Ich bin Postdoctorin in Berlin

When I got into materials science and engineering, I was well aware that scientists must be willing to move and travel for the sake of science and their careers. For me, it hasn't been easy. But now this small-town Florida gal is a Berliner.

The small college town I grew up in was a place I loved--and a place that I dreamt of leaving. It was the place where I was raised, where my family resided, where all my wonderful doctors practiced, and where I met my husband. During my bachelor's degree and Ph.D. there, my university won three national championships in a row (two in basketball and one in football), so we had strong school pride. Some say it's not a good idea to do two degrees in the same place, and maybe they're right, but it was the choice I made. Sometimes, health, family, and security trump everything else.

But toward the end of my Ph.D., I knew I had to leave this town to become a better scientist, and I knew I wanted more worldly experiences. My professor inspired me with stories of his early-career travels in Japan, the United States, and his native Germany. Hereinforced the "world scientist" concept. For me, what started as a nebulous concept took form as a desire to travel the world as a scientist, exchanging ideas and contributing to the concept of sustainability. I decided I wanted to do a postdoc in a foreign land.

I knew I wanted more than scientific growth from this postdoc; I wanted life growth. But that meant leaving my comfort zone and it meant some practical challenges.

Challenge 1: Find a postdoc position. I started searching for a postdoc 2 years before I finished my Ph.D. by seeking out researchers in areas I was interested in: applying materials chemistry to sustainability, smart structures, or biomimetics. I didn't limit my search to any geographical area. I made a list of scientists I'd like to work with and posted it on my desk. I wrote notes, crossed out some, added more, and consulted my adviser and several other people.

Challenge 2: The health care. I have to contend with a variety of medical challenges. In my town, I had doctors I could call anytime and doctors who knew my other doctors. As I looked for a postdoc, I narrowed my focus to countries where the medical care could match home: one school in the United Kingdom, one research institution in France, one university in the Netherlands, and one research institution in Germany.

Challenge 3: Getting my husband in on the plan. My husband wanted to return to graduate school after almost a decade of working in a position that he loved. So, we narrowed the options by finding locations where my choices overlapped with his. The decisive moment was when he found an English-speaking master's program in the field he wanted to study at a place where I had a particularly exciting postdoc offer.

The stars aligned and pointed to Berlin.

At first, the momentum seemed surreal. We were going to be able to coordinate our next move! We didn't have to wonder about long-distance relationships, settling, or any other challenges that afflict other dual-career relationships.

With this decision made, I trudged through the writing of my dissertation. I hoped to write a work that J. K. Rowling would love to read, but it turned out to be more ordinary, the kind of thesis read by the few obliged to read it and random future graduate students looking to resurrect an idea. After the degree was conferred and the hood bestowed, it was time to get physically ready for the move. We sold our possessions, prepped our house for sale or rent, and said goodbye to family and friends, often through tears. Those goodbyes wore away my buffer and exposed my comfort zone. There they were, the people who made me strong and made me who I am today, fully supporting my need to leave for science and my career.

So on 3 April, there we stood, groggy and tired, in the Berlin airport with only a few suitcases' worth of possessions and a life to explore as small-town Floridians in Berlin. No more comfort zone. My science brought me here, but the challenges I face go far beyond the scientific.

In fact, the greatest challenges so far have had nothing to do with science. I was destroyed by a phone call 3.5 months into my job notifying me that my health insurance had been canceled due to some logistic issue. Right then, I felt truly disabled. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to find out what would happen to me while living in a foreign land without health insurance. I wanted to give it all up, this dream of becoming an internationally experienced researcher, of working with amazingly creative people interweaving new and existing ideas, promoting materials science, sustainability, and other fascinating things.

Being a stranger in a strange land has often made me feel weak: getting lost and unable to communicate to find my way, entering an office with absolutely no English-speakers, and trying to join a group of people at work for a friendly conversation but they won't switch from German to English. When I first arrived here, even everyday products were hard to locate at the market. These aren't the challenges that prominent scientists talk about during their plenary lectures at conferences, but they are the real, dominant issues that marked our move abroad.

But through the ups and downs of my transition from small-town Floridian to big--and foreign--town Berliner, I have realized that although I am indeed living my dream, for me, doing so will always require facing up to problems and challenges. 

We move and travel precisely to have new experiences, to overcome challenges, to learn lessons, and to earn rewards. These days, I wake up without an alarm with an invigorating excitement to get back to my science. I have met wonderful people, and we have had great times together. We share experiences and learn from each other.

I survived the health insurance problems and am adjusting to living without my established comfort zone of friends and extended family. Time can be an amazing panacea. Maybe not everything is sorted out, maybe I still can't find every baking ingredient I need at the market, but I now know I'm able and willing to continue living my dream. I moved to Berlin for the science--and I'm learning many life lessons, too.

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Photos. Top: Hidde de Vries. Middle: Rebecca F. Miller

Vasana Maneeratana is a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Golm, Germany, and is a former AAAS Entrypoint! Intern.

10.1126/science.caredit.a0800146