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We want to talk about all things periods and how they affect our daily lives as chemists at Oxford. We would love to here your views and opinions:
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Periodically, the podcast that covers all things periods and chemistry!
Each week, over this series of six episodes, we here at the University of Oxford will be taking a deep-dive into just how periods have affected us in tutorials, exams, labs and just generally studying at undergrad. We want to talk about how periods can sometimes just get in the bloody way!
Periodically is funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry Equality and Diversity fund.
Elba - 0:06
Periodically, the podcast that covers all things periods in chemistry. How did the two overlap? Well, here at the University of Oxford, we've been looking into just that. How does having periods have an impact on studying an undergraduate chemistry degree? Over this series of six episodes, we'll be taking a deep dive into just how periods have affected us in tutorials, exams, labs, and just generally studying at undergrad. We want to talk about how periods can sometimes just get in the bloody way. We'd like to give a huge thanks to the RSC Equality and Diversity Fund for supporting this podcast. Your hosts today are...
Lottie - 0:39
Hi I'm Lottie and I'm in my third year.
Josie - 0:43
Hi I'm Josie and I'm in my second year.
Elba - 0:46
Hi I'm Elba and I'm a fourth year.
Charlie - 0:48
And hi I'm Charlie and I'm a postgrad.
Lottie - 0:51
So today we're going to be talking about all things labs and labs generally mean that we're stood up at a fume hood all day which can be exhausting for anyone but what about when you get your period? How do you cope with period cramps, back pain, nausea, feeling faint, extra anxiety, just to name a few. These are some of the themes that we want to explore today. We also wanted to note just before we start in earnest that the RSC, so the Royal Society of Chemistry, requires a minimum number of hours in order for our chemistry degrees to be accredited. We want to acknowledge upfront that this means there is time pressure to complete a certain number of labs just to be awarded your degree and this is a fundamental part of any chemistry degree and not responsibility of any particular university.
Charlie - 1:35
I am a demonstrator in first-year labs and from the demonstrator side of things I've seen students that have been in real pain whilst during the labs and they've told me it's because of their period and it's quite stressful for the demonstrator because you see these people that are in pain but they don't want to lose any lab credits and you also want them to get the lab done as soon as possible so then they can leave and it actually leads to quite a dangerous working environment and also it's just quite generally unpleasant to witness.
Lottie - 2:02
So I'm in third year now and our third-year labs we have freedom to plan our labs so we decide when we're going to do them and we have a lot more flexibility around how long we spend at the lab each day and it's very beneficial for students to do this and especially when they're on their period and we're thinking maybe that's something we could discuss as a way to help students. We also want to discuss that maybe having catch-up labs is a good way to allow lab credits to be got and completed even if someone is ill on the day of their scheduled lab. So to start with I'd be really interested in knowing more about what you three think. What have been your experiences about the main difficulties of being in a lab environment whilst being someone who has a period?
Josie - 2:39
I think the most difficult thing for me is how few opportunities there are to have breaks since some labs can be really intense and time-pressured. Especially in first year when you're in pairs it can be really difficult if the other person just wants to power through. In many labs I've gone without eating or drinking all day as my peers just want to power through and I have quite low iron levels so when I am on my period I find labs quite difficult and often feel really faint and cannot concentrate. This can end up affecting how we're graded if our periods affect our productivity. When I'm on my period I've often wanted to leave, it's quite difficult to rearrange labs and I don't really want to catch up during exam season.
Elba - 3:17
I think the added difficulty during your fourth year which you spend entirely in a lab in a research group as opposed to the undergrad teaching is that it's every single day and it can feel very relentless in that sense. It's exhausting and you spend a lot of time on your feet. Periods affect your productivity in different ways throughout the month and you still have to come to terms with the fact that some weeks you just might not get as much done and because you actually can't predict periods there are times when maybe you're in a lot of pain but you sort of have to power through just to get something done because you have to run this column or you have to work up this reaction and otherwise it would jeopardise more weeks worth of work so I think it's just finding that balance can be hard.
Charlie - 4:03
I think I can relate a lot to Elba but in terms of a PhD, PhD is just like a really long master's year. So this is like something that takes about four years to do, three and a half to four years and I think part of the success of the PhD is being able to manage doing the PhD while there is lots of other things being thrown at you, whether that be mental health or also just physical health and I found particularly for me that my productivity is affected by my menstrual cycle and there is weeks particularly before my period where I feel like I can't really do anything, I don't really want to do anything, really unmotivated in terms of work and just struggle to get things done but then I know that as soon as I've had my period that the weeks after I'm actually really productive and I kind of get a lot more work done then. So I kind of like account for this when I'm planning what I'm doing. I also have like really bad periods on the very first day of my period and I normally end up having to take it off because even with like painkillers and stuff they're still quite painful, which is a bit of a shame because it means that like if this comes as a surprise and I have a reaction on it's quite hard to plan around, but also it just means that I have to take a day off and sometimes I can do admin work from home on that day but most of the time is just a write-off. So I think kind of what's highlighted about chemistry is that it's not just the work that we have to do but it's also the nature of the work, the fact that it is so physical and the fact that it does demand you to be standing up most days to working in the lab.
Lottie - 5:33
Yeah, I agree and I think everyone I've spoken to who has a period has sort of brought up similar concerns about how it's affecting their work schedule and I personally have felt really frustrated sometimes when friends around me, mostly male-identifying friends, will say, you know, "Women in STEM, you go girl!" And it seems to me to a lot of people pink lab coats and conical flasks, but the reality and the physicality of periods is just so huge and I remember times in undergraduate labs holding onto the edge of the fume hood just trying to breathe slowly through extreme pain while everyone else around me was sort of getting on with titrating or whatever they were doing and all the things that you've just discussed, that are the actual problems for a lot of women in STEM and I think these are the things that we are actually worried about. We're not worried about smudging our mascara with our lab goggles and I think if people could listen to what we're saying rather than telling us what they think we should be worried about, I think that we'd make much more progress in leveling the playing fields. As you can tell I can feel quite frustrated about my period and how it affects my productivity. Having an extra thing to manage on top of what the other chemists around me do can really make it feel very unfair and what kind of emotional effects do your physical symptoms have for you three?
Josie - 6:50
I often just feel really disappointed in myself because I know I could do better if I wasn't on my period and if I wasn't feeling ill and sometimes I worry that the demonstrators think I'm a bit stupid or being quite slow when I can't physically do the work and I worry it will affect my grade.
Elba - 7:04
I think it's frustrating to feel like you can't do what you need to get done and that it feels like a constant build-up effect. You're in pain so you can't do as much work now which means that then you have more work to do after and aside from the actual pain which is upsetting and distracting it's that sense of like disappointing yourself or the people around you or your supervisor because you can't do something which is a very strange feeling to have when you're disappointed in yourself for being in pain and I think also beyond the effects of actually dealing with pain, another aspect that's really important within chemistry is mental resilience because you're going to do a lot of experiments and most of them are not going to work and the skill as a chemist is to be able to get up and say "okay well I'm going to try it another way and okay well this didn't work but now I'm going to move on to do this other thing and I think most times I'm very good at like compartmentalising that and moving on but then there are certain times in my cycle where just everything feels like the end of the world and everything feels like it's worth sitting down on the floor and crying over so you sort of have to manage your response to your research as well as actually managing your physical experience so I I think the issue is that periods don't only affect your physical ability to do the work but also how you feel about your work and your self-confidence and how motivated you feel as well which has a really big impact as well that often isn't considered.
Charlie - 8:37
I relate to like a lot of what Elba said there. I feel quite angry a lot of the time. I think it's kind of not fair that other people can be productive all the time and I think this feeds a lot into my anxiety just generally, like I feel like this is something else that women kind of maybe have to deal with a lot, is that I sometimes feel like I've got imposter syndrome and all this and I think that having the worry of when is my period gonna arrive how is that gonna make me feel how is that gonna affect my work on top of oh my word I need to be doing more work, I need to be doing this and keeping up has really fed into my anxiety and yeah I think this is one of the things that I worry about a lot and trying to manage my own time and also manage how a period could fit into that and yeah I really don't like doing big heavy columns when I'm on my period and that's quite a lot of my PhD so it's kind of a big issue. But yeah I was also gonna say in response to Josie makes me like I completely understand like the worry about demonstrators feeling like you know you can't tell them or if they don't know what's going on and I think this is one of the big things that will maybe talk about later is the fact that maybe these demonstrators being more aware not just demonstrators but supervisors and everyone in general being more aware of these problems that face women, not just women but people who have periods then it can be something that we should hopefully move forward with in the future.
Lottie - 10:12
And Josie, you mentioned about feeling like it could be difficult to talk to people about your period. Would you be able to tell us a bit more about your experience about that in the undergraduate labs and Elba and Charlie about how you feel able to communicate these challenges with other people around you at a research level?
Josie - 10:27
Yeah, my friends can be really understanding and help me out, especially if it's paired work, I can just go take a break or say continue on without reaction. But I find it quite difficult to speak to the staff due to the stigma around periods. And so I feel like I just have to power through and not let them know?
Elba - 10:45
Personally, I'm very lucky to have a great part two master's year supervisor who's supportive and helpful and if you hadn't guessed it's Charlie.
Charlie - 10:57
I actually paid her to say that.
Elba - 11:01
And I think in terms of discussing period-related issues the fact that she's a woman and has also been very vocal about her own experiences. I mean she's the person who brought me onto this project means that if someone who will understand what I'm saying and who I know will take my concerns seriously, I think in general in the lab setting I wouldn't want to talk about my periods or the associated pain because I don't think that other people in the lab would be as understanding and I'd worry that they take me less seriously because they don't see it as a real problem. As a woman in the lab, it can already feel like a battle to be respected by other people so it does feel like a case of wanting to avoid anything that might contribute to make things worse.
Charlie - 11:46
I think as well it's very nice what Elba said about the supervisor, but I think this also comes from like my experience with my supervisor that I had in my master's year. So my supervisor, he was really great, I could talk to him about anything whether that be mental health, whether that be that I'm feeling very ill, whether that being that I'm feeling like very ill because of my period and I was made to feel very comfortable by him and like he's still my friend now. So that made the whole situation kind of good and then I think that perpetuating on I think through me as a supervisor might actually be like one of the things that we should really try and do you know if we have these really good role models that we look up to that are very easy to talk to and very understanding and just very like aware of a lot of issues then if we kind of try and perpetuate this culture I think it's something that would really help. We went to watch a talk by Caroline Dessent from the University of York and she's the head of the department there and she was talking a lot about the work that the university there does to deal with equality and diversity. And the main thing that she wanted to talk about was changing this culture and I think that's really interesting and kind of hopefully what we're doing with this podcast a little bit is changing the culture and trying to like get so that people do feel comfortable enough to communicate it with other people, whether that be their peers, their supervisors, anything like that.
Lottie - 13:11
Thank you all for sharing and especially interesting what you said, Elba, about not wanting to be seen as different or making a fuss about your period. I think that's something that we discuss more in the tutorial episode. So we've discussed a bit about having the problems of being in a period, the challenges of being in labs, and all of us have at some point been in undergraduate labs and at Oxford, we call our undergraduate labs the chemistry teaching labs or CTL to its friends. I'm in third year and now we have the opportunity to schedule our own lab hours as I mentioned earlier, which is fantastic in managing periods it's true, but also managing having an actual life outside of the labs, as I'm sure you're still experiencing Josie, having to be in the labs all day Monday and Tuesday doesn't do great things for your social life. The CTL also now have period products in the toilets, which sounds potentially trivial and perhaps when I first heard it, I thought that was quite trivial. But then I really thought about it and remembered a time in our second year where one of my friends started her period completely unexpectedly, and then had to go all the way back home, which was a 15-minute walk, and all the way back to get period products and then consequently didn't have time to have lunch and so spent the afternoon on the first day of her period having had no lunch at lunchtime, which is a horrific combination with all the other symptoms of being on the first day of your period. So having these products is a very simple and tangible support to students. The CTL also work on education and barriers to student learning, which I and other people I've heard from have found to create a really supportive and friendly atmosphere within the labs. So we have lots of positive things to say about our teaching labs here. But we do have some things we still think could be improved and we'd like to discuss those a bit more now. So what are your guys' opinions? What do you think could be further improved to support students who have periods?
Josie - 15:07
I think it would be really helpful for there to be suggested times for everyone to go to lunch during labs because otherwise people feel quite faint and don't really get time to rest whilst they're on their period. These suggested lunch breaks are given for some labs already which I think has helped me a lot personally during my period and also even just having more stalls in labs would help so you can just sit down whilst you're waiting for your reaction to happen and maybe reducing the amount of work in each lab could mean there are more opportunities to take these needed breaks and I think it could be useful for there to be catch-up labs in the vacation because if you do need to miss a lab due to a really bad period it makes rearranging it easier rather than doing it during exam season which can be quite stressful.
Charlie - 15:50
I think that's a really good point and from a demonstrator perspective, having like suggested lab breaks is actually I think would really benefit not just you guys but also me. Like it means that I can go for my lunch when you guys go for your lunch and also like I can go for breaks when you guys go for breaks and so that I can help you as much as possible while you're actually in the lab. But also like I have periods when I'm demonstrating too and it's the same thing. It’s being stood up all day and it is probably more intense than doing just PhD just for that singular day because when you do your PhD, if you feel uncomfortable you can just leave the lab go and sit outside at your desk for 10 minutes, have a drink of water whereas when you're demonstrating it's actually a lot harder because you know you have your responsibility to be there and make sure everyone's safe so I think it's a really good idea and maybe something that could I think quite easily be inputted into their lab demonstrator notes and stuff so yeah I think that's really good idea Josie.
Elba - 16:46
As I said before I've been extremely lucky with my supervisor but this isn't the case for everyone. I think it would be great if all the master supervisors, the PhDs and postdocs that look after the fourth years on a day-to-day basis as well as all the lab demonstrators could have some sort of training in mental health, periods, just how to have those conversations to make sure that they know how to create a supportive environment because even if they want to they might not have the tools there to be able to do it. From the disability service, I have a student support plan and that's great because you can choose to have that shared with the group supervisor during your research year which means that if I do need to discuss adjustments or I do need to take time off because of things that are mentioned there I'm not starting that conversation from zero, there's already context, which makes it easier for me and it makes it easier for them. I think one step further would be to be able to choose to share that support plan with your day-to-day supervisor, the PhD or the postdoc because those are really the people that you're seeing all the time and who you're probably going to need to have those conversations with if something does happen. So I think that's a great way to facilitate those conversations without making it uncomfortable and just making it all in all easier, I think would be helpful for both the students and the supervisors.
Lottie - 18:09
And Charlie, you are a lab demonstrator. Do the lab demonstrators get any training at all?
Charlie - 18:14
We do get lab training. We have, before we start being demonstrators, we have one that obviously goes through health and safety in the lab, but we also have one that talks about, you know, if we do notice anything wrong with the students, a bit about how to deal with them. It could be I think a lot more in detail and definitely more inclusive in like what that is, but it is probably one of the only opportunities that we have as people that end up being mentors to actually have some kind of form of training which is really good. As Elba said like as I'm her supervisor day-to-day in the lab I've not actually had any like training for that or anything so you know it I think the demonstrator training helped a little bit with that but I think that there could be more done and definitely more specifics kind of with the training that could make it a lot more beneficial for everyone.
Lottie - 19:07
So we've got lots of tangible suggestions here, lunch, deep breaths, water, food being included in the lab manuals, stools in the lab, more training for demonstrators, supervisors and anyone in a teaching-type role.
Elba - 19:21
Thank you so much for listening, we hope you enjoyed our discussion and hopefully it was relatable for those studying with periods and for those listening that don't experience periods, we hope you can understand a bit more about the day-to-day issues they can cause. Please feel free to let us know your thoughts and opinions. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram @Periodically_ox. Again, we would like to give a huge thanks to the RSC Equality and Diversity Fund for supporting this podcast.