In which we pause

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

snowdrops blooming on grass

Silent night.

Well, not really night anymore, as I first opened this page at 4 AM. Out the window brittle stars burn, though the faintest of glows already encroaches. That limbo before morning, when the house is utterly silent, the central heating’s hum not yet kicked in. Even the chatty robins still sleep, and no cars or planes rumble past. After three days of windstorms, the air too is completely still: no branches shushing or chimes tinkling. I could be the only person awake in the entire world, driven to this state by the bad cold that befell me, typically, on my first full day off work.

It is also that limbo between Christmas and New Year, when everything has dried up: work emails, chatter from friends, even – thankfully – the guilty compulsion to chip away at academic chores. All that remains is your dear family, the larger world pushed away from its glowing, essential core. There is food to prepare, LEGO to assemble, hugs to enjoy, movies to watch, wrapping paper and cartons to recycle, long-postponed chores to consider: sweeping the last of the fallen leaves from the garden paths, for example, or tidying (once and for all) the loft. There are walks to take in the chill afternoons, muddy boots and untidy woods full of berries: holly, ivy, hawthorn, the remains of the sloe. There is the cold North Sea to be plunged into, while passers-by bundled in hats, scarves and gloves stare as if you are mad.

But reality will resume soon enough. The first snowdrops are already blooming in the village gardens and – along with the January crocuses pushing through the ragged lawn – the abandoned list of academic deadlines will soon once again become unavoidable.

Yet for now: silent night.

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In which I thank my stars for country living

Posted on October 4, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

The three ingredients for a happy life


When I first moved to London in 1997, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Long hours in the lab would spill into the evening streets and underground tunnels of a city so large that you could never experience it all. When I think back to those evenings this time of year, it’s all wet leaves slicked against grey pavements, streetlights bleeding colours, the smell of fireworks exploding in the chilly air.

My companions were fellow postdocs, and this whole period in my life is tangled up in how I thought about being a scientist, inexperienced and trying to work it all out. High highs and low lows, too young to have worked out the balance of things – the memories saturated with blue. Blue but beautiful, and the thought of not being in that place was incomprehensible, even when it hurt.

Of course, it was never going to feel that way forever. After Joshua was born, the compact two-bed flat in Canada Water was too small to contain us. And at that stage of life, a few decades on, it was possible to imagine a different kind of life. It almost broke my heart leaving the canals, docks and woodlands of the Rotherhithe area I’d grown to love, but the first time we’d stepped into the back garden of the Kentish house we now call home, our fate was sealed. It was vast, green, full of trees and potential – about as far away as you could get from the postage-stamp-sized council flat plot where we’d carved as many vegetables beds as was humanly possible out of the the rough grass – much to the bemusement of our indifferent neighbours.

I’d always dreamt about keeping chickens and bees, and a garden full as many of edibles as possible. Today, I fulfilled the long-standing ambition of making Torrone Sardo (an Italian nut-filled soft nougat) with only our own ingredients. Hazelnuts are an acceptable traditional substitute for almonds, and this year the cobnuts and filberts we’d planted ages ago were finally mature enough to give a decent crop.

Filberts and Kentish cobnuts from the back garden hedge

So today, we shucked two large bowls of nuts from their frilly casings, then experimented as a family with the best way to crush the shells in a high-throughput manner (the grape mangler was a bust, but a large brick against the paving stones worked wonders).

A failed experiment: crushing hazelnuts with the grape wrangler

I separated the whites from three pretty green eggs laid by Luna, our new Cheshire Blue, whipped them to peaks and folded them into a pound of melted honey from last summer’s harvest. It needed stirring continuously on a bain marie for 45 minutes, then 30 minutes more after adding the nuts I’d roasted for 15 minutes in a 180 degree oven. It was relaxing just to sit there on a stool by the stove, writing and stirring, and now the mixture is setting in a cool room between sheets of parchment.

Torrone Sardo, which I first tried on a trip to Sardinia at the turn of the century

There were other garden chores: Richard has been harvesting grapes for wine, collecting medlar fruit to “blet” into over-ripeness, and gathering the last of the apples and pears. It’s been a great year for fruit, thanks to the extended heat wave. But I’ve been happy to welcome the autumn, with its stormy rains, cold mornings and brilliant blue skies. Soon we’ll be picking the last of the tomatoes and cucumbers, and harvesting pumpkins and parsnips.

The right tool for the job

London is miraculous, and I still love working there. But country life is all I’d hoped, with space to breathe, grow and work the land. I can go for hours without thinking about science, or the anxieties that tinge my campus existence. I never stop remembering how lucky I am – not just for the quality of my life now, but for the colourful journey that brought me here.

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In which I make contact

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

Back in the late Nineties, I was interning at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. During the working week, I threw myself into the lab with all the evangelical fervour of a pilgrim who had finally reached her own personal Santiago de Compostela. But during the long summer evenings and weekends, I was spending a lot of time with new friends, euphoric with the freedom of living far from home.

handheld radio on a table

Hello world

During these times, I got to know Jon, an amiable man who was heavily into amateur radio. I loved watching him work the VHF network with his handheld. It’s striking that when I sat down to write this post, it took some time to remember Jon’s name, but his callsign – KD3FG – was still etched into my memory.

Ever since that summer, I’ve wanted to take up the hobby myself, but life has always got in the way. Last autumn, I decided to start studying for my Foundation License. It was a long, slow process, because facts and figures no longer stick so readily in my mind, and I’ve never had a strong affinity with physics or electronics.

All that season, and into the winter, I’d set aside an hour or two a week to study the curriculum, lying on the sofa in front of the wood stove in the summerhouse. Over and over I’d read the chapters, absorbing the relationship between power, voltage and current, summing up theoretical in-series and in-parallel batteries, learning how signals propagate through the different layers of the atmosphere. I memorised the phonetic alphabet from Alpha to Zulu, and studied the shapes, pins and threads on images of various connectors – PL591, N, SMA, BNC – until I could tell them apart at a glance. I learned what causes interference, and how to avoid it. I marked up the long, densely populated Band Plan which tells you which type of user can use which stretch of the spectrum, alongside the maximum allowable transmission power. (One must steer well clear of other users, such as MI5, who own the 431-432 MHz turf within a 100 mile radius of London’s Charing Cross.)

At the beginning, I didn’t know my Sporadic E from my elbow, and I was continually frustrated. But eventually, all the information started to soak in. In the meantime, for my birthday in 2024, Richard bought me a beautiful Yaesu transceiver and a few bit and bobs to go with it. I started taking mock exams, and early this spring, I was ready to sit my online theory test with the Radio Society of Great Britain. I was stupidly nervous on the day; the invigilator let slip that women very rarely took part. So he seemed particularly pleased to let me know that I had passed (missing only one question). A few days later, I was assigned my unique callsign: Mike Seven Hotel Zulu Tango.

It was at this point that I came face to face with the reality that theoretical knowledge will only get you so far. Ultimately I wanted to “work the world” – that is, use the High Frequency band (3-30 MHz) to contact users other countries, maybe even astronauts on the International Space Station. But I quickly ran aground. I’d need to do a lot more reading even to decide where and how to erect an antenna for my permanent high-frequency shack. To bridge that imposing gap, I bought a cheap VHF/UHF handy (for the more accessibly 30-3,000 MHz frequencies). I was full of hope, but the way my house is situated on the side of a hill, the only thing I could pick up with the tiny in-built antenna was the BBC, and random static on other channels. The space around me seemed utterly sterile; no one answered my calls. It was all very discouraging.

Then a friend put me in touch with the neighbourhood Ham Club – a grand name for two local guys on WhatsApp who turned out to be super friendly and helpful. I don’t understand even a fraction of what they chatter about most days, but they were generous with their time and advice. Ian lent me a massive pneumatic mast which could elevate my “white stick” vertical ground plane antenna nine meters into the air, with plenty of clearance to send and receive over the Thames and even to the airspace west of the massive hill shadow. Meanwhile, Stuart came around to look at our back garden, advising on HF antenna placement and gifting me a coaxial cable with the right attachment to connect my handy to the antenna mast. There was just enough slack for me to sit on the summerhouse porch and have a go.

What if there was no one there; or worse, there was, but no one wanted to reply?

Reader, I felt like the belle of the ball. The airspace around me was not empty, but full of life and chatter. People were queuing up to talk to me in the FM calling zone of 145.500 MHz, establishing contact and then moving up or down the band to find a free frequency. It was like being at a cocktail party, but instead of talking about what you do, you chat about your radios, your antennae, your physical locations, and how good (or bad) the mutual sound quality and signal strength is. Like a geeky cocktail party, except you’re the only woman in the room. Later, Ian and Stu confirmed that most operators were committed to being supportive of “YLs” (Young Ladies), which I found amusing. I signed off my final 73 feeling thoroughly exhilarated.

I still need to hire an aerialist to erect my white stick into a more permanent position on the roof, drill some holes into the house for cable access, and erect my end-fed long wire HF antenna across the back garden to access more far-flung operators. All in all, though, I was happy with my first foray into the airwaves.

I enjoy doing science, and despite all the stress and heartache, I still love being part of the profession. Yet it’s not escaped my notice that most of the ham enthusiasts I’ve encountered are retired. I do sometimes look forward to day when I can spend my time doing other things I love – lifelong hobbies alongside brand-new adventures.

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In which I lurk on the edges of the playground

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

Sunny path lined with blooming cow parsley, nettle and hawthorn

I’ve just finished Richard Powers’ latest novel, Playground. This is not a book review (although I can highly recommend it), but more of a reflection on its aftertaste. Cryptic spoilers below.

I’d consider the book ‘lab lit lite’ – there are three scientist characters whose work is ancillary to the main plot. This is not really a story about science as a profession. It’s more a cautionary tale/homage of artificial intelligence and human over-reach, somewhat reminiscent of two of his earlier works, Galatea 2.2 and Bewilderment, with a Gaia-esque dash of The Overstory thrown in.

And at its base, like a celestial plug-hole, the hard gravity of Urbana-Champaign, pulling the reader into the author’s recurring collegiate dreamscape. Like most of us, I suppose, there is nothing more compelling than the place where we learned to adult for the first time. I have similar feelings for the small campus in Oberlin, Ohio, where the scent of apple blossoms in the present day never fails to propel me back to the springtime of senior year, when I was riven with unrequited love and about to set off to earn a PhD in Microbiology on the other side of the country. It is no exaggeration to say that the future seemed to stretch out into infinity, then, much as it probably does now for my 11-year-old son.

As always, Powers has made me feel existential. Not that I need much of a catalyst in that department, these days. The slightest thing can set me off as I move ever further along the timeline, and occasionally contemplate what might lie beyond. I feel genuinely old: I am plagued by aches and pains, alongside low-level exhaustion of the body and spirit. The deaths of singers and actors that inspired me as a youth seem to happen on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, the roller-coaster of lab-related acceptance and rejection hurtles onward – one grant and paper in the former category this past week, and one grant in the latter – but it no longer feels so high or so low – just the bland normality of my precarious academic situation, averaging out.

In my heart, I also sense the cooling down of political fire to the numb embers of resigned acceptance. The thought of organising a petition, let alone a full-scale street rally, seems like something from another life. I have passed the torch long ago, and do not envy them the fight ahead.

And does anything lie beyond? Most days, I think not. But occasionally I get glimmers of potential. Yesterday, after Joshua’s last rugby training session of the year, I felt weary and sat down on a bench well away from the furore, watching my son queuing for a sausage bap and then fussing over the ketchup packets, while across the crowd, Richard was chatting with another rugby dad, smiling at some shared joke. Neither of them knew where I was, nor had yet registered my absence. And that’s when I wondered if this might be what the afterlife is like: not being a ghost, inserted no matter how incorporeally into the lives of your successors, but simply a silent point-of-view. A regard of fondness and familiarity, with the grief of separation totally blunted. You could follow your friends and family forever, a mute, all-seeing omniscient narrator who no longer has skin in the game. I am not sure if this is heaven or hell, to be honest. But, as I write these words, I suddenly realise that this concept might be part of what Powers was getting at when he skilfully unfolded his jaw-dropping reveal at the novel’s end.

Meanwhile, back in reality, it’s the dregs of a bank-holiday weekend, cold and blustery. I’ve crossed a few gardening tasks off my list, admired Richard’s runner bean supports, made stinging nettle soup from plants (carefully) foraged from the path behind the rugby club, enjoyed some me time.

Still very much of this world, and taking nothing for granted.

Posted in Careers, Domestic bliss, Gardening, Joshua, LabLit, Staring into the abyss, The ageing process, The profession of science | 1 Comment

In which I mark a milestone

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

A garden scene with table and computer

I have been putting off writing about a special twenty-year anniversary. But first, apologies are in order.

Yet again, I find that another season has passed without me writing here. This was never meant to be a quarterly affair, but so it’s proved in recent months. The neglect is not solely down to lack of time – I find that the slowly unfolding horrors of the world (wars, bird flu and climate catastrophe, alongside bigotry, cruelty, and the wholesale dismantling of democracy and science in a certain quarter of the world) have stifled my inspiration. What can one possibly say that could encapsulate – gestures weakly at all of that – ? Future historians will have plenty of material to dissect, so I’ll leave them to it.

My paper journal, which I still tend to most days, is so lost for words that it’s lapsed mostly into descriptions of my garden, whose inspiration, on the other hand, is boundless. I feel a strange urgency to record its infinite charms, even though there are only so many ways that I can rejoice in my tulips, or the way that it feels to tug a particularly long chain of sticky goosegrass from among them. Flip through its pages and you will occasionally find other musings: impressions from my many travels, jotted down in airports, hotels, foreign café tables, interspersed with worries about keeping the lab stocked with fresh grants. Otherwise it’s the orderly succession of snowdrops to crocuses to daffodils to hyacinths to tulips to bluebells. Seedlings in indoor propagators under artificial light slowly graduate to larger pots in the greenhouse, waiting until it is reliably warm enough to plant them out in the beds, where they will battle it out with weeds, slugs, drought and insects. All of this, playing out each year like a well-oiled West End production, with only a few minor variations keeping up the tension: one year it took three successive sowings to get courgettes that did not rot away, a mystery that we never solved; this year, it is the etiolated tomatillos that have terminally failed despite multiple attempts, and the first rows of parsnips did not germinate at all.

graph showing increase in lab lit by year

An encouraging upward trend of fiction about scientists

But I promised you news, appropriately belated as are all things in my blog now. March marked the twentieth anniversary of LabLit.com, my humble science/literature/cultural magazine launched as part thought experiment, part guerilla action, to shed light on the relative scarcity of scientists in novels and, perhaps, in my own small way, to try to rectify it. LabLit.com still has a following, despite recent years of shocking neglect, and I’m proud of having hung in there despite lacking the time and energy to coax it into anything bigger. Alongside the original fiction we publish, its crown jewel is the List, a curated database of realistic fiction featuring scientists plying their trade. When we launched in 2005, the compendium only contained about a hundred novels – now it stands at 495. While part of this is down to continual searches amongst older literature, it’s also driven by a year-on-year increase in new ‘lab lit’ novels, as you can see from the graph above that we complied for the magazine’s anniversary edition. (If you’re interested in reading more about the project and the people behind it, all the links can be found in my 20th anniversary editorial.)

Today is my last day of Easter break before returning to the lab. It’s been a restful and much-needed time away from the stresses and anxieties of work, with cold sunny days spent in the garden and not much accomplished (a good thing in this case). I’m sitting here at my table under the grape arbor in the far back, next to the cascade with its soothing rush of water. The pond into which it empties is a green baize of duckweed dotted with pink cherry blossoms; beyond it our bees seethe industriously around their hive. The air is scented with blossom. Birds sing, and the sun warms my face. All is green, liquid, dreamy.

One last day, just for myself.

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In which I languish in limbo

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Jennifer Rohn

You could write an entire PhD thesis about how difficult it is for academics to relax on holiday.

Close-up of a Christmas tree

Presiding over festive cheer…and apathy

(And whoever’s writing it would be lying on the sofa by the Christmas tree right now, fretting about how they really ought to be working on that dissertation instead of reading a novel– the first novel they’ve managed to pick up in months. Instead, they remain where they are, gripped by negative feelings, vacillating in that state between work mode and not work mode. Failing utterly, in short, to manage either.)

Yeah, that’s me. Three days into my holiday, and the internal battle is raging on like a land war in Asia. It’s not just academic tasks that taunt me, but the personal projects I’ve been saving up for this break. Making cookies. Planting spring bulbs. Potting up propagated seedlings. Tidying the study. Putting up a few new articles on LabLit.com. Studying for my Foundation license for amateur radio. Wrapping presents. Practicing for my driving test. Making the Christmas wreathes.

And of course, blogging.

Can it really be an entire season since I last wrote here? Sadly, I find this to be true – but it’s not at all surprising. This was the year that I’m thinking of as my academic ‘tipping point’. I’ve been inundated with invitations for keynote lectures, plenary talks and seminars, which collectively have sent me to three continents – a blur of trains, planes and hotels. I’ve written about a dozen grants, a surprising chunk of which have been successful. A sizeable number of people have asked me to collaborate on their projects. I’m in the middle of two hires, and have a whopping twelve manuscripts in various stages of the production line. Meanwhile, I’m contractually obliged to discharge three days a week of full-time teaching, which I still enjoy, but which is relentless, nudging me in the ribs whenever the other stuff starts to pile up. Meanwhile, the commute continues to take its physical toll, exacerbating my chronic metatarsalgia, while the heaviness of my shoulder bag has inflicted a deep ache in my left shoulder and neck region that is starting to feel worryingly permanent. Some days I am so busy that I only manage one or two meals, most of which are not particularly wholesome.

Given all this, you would think I would embrace my 2.5 weeks off with the fervour of a shipwrecked soul washing up onto the beach of a fertile island. Anyone else would be sticking out her arm and demanding a cocktail with an umbrella in it. But sadly, that’s not happening yet. I’m still sleep-deprived, but too guilty to nap. The FOMO is entirely internal: an audience of one. I feel like grabbing a stick and writing HELP ME in massive letters on the sand.

I know, from long experience, that things will settle down. Work emails will trickle down to nothingness as the 25th approaches. I will eventually get enough sleep. I will start ticking things off my list. It will probably help immensely to work on the two manuscripts I urgently need to edit, because that will send the academic guilt scuttling to the far corner of the room, at least for a while, and probably free up space for more fun stuff to flourish. And the party we are throwing tonight will force me into the kitchen to do some baking.

So, yeah. I’m getting off this sofa on the count of three.

One…two…

Posted in Academia, Domestic bliss, The profession of science, Work/life balance | 2 Comments

In which I slowly kill what I love

Posted on September 15, 2024 by Jennifer Rohn
a view of the moors

A recent trip to Exmoor – involving petrol

I sometimes feel like I am living in the last gasp of the “having your cake and eating it too” era. The planet is approaching a climatic tipping point – if not past it already. Widespread war is sparking ever closer, several bushfires punctuating an arid landscape of hatred, seemingly only a matter of time before the dots are joined into all-out conflagration. There is so much loathing, indecency and disinformation online that it’s hard to imagine a time when we were mostly a civilised society, let alone one governed largely by truth and common sense.

And yet. Some of us lucky few, in calmer pockets, still have our interesting jobs, our comfortable houses, our collection of “nice things”, access to forests full of serene greenery, gardens full of songbirds and butterflies, shiny cars and far-flung holidays – pleasant pastimes that nevertheless drive the aforementioned carbon-dioxide-fuelled apocalypse. But we do it anyway. The world is horrible. But it’s also beautiful.

These thoughts come and go as I live my life, a cycle of worry and complacency. There was an article in the Times yesterday about the Profumo Affair – can you imagine any politician these days resigning in scandal because he’d had an extramarital affair or consorted with Russian assets? It seems laughable now. No, he’d just shrug and go on, safe in the knowledge that the furore would die out in a few more news cycles. Maybe that’s no different from me: I am horrified or enraged by some injustice on the other side of the world, but then go outside and hoe my rows of lettuces and enjoy the feeling of autumn sunshine on my face.

Of course, we all try to do our bit. Our family has a 20-strong array of solar panels on our roof, an electric car, a rigorous recycling regimen. We do the little things: we don’t own a clothes dryer, but string up our laundry on the line. We have our milk delivered in reusable glass bottles, grow our own fruit and vegetables, keep laying hens and busy honeybees, make our own alcoholic beverages from garden produce, use metal water bottles and portable coffee mugs and sturdy shopping bags. The school run is on foot; the London commute is by train. But this is nothing when we fly to that conference or beach, or order more stuff that we don’t truly need.

Perhaps because I consume a lot of science fiction, whose forte is laying bare the stark differences between the present and some speculative, inevitably worse-off future, I am hyperaware of how good I have it right now. We are extracting every last pleasure that our way of life allows, heedless of the damage, and yet we still – mostly – can find beauty in which to immerse ourselves. My family and I regularly camp in the woods, swim in rivers and the sea, fish remote trout streams, stay in rural areas and eat in country pubs that haven’t changed much in hundreds of years. The air is usually fresh, the stars bright. Wild animal life is everywhere – lazy circling kites, damsel flies, beetles, long-tailed tits, painted ladies. I imagine my ancestors reading my journals (if such fragile paper survives conflagration) and marvelling at the miraculous bounty we enjoyed – both of the earth, but also the activities we pursued that slowly killed it.

It’s like living perpetually in cognitive dissonance. My human brain is not equipped to embrace the contradiction 24/7 – instead I enjoy the good parts, and try to forget the bad. Most days, I just get by, my life so full that I rarely have time to regret. I’m aware that, in the grand scheme of things, my time here is nearly up, and all of these problems will be passed down to my son alongside our estate and possessions. But it seems too late to change, and any drastic changes I make will not even register against the backdrop of 8 billion others on this planet. In the meantime, it seems only right that I do the best I can: cherish my family, enjoy my garden, try to be kind, chip away at the science whose ultimate goal is to help people.

On the individual human scale, I have to feel that this is enough. But history may not judge me so leniently.

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In which I dream of escape

Posted on July 14, 2024 by Jennifer Rohn
Garden scene with flowers

Alternative reality?

Sometimes everything just seems too much. As the non-existent summer rolls on – 14C mornings of rain or overcast, wool sweaters taken back out from storage – I find my stress level to be the only thing heating up. As I prepare the course I lead for its next academic year, there are also manuscripts to edit, review articles to write, grants and papers to peer-review, interim reports to file for current grants, collaborations to tend, talks to compose, PhD upgrade reports and final dissertations to examine.

And above all the relentless admin: pushing research agreements and material transfer requests through a reluctant quagmire of legal bureaucracy, wrangling finances, applying for ethical approval, seeking reimbursement for business expenses – the thousand natural shocks that academic flesh is heir to, culminating inevitably in spiritual death by tedium. Physically, I am finding the commute increasingly difficult: my joints ache from the amount of miles I need to walk, and when I get home, I want nothing more than to lie down, without the energy for all the creative things I used to do.

I turned down a family outing to the woods to stay at home this morning, seeking some inner peace in the rare sunshine. Here on the back patio, solar fountains trickle, flowers bob in their containers – cosmos, zinnias, mallows, marigolds. Wind shushes in the tall trees, and the metallic tapping of beaks on feeders lets me know without having to look up that the sparrows and tits have forgotten I’m here, not a few yards away and only partially screened by the apricot tree sagging under its weight of rose-gold fruit.

Although the growing season has been severely retarded this year, all around me the crops are steadily progressing: tomatoes and tomatillos, strawberries and blueberries, chokeberries and blackberries, courgettes and pumpkins, runner beans and beets, carrots and lettuces, sweetcorn and kale, spinach and chard, potatoes and garlic. The greenhouses are home to cucumbers, chilli and celery, pots of fragrant herbs. The cherries, gooseberries and raspberries are past, but apples, pears, figs, plums, hops and cobnuts swell in the wings; grapes clusters hang heavy amid groping tendrils that seem to grow meters overnight. It is the time of year when you can breeze round the garden foraging for your breakfast or dinner, returning with handfuls of produce whose “food distance” is measured in feet and inches, not miles. Our girls are working hard, too: bees filling their clever waxy combs with nectar, hens laying their daily eggs.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to end all this stress. Just to walk away from the job and do something else, something where the amount of effort you put in is reflected equally by what you get out, where the crushing uncertainty of whether you will get enough grants to carry on to the next phase is no longer relevant. Or even more extreme: taking early retirement, and being in the garden whenever I like.

I was chatting with some colleagues earlier in the week at a scientific conference, so I know that the idle fantasy of just stopping is almost universal, on and off, amongst academics of a certain age. What keeps me going is how long I have worked to be where I am, and how important the scientific cause is. I may be only a tiny cog turning on the fringes, and it may be a constant struggle for existence, but this wretched infection afflicting 400 million people a year is not going to just go away on its own. Grants-wise, I’m sorted for the next few years at least, with a good probability of new ones slotting in to take their places. I want to do what I can, for as long as I can, even if some weeks it feels like I’m going to break.

Posted in Careers, Gardening, Research, science funding, Staring into the abyss, The profession of science, Work/life balance | Comments Off on In which I dream of escape

In which I make the best of things

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Jennifer Rohn

BluebellsGreetings from the tail end of a typical British bank holiday, where the big highlight was gardening in the rain.

In all seriousness, it was rather lovely to be out tidying up the flower beds in the fresh air, among the blooming lilac and the first roses, hacking order from chaos through water-splattered specs. (When I was a kid I always longed for windscreen wipers for glasses, and even though the year 2024 sounds like science fiction, I’m still waiting.)

It made a nice break from grant writing, at least. I’m on the home stretch, finishing up the last of four I’ve been wrangling this spring, probably the one I’m most excited about. It’s due next week, and I’m confident everything is under control. The competition will be tough, but I’ve got a great foundation, building on our published work in a way that seems logical but also timely and exciting.

It bothers me that I seem to spend most of my research time writing grants – singing for my supper instead of eating, let alone enjoying the meal. I’m painfully aware that there are a few manuscripts that would go more quickly if I only had more time to spend helping their lead authors out. But the way I’m funded at the university, I have to prioritise writing the bids that will bring in small fractions of salary, cobbling together my two days a week buyout from teaching. It’s not easy to mastermind a continuous 40% salary, but just when I think I’m going to default, something always comes through for me. I could honestly do without the stress, but having lived with it for nearly a decade, I’ve learned how to keep the anxiety largely at bay.

I always feel guilty working evenings, weekends and holidays, though, which I’ve been doing a lot recently. At least my family are understanding, for which I’m grateful. When I have to work through my down time, I sometimes try to make it seem more bearable by surrounding myself with a special environment, to make the labour feel more like a holiday. Normally this time of year I’d park my laptop on the bistro table under the grape arbour by the little cascade and pond that R. built me. But this spring has been more or less a cold wash-out, so I’ve spent a lot more time in our summerhouse cabin with a fire in the wood stove to keep away the chill.

a cabin with wood stove

The cabin is my sanctuary. It’s quiet, bright, smells of seasoned pine, is carefully decorated and offers a lovely view over the lush back garden terraces. When the sun shines, a fountain splashes in a stone trough on the porch; when it rains, the drops tap comfortingly on the roof. Birdsong filters through: robin, wren, blackbird, dunnock, tit. The wood stove is a marvel of efficiency, burning slowly through kiln-dried logs which I spice up with fragrant dried bark from our eucalyptus tree, making the interior toasty-warm. A small glass of wine does not impair my intellect.

In this space, I can pretend that the overtime is pleasure, is voluntary, is what I would have chosen to spend my holiday on if I’d truly had a choice.

Posted in Academia, Careers, Domestic bliss, Gardening, Research, Staring into the abyss, The profession of science, Work/life balance | Comments Off on In which I make the best of things

In which I dream

Posted on March 17, 2024 by Jennifer Rohn
Lab worker looking at a Petri dish

One from the archives: I check out some urinary tract infection bacteria, circa 2016

Last night I dreamt I was pipetting.

It was a beautiful Gilson p200, the classic model of my formative years. The precision instrument felt reassuringly heavy and solid in my right hand. Despite its age, the movements were smooth and easy after years of faithful service. Double-slam the yellow tip, plunge, immerse, pull up, transfer, expel while mixing up and down, shoot the spent tip into the benchtop bin with a satisfying rattle, repeat ad infinitum – movements as familiar and thoughtless as clutchwork while shifting gears.

I was in the midst of one of those experiments where you’d have to perform the same rote transfer hundreds of times, the hours somehow compressed into timelessness, into a state where tedium encroaches upon nirvana. The manipulations require little thought, so your head fills up with all sorts of other things: the next step in the protocol after these racks of tubes are finally completed; when you will get a chance to collect ice and thaw the enzyme, eat, grab a quick coffee, nip to the loo, write up your notes; what time you might manage to leave the lab, and whether any other late workers along the corridor might be up for a spontaneous evening social. It could have been one afternoon in any of the thousands that occurred in the roughly 25 years when I was heavily active at the bench, not just funding, planning, analysing and writing up research like now, but actually performing it manually.

When I woke, I wasn’t sad to find those days far behind me. My plate is full of ample nourishment. In the grand principal investigator cycle, I currently have two grants under consideration, three in preparation, two newly funded with personnel to hire, and two papers at draft stage. My substantial team is busy producing interesting data. I’ve got about ten invited talks or keynotes to discharge so far this year, and while teaching itself is winding down for this term, there is still plenty that needs attention in that sphere.

Do I miss my Gilsons? Of course I do. There is something raw and vital about benchwork – not just the work itself, but the phase of life it punctuates. My lost youth is rattling in that cardboard tip waste box, along with the camaraderie of my fellow travellers. It’s lonely at the top, and scientific friendships – though still present and important – are never the same as during your PhD and postdoc, when everything seems possible and the future is a bright unknown. The reality is probably less exciting, but far more satisfying than those long-ago aspirations.

I wouldn’t be young again for anything – but a girl can dream.

Posted in Academia, Careers, Nostalgia, Research, Scientific thinking, The ageing process, The profession of science | Comments Off on In which I dream