Bumps & Humps

Science careers are not easy, but most people are not aware of the bumps and humps involved until they have started driving down that road. How many of us asked our professors or others in the field how difficult it was for them before we chose to major in STEM? But we started driving nonetheless and - always sooner than expected - encountered our own challenges. Everyone's path is different, with their own bumps and humps. Some are minor, some are major; some discourage you, others test your determination. Once again I took my wondering to the blog wide world to put together another Scientiae Carnival. I asked for bumps and humps, and that is what I got. So here I invite you to go Bump! Bump! on this multi-hump Wump.*

To start off, let us all congratulate Micro Dr. O, who blogs at The Tightrope, on her soon-to-be-bump. Buckle your seat belt, you are in for quite a ride! Juggling career and family can be quite a challenge, but I would say it is very much worth the struggle. There will be many bumps in the way, not just the one you can see in the mirror. We should also wish Rocket Scientista good luck. She is worried she will go insane while trying to overcome this major hump in her doctoral studies - her comprehensive exam. She is preparing herself as best she can and I am sure she will get over this hump without breaking down. It is just a test, just the hardest test!

Some of the bumps are indeed major life changing events, and it takes courage and determination to get past them. Other bumps are daily life bumps, that slow our progress but do not change our path. Though sometimes it is hard to figure out which kind of bump you are going through until you have gone past it. JaneB, who blogs at Now, what was I doing?, thinks it is like driving down a road. Her drive was full of bumps and humps that could be perceived as major setbacks, but she encourages us to think about the journey, not just the destination. Taking the motorway can seem very monotonous some times...

Liberal Arts Lady deliberately avoided the highway because she thought a secondary road would provide a more pleasant drive:

I like to think that I came to a SLAC to allow for a more reasonable life, one not ruled by the power of the external funding agency, one where I might someday have a free evening once in a while. I like to think that this reasonable life is still possible, out there somewhere over the tenure rainbow. Or maybe I should stop waiting for that mythical future and try to create a more sustainable life for myself right now.

Independent of which kind of road you chose to drive on, it most likely will not be smooth the entire way - or the second time around. Amy at This is what a computer scientist looks like is driving on a very bumpy teaching road. Even though the last time she taught a particular section it was a smooth drive, this time around she is falling into potholes. She wonders if it is the road or her driving. Kylie at PodBlack Cat is also wondering what can be done to improve the teaching road. Magic?

But what do you do when things get too tough? Canadian GirlPostdoc in America only feels motivated to keep driving when she focus on things for which she is grateful, instead of ruminating on the many bumps in her road. Alyssa at Apple Pie and the Universe writes that she has encountered a million and one bumps on the road to turning a nearby observatory into an outreach program. As she describes the challenges she has run into, she also asks when is it time to walk away. Ms. PhD, who blogs at Young Female Scientist, also is wondering when do you know that it is time to get off the road. She seems to keep hitting the same bumps over and over, and she wonders if she is just driving around in circles or if this road will actually go somewhere. Will she feel like a quitter if she changes her path or will she find herself on a better road?

My own road is uncharacteristically smooth and colorful right now, but I am not sure where it is headed. I am not sure I am even in Kansas anymore... I probably should have packed those ruby slippers...



* Just in case you have never seen a Wump...

From "One Fish,Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" by Dr Seuss

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

Who is the fairest of us all? Now that is a loaded question... Have you seen how many definitions of "fair" there are in the dictionary? Moreover, even if what we see in the mirror is fair, our judgment may not be. We seem to constantly compare ourselves to some ideal or another, and lo and behold we do not quite measure up. Once in a while I try to discuss this with Ihctap, but all she does is roll her eyes at me. Hence, I took my wondering to the blog wide world and I got a Scientiae Carnival out of it...

Indeed, there are women out there that face the mirror with confidence. Field Notes has been seeing many physical changes in her mirror, but these changes do not seem to affect her true identity. Pat at Fairer Science hopes she still is who she thinks she is. Academic at Journeys of an Academic knows she is following the right dream by the sparkling eyes she sees in the mirror. Kate at Academic Ecology hopes that leaving her twenties behind will not impair her self image or her ideals. Despite here stress, EcoGeoFemme at The Happy Scientist sees determination when she looks in the mirror and gears up to defend her dissertation. JaneB has a thorough description on how she sees herself up at her place. She seems to have a clear idea of who she is, for better or worse. The Ethical Paleontologist also has a very detailed portrait of the woman who looks back at her, even though she points out how strained their relationship is:

We are worse than best friends with our criticism of each other. Sometimes when I catch her gaze she looks absolutely repulsed by my body. In turn, I spot every lump and bump (although I also notice that the bitch always looks pretty damn good in the bedroom - if only she would look as good in the shop windows as I walk past).

As it happens, taking a fair look at oneself is harder than just looking in the mirror. Leigh at The Path Forward says that she purposefully hides her true self behind a protective image. Maria at Speech and Science sees her reflection in two opposing mirrors and ponders which one is telling the truth. Professor in Training has a difficult time reconciling the differences between what she perceives to what others around her see. Indie PhD pointed out that she tried to face herself at least three times before she decided "to stick to a list for now" due to too much baggage. Alas, even the Goddess seems to be having trouble...

Perfection seems to be a holy grail, sought but not found. Volcanista points out that one can eventually outgrow their teenage issues with the mirror:

If we’re talking body image, I’m past most or all of the issues I had as a girl and teen, the issues that most or all teenage girls have with thinking their bodies have problems because they don’t fit the beauty ideal. So physically, I generally like what I see, though everyone has their bad days when they notice all the little imperfections, and I’m no exception to that.

But that does not mean we are not trying to see how we measure up to other ideals. Career, family, society in general... Fia over at Academia and Me wrote that she has been trying to figure out who she is. A scientist? A mother? Adventurous? Zen? However, she never seems to measure up to her own standards. Karina at Ruminations of an Aspiring Ecologist is proud of who she has become, but she still believes she is not quite there. ScienceWoman tries to be realistic as she assesses her progress towards tenure, but she seems to look more at what is lacking than at what she has. DamnGoodTechnician feels inadequate because she sets the bar too high, even though she knows she is being unfair to herself:

Am I being fair to myself in doing this? Of course not. But does anyone see themselves fairly? I can't imagine that they do. My problem here is that I never measure myself against my peers, and instead I find someone who's better at whatever-it-is, and set them as the bar for competency. My comparisons are always against the postdocs or lab heads, and never against another tech. Essentially, I've come up with an invisible ruler to measure myself against. I can't see this ruler, and neither can anyone else, but this doesn't stop me from authoritatively saying, "Nope, I fell short again. See? Can't you see this line here? I totally missed it."

Are we just striving for personal growth, wanting to be better day after day? Or are we truly setting ourselves up for guilt and failure by unreasonable criticism? Are we being fair to ourselves? Melissa over at Confused at a Higher Level thinks it is "the lack of well-worn paths and the variety of personal perspectives upon looking in the mirror that makes the larger picture so difficult to discern." I think Jenny from A Natural Scientist would agree... She says she does not recognize the woman she sees in the mirror, as her life choices have taken her in such an unexpected direction. There is no right or wrong path to take, and how to proceed is not taught in a class or written in a book. I think Kylie from PodBlack Cat has an important point (I am purposely quoting out of her context of religious skepticism):

To assume that ‘teach X will automatically lead Y’ in this case, to me, leaves out other factors. The quality of teaching, the environment of the school, the home environment, the socio-economic status of the student, the pressure from peers and culture, even role-models… I’m just not confident that it’s as easy as ‘here’s a website’ or ‘here’s a book’.

Maybe we need more role models - Pat from Fairer Science points out that some subfields of science (and drag racing) are still lacking women. Maybe we need less guilt - Alice from Sciencewomen would probably second that, while she tells you how hard it is to be your own subject matter. Or maybe this is what blogging is all about - Kim over at All of My Faults Are Stress Related pointed out that bloggers might be looking for an outlet more than an audience. Mirror, mirror, on the web... As you look at yourself and interpret the image, I hope you interpret yours fairly!

When You Got It, Flaunt It

I have noticed that many scientists keep well defined boundaries between their personal and professional lives. Some are particular about not talking about their family, and one might not even know if they are married or whether they have kids. This might lead to a respectable professional facade, but might not be sending the right message to aspiring scientists. The image they are sending is that there is no success in science unless work is your life, which should not be the case. I fear that many aspiring scientists abandon their career choice because of the lack of role models that show them that it is possible, although not easy, to bake their cake and eat it too.

I have found many posts in the blog wide world of scientists blurring the line between career and family, and I believe it is the right message to send. A well rounded individual should not forfeit one aspect of their well being over others. Moreover, life is complicated and most of the time beyond one's control. It would be enlightening for students to see that even with a complicated life, their professors still manage to get the work done (and by the deadlines).

I never kept my personal life a secret, and maybe I have paid a high price for that sometimes. However, I hope that I'm setting a good example to the students in my building with the little merging of personal/professional things I do on a regular basis...

• I gave seminars & journal club while sporting very large pregnancy bellies. Work was a welcome distraction and I worked as long as I could health-wise. I even showed off my hard-to-find maternity labcoat. I attended seminars regularly, even the ones in nearby buildings. I cherished the smiles and chuckled with the "I thought you'd have popped by now" comments.
  
• I'm the one who brings her kids to lab & department social gatherings unless they explicitly say no children. We take our kids everywhere and that is why we hear so many people say they are well behaved. However, I once took a baby to a dinner with an invited speaker, which was a bit of a distraction when you are trying to talk science. (Somehow the fact that the baby is there makes people want to talk about family instead... all barriers break loose...)
  
• I'm the one pushing the stroller and totting an almost 3 year old into the department on a Saturday to do little things in lab that will make my week run smoother. If you ask me where their Dada is I'll tell you I'm giving him a 3 hour window to clean the house without distractions.
• I have walked around the department every day for almost a year with the black bag and a heavy duty, bright orange, 10 ft extension cord. If you ask me what I'm doing, I'll tell you it's my milk pump, that I am heading for the ladies room with the couch and that I need the cord because the outlet is at the other side of the room.

It's the little things that blur the line between the personal & professional, and sends the message that scientists are people too.

On women & plant biology

I believe I am driving my husband a bit crazy with my interest in issues related to women in science. I've been reading FSP's book and many postings in the blog wide world. Last time I tried to discuss my new findings with him, he came back with the "Is it really that bad?" reply. That was a rhetorical question, because he knows it is. He proceeded to tell me how bad the last tenure decisions were. I will not post it because it is too depressing.

Interestingly, I have noticed discrimination more in my postdoc years than in my graduate years. I thought that this was due to the loss of women through the academic pipeline. Many graduate students, less postdocs, not so many faculty. However, I am also seeing the differences between subfields of study. There were many more prominent female scientists in plant biology. Why?

I went looking for answers and came up with some historical reasons. Most of them describing botany as a women's subject. I even found this article in Science from 1887 promoting botany as a suitable field of study for young men.

AN idea seems to exist in the minds of some young men that botany is not a manly study; that it is merely one of the ornamental branches, suitable enough for young ladies and effeminate youths, but not adapted for able-bodied and vigorous-brained young men who wish to make the best use of their powers. I wish to show that this idea is wholly unfounded, but that, on the contrary, botany ought to be ranked as one of the most useful and most manly of studies, and an important, if not an indispensable, part of a well-rounded education.

Would this idea be the reason why there are so many women in plant biology? This is not to say that women in plant biology have an easy time climbing the academic ladder. And maybe some of the difficulties they face have to do with these "young men" making sure they appear manly enough.

However, in the biological sciences scope of things, plant biologists seem to have a harder time justifying their worth. One needs to be twice as good to be considered good. One needs a complete story to publish in a general interest journal. While some observations are published comparing different cell lines, plants are plants. One does not get much prestige for working on plants, let alone recognition for big discoveries unless it is proven to occur in animals too. (Don't get me started on the RNAi business...) Does this have to do with botany being a women's field?

Parenting is not just for mothers anymore.

I have been reading a lot of articles on how to retain women in academia and how to make science more family-friendly. I've read about the daycare argument. Some people think affordable daycare is the solution to all problems while others believe it is not the incentive women need to go back to work. I've read about clock-stopping policies for tenure-track professors. This would allow for longer maternity leave, which many people seem to think is what every mother wants. I've read about debates on how to make it possible to be in academia part-time, how to give grant incentives for women with children, how to keep women productive and up to date while on extended leave to allow them to return to work. The common denominator in all I've read seems to focus on how to enable mothers to raise their children and work. Somehow I keep asking myself: where do the fathers come in? The more I read about how difficult the situation is portrayed, the more I'm amazed that people think that to have it all means to do it all by oneself. What happened to the paradigm that "it takes a village to raise a child"? Or at least a family...

I come from a culture that believes that one cannot do it all. My relatives always ask me how I can manage to work, cook, clean the house and take care of the children without live-in maids or extensive family at close proximity. Even my cousin who "stayed at home with the kids" had a maid to cook & clean AND a nanny. I always have to politely point out that I'm not all alone. These days, my husband seems to be doing most of the cooking (as I'm usually nursing my 7 month-old during food preparation time) AND most of the cleaning (I get to do the laundry). We engage our 2.5 year-old in all these "activities" to keep him entertained. We also send our kids to daycare full-time so we can both work during the week. We are both responsible for the well being of our family. Isn't that what parenting is all about?

So you'd like to marry a scientist...

When my mother was getting ready to marry my dad, someone took her aside and told her it was not easy being a scientist's wife. At 19 I'm not sure how prepared she was for this role (or marriage in general), but as they approach their 37th anniversary I can see she managed just fine. Being a scientist myself, I can understand some of the challenges she faced.

Science is not a 9 to 5 job, it's a lifestyle. I was told that the first day of classes in my undergraduate program. I had been admitted to the first incoming class of a program designed to form researchers in biological sciences. The coordinators wanted to make sure we knew what we were getting into. I was probably as prepared for my career as my mother was for marriage, and, like her, I dived in with all my heart.

The way things turned out, I ended up marrying a scientist. Five years later, it is hard to say whether this made things easier or more difficult. All I know is I don't think I could have married anyone else. I need someone that understands how important work is to me. I need someone who I can talk problems out with and can give me strategies to attack them. I need someone who will give me constructive criticism to help me move forward in life. Someone that doesn't think I am too crazy when I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about experiments. And yes, the fact that he can cook & dance was indeed what sealed the deal.

As I married a scientist, I got what I asked for but the reverse was also true. We are both spouses of a scientist also. So we talk research at breakfast and dinner, and sometimes in the middle of the night. I always find it amusing to hear him whispering in my ear "Are you awake? I was thinking about my grant..." Pre-kids there was a lot more science talking, but now we have two little someones competing for attention.

I realized how much of a scientist I am during my pregnancies. When I miscarried my first pregnancy the message boards did not give me the support I needed. I found more comfort on PubMed. Somehow realizing that it happens 20% of the time (25% in England - why?) made me feel more normal. I guess sanity is a question of perspective... All I can say is that I tackled pregnancy as I would any other experiment. I have to admit I was a bit obsessed with development. I was reading more embryology texts than parenting books. I found this great pregnancy journal that describes what happens to the fetus & mother on a daily basis, along with nutritional information and why certain things should be avoided. The more I read, the more I was amazed there were babies born at all. Makes you want to almost believe in miracles...

Along with the perks there are also disadvantages of my marrying a scientist. The major one is that my career is not advancing as smoothly as I would have hoped. It is easy to just blame our age difference of four years. He had finished his Ph.D. by the time I started mine. Combined with the fact that he had a very short 1-year postdoc before landing his tenure-track position. He is tenured and I'm contemplating a third postdoc. I'm not trying to catch up, I know I will be trailing for years.

As I meander through life I keep my goals in view and enjoy the journey. Despite the pebbles in the road, I would not have taken a different route. A Brazilian poet once wrote that he collected the stones in his path because one day he would have enough to build a castle. This princess is working on her castle too.

So many PhDs, not many professors.

When I was finishing my PhD, I drove many of my professors crazy by asking them where their students were. I was searching for alumni from my graduate program that made it into academia. I wasn't going as far as wanting a tenured faculty member, as our program only started in the early 1990's and admits about 3-5 students a year. It is also true that several of the alumni are foreign students, many of which return to their own country. I assumed that most professors kept track of their students, shouldn't they get brownie points for their progeny's success? However, my professors kept sending me to each other, and in the end one of them introduced me to a student of theirs at a conference who had recently gotten a tenure-track position. (Her husband, who is in the same area, ended up with an industry job, but I'm not sure if it was by choice or not.)

My argument with my professors was that they were not training their students to stay in academia. They were not preparing them to go into tenure-track positions. I lived through my husband's struggles to get tenure and I knew he was a lot more prepared for the job at the end of his PhD than I was at the end of mine. He had a lot more grant writing and teaching experience, which is probably why he landed a tenure-track position with a year and a half of postdoc experience. It is true that I chose my PhD program partly because it didn't require teaching, all students admitted receive research assistantships. My thought at the time was that I didn't want to have to teach while I was taking classes or getting my qualifying exams done or my dissertation written. I didn't know that "no teaching requirement" meant "no teaching opportunities." I did manage to TA for a class, but three lectures are not enough to call experience. I tried to overcome that deficiency by volunteering to present my work at meetings and by joining as many journal clubs as would fit my schedule. But I am now looking for teaching opportunities during my postdoc, which are also quite difficult to find.

Given what I believed were shortcomings of my PhD program, I was quite surprised to read an article in Science stating that only one out of 26 of Yale's molecular biophysics and biochemistry program graduates from the class of 1991 holds a tenured faculty position 10 years after graduation. Five other alumni are working in academia, but only one of those is on a tenure-track. The article makes the point that many of the alumni chose not to go into academia and that two thirds are still working in the life sciences. The author's concern was whether the low funding opportunities were to blame, but that does not seem to be the case. The main point I see is that most students are choosing not to go into academia, why?

I know that not everyone holding a PhD can (or wants to) become a professor. And there are not enough positions available for the ones that are trying for it. I understand not trying for something because you don't want to do it, but what I see is many students thinking they cannot compete. I heard that professors tell their students to aim one tier down, that someone from a "first-tier" institution will get a job in a "second-tier" and so on. That kind of comment sends some students straight to industry, as they are scared they will end up teaching at a community college. Not to mention the married couples who are told to forget about dual-position offers unless they both have Science & Nature publications. Are the prospects really that bleak? No wonder most students are scared of academia!

Roll call for role models

Career & family, I'm sure that is an internal debate in the mind of every working woman. While aspiring to be a scientist, I always wondered if one could have both. I remember stressing out about this when I was in my senior year in college. I was worried that I hadn't met many female professors that had a family too. I was complaining to my father that there were no "good examples" out there and he said to me: "Ask me again in 20 years and I should be able to give you one." That was the best advice I ever received and has kept me going all these years. Even though I have met a few "examples" recently, I always remember that I need to be my own role model.

At the end of my pregnancy with first son, a newly-hired female professor at the department I was at came up to me and said she was really excited to see me at the bench. She always thought pregnancies were such a hindrance that to make it as a professor meant you couldn't have kids. She was glad I was showing all the female students in the department that they could have a family and do science. I had an easy pregnancy and ended up working up to my due date, so everyone got to see me really big. And I could see the smiles from the students in the hallways, as they saw me coming to work very day. It felt good to be a role model.

During both pregnancies, I started hearing a lot about other women's views on career and family conciliation. Several female professors started mentioning their pregnancy and family stories. It felt like I was admitted to this exclusive club that I didn't know existed. Where were these women when I was worried it could not be done? As Moira Sheehan pointed out in her Nature jobs postdoc journal:

In general, other researchers' family lives seemed so hidden to me before now. Are such discussions taboo or just mundane? I used to think it was the former, but now I'm inclined to believe it's the latter. For me, it's just life. I often feel as if I have to explain to others what having children entails — especially to single people and those without children. But now I see that plenty of other people don't think it's an extraordinary feat.

It might not be an extraordinary feat, but it is clearly not laid out in the open. Why doesn't "family" come out in conversations with female professors, while male professors always seem to mention that their wife stays home with the kids? I always thought the latter was the problem, the bad advice that one needs a "wife" to have kids. However, the lack of realistic discussions about career and family might be the biggest problem. Are women keeping women out of science?

In grad school I attended a "women in science" round table discussion. The three invited speakers were great examples of how you can be successful as a scientist, but their personal lives were not very inspiring. When asked about their family, one said right out that she never wanted kids while another got divorced because her husband couldn't cope with her successful career. I could feel the shivers that went through the auditorium. Throughout that entire discussion no one said you could have both.

I hope to inspire female students to pursue scientific careers and increase the representation of women in science. The number of women achieving graduate degrees in science has increased throughout the past decade, but many abandon their career goals due to discouragement from their mentors and peers. Only a small percentage of women seek academic careers and the number of role models for female science students is very limited. I look forward to being a role model and to showing students that it is possible to have a scientific career and a family. However, it isn't a happily ever after fairy tale. It requires hard work and compromises, but it can be done.

Why Not Math?

A few years ago I started a community on Orkut called Women in Science. This past month one of the members was asking why are there more women in biological sciences and not so many in physics and math. It got me thinking about why I chose biology...

It would be easy to say that I chose biology because of my dad, who is a biologist, but I don't think that is true. I was interested in science since my early years, while my brothers were not. We were all exposed to a researcher's life and got to spend some odd days in my dad's lab. I didn't grow up with the "mad scientist" image. There are also many scientists in my family, one could even say it's "genetics." Maybe, but there is always the nurture vs. nature conundrum...

Part of my career choice was probably due to the good (and bad) teachers I had in grade school. I had 3 wonderful math teachers (all women by the way) and, if asked, I would have said math was my favorite subject. I had a great biology teacher my first year of high school, but the other ones were just OK. My physics teachers were not inspiring at all, neither were the chemistry ones. Can I really say that one teacher changed my life? I don't think so... I had great physics and chemistry professors in college, but by then I was already set on plant biology. In college, one of my physics professors even tried to talk me into switching majors, but all I could see in physics was the math. I hated the question 'Does this answer make sense to you?', I never had the insight for it.

When I was choosing my college major, I thought of math too. However, I didn't know what to do with it. I knew what the actual work in biology was, but I was not exposed to what a mathematician actually did. All I could see was math teachers, and that was not what I wanted to become. I should add to the "nurture" list the fact that I was able to experience working in a biology lab very early. My high school was part of an outreach program that placed students into research labs one afternoon a week for a year. When I heard about it, my reaction was 'why not? I like biology...' I ended up in a molecular biology lab, under renovations at the time. Not the best placement, and most of what I did there was reading not experiments. But I loved it! Interestingly, I loved the actual lab, not the subject they were researching. Afterwards, in high school still, I did a one-week summer program called Light and plants. And that got me hooked. From then on I knew I wanted to study plants.

My first reaction to the 'Why not math?' question was that it was too abstract. It wasn't a question of what could I do, but what I wanted to do. Now that I thought about it some more, I don't think that is true. I think my biggest problem with math was that it was too easy. It wasn't challenging enough, all I had to do was solve the problems. And there was always a right answer, you just had to find it. Maybe if I had gotten deeper into math things would have been different... What led me into biology was all the unanswered questions, all the random puzzle pieces that don't quite fit together. And that what you think you know today might not be true tomorrow...

Stuck here? Not really.

The Nature Jobs Prospects in v. 45, 17 Jan 2008 (p. 369) seems to emphasize relocation as a key contribution to a successful post doctoral experience. As a scientist who decided to remain at the same institution where I got my PhD, in order to accommodate family and work goals, I respectfully disagree.

At the end of my PhD on ethylene signal transduction, it was clear to me that I wanted to keep studying the receptor's biochemical properties. However, leaving town would certainly jeopardize my personal life. As my PhD advisor put it 'You're stuck here'. Of course I disagreed with him at the time. I even asked him who, in the world, I should go work with that was doing what I wanted to do. He came up with someone in Japan, maybe. What I told him was that I needed the tools to do what I wanted, and there should be competent people at this institution from whom I could learn. I wasn't bluffing...

Instead of seeking a postdoc in plant biology, I instead focused on what I needed to learn to be successful in that field when I got back into it. My first objective was to further my knowledge in enzymology. I was able to find a postdoc in the Dept. of Chemistry that worked on mechanistic enzymology of oxalate decarboxylases. My second postdoc has been dedicated towards learning membrane biology techniques. I'm studying glucose transporters in a mammalian cell culture system.

I have been in three different departments, in three different colleges. I was a graduate student in a lab with five postdocs, where each question was greeted with five different answers. I was the only postdoc in a lab with eight students, each wanting 2-3 answers to a single question. ('What if it doesn't work?') I have experienced conditions of high and low funding. I have gained insight into lab management and university politics beyond my expectations. I had two sons, one at each postdoc, and was exposed to issues that affect most women in science. (Pregnancy, maternity leave - how many experiments can I realistically plan for the next 12 weeks?)

I wonder sometimes whether I would have learned more if I had moved to a different institution. My advice to graduate students is always to focus on what you want to learn, not where you want to go. I have been able to broaden my horizons without leaving town. Will it help me get a real job? I hope so!