put to shame

The last few days I've been whining a bit about my brain, my butt, my lack of life outside of the 10 foot diameter of my computer and piles of review books. Spending a week at my parents house, however, has put me to shame. My parents get up sometime around 7am usually and go off to work for 12 hour days of often frustrating research. After earning PH.Ds and spending years as post-docs, they make less money than many kids who come straight out of business school or the "IT" folks who work at my mom's unnamed top research university and still haven't managed to hook her lap top up to the internet.

Anyway, my parents work hard, as they have since we moved to this country of golden opportunities for spoiled little suburban brats and the hard-working immigrants who come to steal their jobs.

...but I degress.


Anyway, this week, my parents put this spoiled suburban brat to shame. Due to upcoming grant deadlines, 16-hour experiments, and conferences for which they must produce data, my parents have been working especially hard the last few weeks. My mom got up at 4am the other day; my dad at 6am. They were both at work for the next 16 hours, after which they came home and did the same thing the next day.

Now I'm sure I'll be pulling lots of 16-36 hr shifts next year and in future years, and I have definitely had my years of going to college, working 2 jobs (including one that went from 12am-8am), and even volunteering in my "spare time" between nervous breakdowns. Yes, I definitely have the genes.

But here's the difference:

My parents wake up each day and make their bed. They clean up after/feed the cats. They keep the kitchen and bathroom sparkingling clean. They do groceries and cook food for the week. And when I visit, they even give me sympathy for the "hard work" I have to do.