Speak Out October 2020 DIGITAL EDITION FINAL

LEFT Harmony Turnbull's quest to find her space, and, Rebecca Sullivan dealing with the derailment of LEGO trains and data collection (i.e. ethics amendment).

Working from home Rebecca Smith: Although I had been working from home one day a week prior to COVID-19, the jump to working from home full-time was big. The line between “work” and “home” was totally gone so I had to make a conscious effort to give myself mental health breaks. I considered myself lucky as I already had a home office set up. However, I faced days where I had minimal interaction with the outside world. I tried to counteract this isolation by spending time with my miniature schnauzer, Basil, as well as my sister and newborn niece who live nearby as restrictions eased. Rebecca Sullivan : My husband began working from home in March, in our unit with no spare room or study, so we set up one desk in a bedroom and the other in the loungeroom. Things intensified for us when stage 4 lockdowns came into effect and we no longer had access to childcare meaning our 4-year-old son was home with us every day. We took shifts each day sharing the parenting, domestic and working duties; however, for me, the writing often took place amongst Lego, train layouts and Toy Story 4. I had dedicated time in the afternoon and evenings but starting work at 3pm after a morning of playing with a 4 year-old required extra motivation and skills to transition from my Mum role into my HDR role. Harmony Turnbull: After two years of part-time HDR experience, I had developed many strategies for juggling family, work and HDR roles. I lost all routines overnight. Writing and thinking while commuting 3 hours a day on the train. Gone. A couple of hours in a café with my headphones to kick-start a productive HDR day. Gone. SUAW at the local library while my teenage daughter worked a weekend shift at Maccas. Gone. Suddenly, the desk in the corner of my bedroom became the place I was teaching and keeping up with my HDR work. Two months

of furniture-shifting ensued, where no room in the house was left unturned. New routines have emerged and will continue evolve as the year progresses. A lesson in flexibility The impact of COVID-19 has been far reaching. We are sharing parts of our HDR journey through the time of COVID-19 in solidarity with the other speech pathology HDR students that are also persevering, innovating and laying the path for future speech pathology practice. We have faced its impacts on our HDR alongside life events including hospital admissions and surgeries, the birth of a niece, the death of grandparents and navigating the grieving process in isolation. Through it all, we have persisted and progressed with our research. We have built blogs, utilised Twitter, presented at HDR student events, amended ethics protocols and continued to prepare and submit manuscripts for publication and abstracts for online conferences. As an example, Rebecca Smith engaged in the Three Minute Thesis competition over Zoom this year, in true lockdown style: looking perfectly presentable on top in a blouse and blazer while wearing track pants and Ugg boots under the desk. This was successful for round-one of the competition and carried it through to round-two. Through these collaborative and ongoing experiences, we are stronger, wiser and more resilient, we know that nobody could have predicted COVID-19 or the far-reaching implications across the speech pathology profession. We have learned to make personal and professional connections and continue our research, all the while dealing with toys, pets, partners, the merging of all our roles into one environment and an increase in the number of track pants we own. We persevere because we know that our research will influence the way people with communication and swallowing difficulties are supported in the future.

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Speak Out | October 2020