Life as a scientist nomad.
Several years ago, while still a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, I told a friend that I would be spending six months at the University of Calgary in Alberta. He joked that I was a “mercenary for science”. That joke has become a depressing reality.
In the past six years, I've lived in five locations across the United States and Canada. I feel as though I lack roots. I am constantly moving, living out of boxes, leaving friends and adjusting to a new town. It is a solitary, nomadic life.
In those six years I have accrued an enviable hoard of scientific wealth. While a graduate student enrolled at Cornell in a department famous for nonlinear dynamics, I plundered the University of California, Berkeley, for knowledge of metabolic biochemistry and the University of Calgary for knowledge of muscle mechanics. As a postdoc, I raided the University of Vermont in Burlington, escaping with invaluable experience in experimental single-molecule biophysics. Now at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, I am greedily absorbing the very latest in theoretical biophysics. But even with all this wealth, I just want a place to call home.
In a few months, I begin the next round of faculty applications, and I think I need to change my mindset. Maybe I should stop thinking about how to maximize my knowledge and instead start thinking about where I want to live. I just hope I've amassed enough scientific wealth to afford the rent.
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Walcott, S. Wealth of knowledge?. Nature 460, 423 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7253-423b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7253-423b