'For any professors out there who are juggling projects, grants, and deadlines, please remember to take the time to support your lab members through difficult periods because life—like science—can be messy.' ScienceWorkingLife
Eleven months into my postdoc, my 4-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer. After hearing the news, I stepped outside her hospital room to make two phone calls: one to my mom and the other to my adviser. He didn’t answer—it was Easter Sunday—so I left him a voicemail message. “Emery has leukemia. I’m not coming back to the lab. Please give someone else my project and clear my bench.” Later, he told me he supported me setting everything aside.
In the months that followed, days came and went and my family and I spent an inordinate amount of time at the hospital. My daughter lost her hair and became extraordinarily weak and thin. I sometimes checked her breathing at night because I was worried it had stopped. In the midst of the stress, I never thought about work.
The second time he called was to discuss a fellowship I had been awarded. It was an extraordinary honor, and one I had been working so hard for until a couple months earlier. But by that point I didn’t care. My adviser suggested I start working a few hours per week on my project—which, I was surprised to learn, he’d never given to another person. That allowed me to come into the lab on my own time. And as I slowly re-entered my lab life, I discovered he had been laying the groundwork to ease my return. He had arranged to defer my fellowship, which now provided me with funding as well as unparalleled collaborative and networking opportunities.
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