My mom always says that we should grow where we're planted. I take this advice to heart, especially since my parents flourished after immigrating to the United States with four small children, 12 big boxes and not much else. As a postdoc, I live by these words, particularly since my husband and I relocated to London to pursue our research fellowships, albeit without children, and with many more boxes, but with a similar challenge of acclimatizing to a foreign land.

Scientific mobility often means successive moves to different environments to which we must adapt, and in which we must thrive, in order to be productive scientists. Naturally we seek places where our development will be nurtured, both professionally and personally. Nonetheless, we occasionally face inclement conditions — such as a drought in funding or an unrelenting deluge of responsibilities — that we must endure and survive in order to be fruitful.

However, it is in such climates that we can discover the depths of our own resources. Deeply rooted values and goals can provide us with the tenacity to hold our ground and to weather various storms, thus allowing us to bloom even in the toughest of fields. So the next time I feel buried under a pile of manure, I'll see it as an opportunity to cultivate my strengths and to grow. After all, it's just more fertilizer.