You might think you have some control over your life. And it’s true that you can carry on in a purposeful direction with a bit of thought and effort, but still events will tumble across your path, and nobody can stop the wind from blowing.
Parallel universe: What else is out there?
I don’t know about you, but I often become hyperaware of the invisible web around me, its threads spun from cause and effect, missed possibilities and lucky breaks. If I decide to take the bus instead of the train, I wonder what opportunity or mishap might have been avoided (or gained) in the process. Almost every job I’ve ever had has resulted from random collisions with strangers; my first position in publishing came about from a series of events kicked off by having dinner with the friend of a friend on a balcony one warm summer night in Amsterdam. It would never had occurred if I hadn’t followed the random events that forged that particular friendship, that led to my move to the Netherlands; neither would it have happened if the friend of the friend had not followed his own trail, dropping by our Dutch flat on a whim during a business trip.
And all of these possibilities go on forever, in all directions, all of the time. If you thought about it too much, it would either incapacitate your decision-making capabilities or drive you mad. But thinking about it a little, I think, is good for you. It keeps you sharp, and inspires you to put yourself in as many interesting situations as possible – the more threads in your web, the better.
Over the past half year, I’ve blogged about resuming a research career after a four-year break. When I made the switch, it was into a relatively shaky situation: eighteen months of funding on the tail end of someone else’s abandoned fellowship. When you are as far away from your PhD as I am, the possibilities for further funding are extremely limited. Just before I started in the lab, I applied for a Wellcome Career Re-Entry Fellowship : four years of solid funding, more than enough to get me back on my feet – and pretty much my last realistic hope.
The application was reviewed, and I was selected for interview. Life may be random, but I put a hell of a lot of effort this past month into being as prepared as possible for my big day. Because I am working in a new field, I haven’t studied so hard since I was an undergraduate: I wanted to know everything from first principles. I started with the superlative Cell Migration Gateway, then graduated to basic reviews, followed by more specialized reviews and primaries. I went to an Actin meeting in Bristol, and one on RNAi. The day before the interview, I put myself through a brutal mock interview with a few lab heads at the institute that nearly finished me off: for one brief moment, I fantasized about cancelling the whole affair.
The fateful morning dawned brilliant blue. I stayed home to do some last-minute preparations. I read and re-read my proposal; penned before I started in the lab, it contained a few vulnerabilities and grey areas now obvious after half a year’s experience. I practiced looking in the mirror and saying, with unwavering confidence and excellent posture, how I would respond if they asked me why I had left science, why I wanted to come back, why my work was important, where I saw myself in five years’ time. Before I put on the suit, I took a long run in the woodlands around my house. Everything was gripped in heavy frost, delicate white lace delineating each blade of grass, leaves like crystal shards, a thin film of ice on the ponds and streams, pebbles and gravel dangerously slick. Droplets of water rained down from the canopy: sky-high ice melting in the sunlight. Squirrels, magpies, robins, even a skittish young fox, scattered before me; the air was so cold in my lungs that it hurt. I told myself that it didn’t matter how things turned out. If I got the fellowship, my journey back to a scientific research career would continue unabated. If I did not, I would probably have to leave the lab at the end of next year, but I would find something else, and this something might be every bit as fulfilling. Either way could be the right path.
Today I got the call: I was awarded the fellowship in full. Multiple paths and unknown alternative opportunities be damned: I was ecstatic.
HAPPY DANCE
Well done! Well done! There isn’t enough congratulations in the word to convey how congratulatory I want to be!
Thanks, Richard. It was a wonderful Christmas present, and I still can’t quite believe it’s true.
Hi Jennifer, congratulations also from Dresden!
Thanks, David! Congratulations are also in order for your PLoS Computational Biology paper, I hear! Well done.
What wonderful news, I am so pleased for you.
Thanks, Maxine. For awhile it was such a toss-up between continuing as an editor and going back to the lab – I have to admit it’s such a relief that the research direction has now been clarified. I tend to get bogged down in ‘what ifs’, so tidy resolutions like this are the best!
Wow! Congratulations!!! I am so impressed at your determination and perseverance. Yay!!
Thanks. I’ve been very lucky as well. And we are nothing without luck!
Good for you, Jennifer.
You exemplify that we should not fear regret about not having taken the other fork back at the crossroads, because we can never know how that other path would have panned out without having taken it. We can’t look across at it; the ‘distance’ is doubled.
Hey, Lee, I bet we could get really maudlin over a few beers!
If only we could have control selves to let loose and try everything simultaneously.
Aside the brilliant writing in your post, I must congratulate you! Good job!! :)
Thanks very much, Ricardo!
Well done, Jenny – that’s great. Perhaps it’s the end of the year, and the darkness makes one wistful, but I have also been thinking of might-have-beens, lately. So do find the time to keep your other options open. LabLit is first rate, and your fiction is super.
Thanks, Henry; I’ve been writing seriously in my ‘spare’ time for the better part of a decade, so this lab boost shouldn’t change my patterns. If it does start to suffer, I’d take a hard look at my routines.
What is your biggest might-have-been? I could always picture you unearthing fossils somewhere in the desert…
Might-have-beens belong to alternate universes and are therefore secret.
Might-have-beens belong to alternate universes and are therefore secret.
Then there would be no risk-taking.
Safe is boring.
I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the accordion…What’s your secret alternative universe, then, Lee?
I was referring to your reply yesterday (18th; 17:20).
My ‘secret alternative universe’? That’s a lot of ‘maudlin’ beer. But it likely would not involve murdering germ cells most weeks.
Maybe they had it coming?
Accordions? What have they ever had to do with anything?
Y’know. Soothing the savage beast and all that.
Hi Jennifer:
I have not had the time to visit the network for quite sometime. So, when I read your blog for Tuesday, 18 December, with the title: In which one door blows open and another slams shut,
your beginning statement: “You might think you have some control over your life. And it’s true that you can carry on in a purposeful direction with a bit of thought and effort, but still events will tumble across your path, and nobody can stop the wind from blowing.” – wow, it sounds very much like a verse out of “Bhagavat Gita” , India’s song-celestial which fascinated Aldous Huxley, Robert Oppenheimer, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, to name just a few well-known personalities.
Congratulations, Jennifer, twice over, one for the fellowship award, and one for the deeply-intellectual approach to life’s problems.
E.Subramanian
Dear Easwara, thank you for your kind words. I’m flattered you put me in such company.
‘Everything was gripped in heavy frost, delicate white lace delineating each blade of grass, leaves like crystal shards, a thin film of ice on the ponds and streams, pebbles and gravel dangerously slick. Droplets of water rained down from the canopy: sky-high ice melting in the sunlight. Squirrels, magpies, robins, even a skittish young fox, scattered before me; the air was so cold in my lungs that it hurt.”
Good lord, where do you live?? I had to sign up for an account just to comment on your blog. First off, congratulations! And secondly, thank you—I stumbled across your page and have been back many times since—the subject is relevant (I’m currently a graduate student) and I absolutely adore the way you write. I’ve always had a left-right brain conflict between science and writing, so to come here and read your posts is like a breath of fresh air.
Jennifer – belated congrats on your good news. Good to know you are secure for a while to come.
I can’t help wondering whether maybe the panel who interviewed you were secret admirers of your blog and they couldn’t bear the thought of having to live with out it!
Anu
A belated thanks for your kind words – I did not check back for later comments until now. The answer is, I live in Zone 2 of London, but in a very special part of it, Surrey Quays, just south of the Thames in the old timber docklands. The area burned to the ground during the Blitz, but in the Eighties, some visionary city planners decided to fill in some of the docks and create an entire woodlands, complete with ponds and streams, and work in quiet neighborhoods of low-density housing around it. More than twenty years later, the park has matured into an amazing space. In the summer, there is so much vegetation that you almost can’t see Canary Wharf lurking just on the horizon. It really doesn’t look like London at all.