I was always in the next job within a week of leaving my previous role because that was the expectation.

No matter how good you are, there is always this pressure to do more and be more. That’s not to say that this pressure exists everywhere in the United States, but that’s my personal experience.

After Texas, I moved to Europe and have much less stress.

I am a full-time leader and principal investigator of a biotech research group, living and working in Lithuania. Here, people know how valuable taking time off from work is for their wellbeing – and now I no longer feel guilty about taking time off.

I am often asked, “When are you moving back to the United States?”

I’m just not thinking about it at the moment. I’ve had great experiences in the US, but I feel like this fits my lifestyle better.

I can take my dog ​​to work with me and I have a guitar in my office that I play almost every morning. Spending some time writing and playing music gives me a creative space to do my research. I’m grateful to be able to do that here.

I could probably do these things in the US, but I think the difference is that here it’s seen as part of maintaining my well-being, rather than as mere cheating.

Stephen decided to move to Europe during the 2020 US elections

As the 2020 US elections approached, my wife and I thought deeply about our personal values: how society is structured, how people are valued, and what support structures are in place.

From then on, we began to turn our attention to Europe.

We realized that our values ​​on community-wide healthcare, food quality, policies focused on well-being rather than profit, public transportation, prioritizing privacy and limiting data sharing were more aligned with Europe than with the United States.

We chose Lithuania because the institute where I work collaborates with a very large research organization called European Molecular Biology Laboratories. This name was already well known to me due to its reputation for scientific excellence and decades of productivity in my field of research, genome editing.

Stephen believes that the quality of his research is better than in the USA

When I looked for full-time positions in academia in the US, they came with a very heavy teaching load, in addition to focusing on scientific research and regular publications. Don’t get me wrong, teaching is important, but it’s hard to be good at everything.

The nice thing about academic jobs here is that while many people choose to do a combination of teaching and research, there is also the option to focus on just one.

For example, I focus more on research, so I believe the quality of my research is better in Lithuania than perhaps in the US.

Being less stressed gives me some freedom to make sure my research is going in the right direction and that my researchers have everything they need. This helps us take our science to the next level.

This is important to me because, at the end of the day, my research is funded by people’s tax money and there is a blind trust that we are doing our best to improve the living conditions of humanity with the resources at our disposal.

Sometimes it can be a little harder to get certain products here. The bureaucracy of buying scientific equipment made in other parts of the world can make companies consider whether the effort is worth it.

Also, I find it difficult to find corn flour for making tortillas at home and for certain vegetarian products like seitan.

I may not be here forever, but at this stage of my life, it’s really good.

Jessica Orwig reports on career opportunities in the sciences. Are you currently or have you previously been on this path? Have you changed careers for personal reasons or other reasons? If so, I would love to talk to you. Please email me at [email protected].