Maintaining my mental health during the pandemic has been difficult. I am a single parent of a three-year old boy and I now have no childcare for him as the daycares are all closed. My days are spent trying to entertain him, teach him, and keep him engaged and active. The pandemic has taken a toll on him as well. He has developed anxiety and some concerning behaviors as a result of the turmoil of this situation, so he now requires even more attention than he did previously. It has been extremely difficult for me to get work done in this environment. I am supposed to defend my prospectus this Spring but there is no way I see that happening. Trying to keep up with coursework, program requirements, and paper writing while also ensuring my son’s physical, emotional, and cognitive needs are met, on top of dealing with the steady flood of distressing news that this pandemic produces is an impossible task. Balancing work and child care as a single parent was hard before this situation, and now I wonder if I will be able to do the dissertation work I planned to do before I run out of funding or if I will have to settle for rushed, mediocre work that will harm my job market prospects, risking the livelihood of my family. On top of these caregiving needs, I have not been able to get feedback from my advisor on the work I am trying to do as they have coronavirus and of course cannot work right now. I have talked to many other graduate students who have similar concerns. Despite fears for the health and safety of ourselves and our loved ones, graduate students have continued to work tirelessly to keep the university running—as preceptors, as research assistants, and as students. But we need help. We are all very scared right now. We came into academia because we are passionate about our work and we want our research to make contributions that will ultimately benefit society. But right now it feels as though our futures are uncertain and Princeton is not giving us the support we need to do what we were admitted to this university to do. I hope the university will recognize our needs and give us the aid that they fully have the means to give. The endowment is like a rainy day fund, and if this isn’t a rainy day I don’t know what is. Supporting graduate students right now may be expensive in the short term, but if the university trusts its admissions process, the benefits that supporting these dedicated scholars will have for the university and the broader world in the long term will be well worth it.
