What is success? Is it landing that NIFA grant for $500,000 and then realizing that you’ll have to work 80-hour weeks to accomplish even half of your original objectives? Harry Hinton, an American author argues “success cannot be defined in one sentence, but instead it is comprised of many things.” One could argue that the definition depends on the individual and one size does not fit all. In fact, unless you take the time to decide what it truly means for you to live a successful life, you can end up spending all of your days working desperately to measure up to definitions of success that have been created for others, but that don’t necessarily reflect your journey. Herein, how we define and measure success as an entomologist and more importantly as an individual will be examined. I’ll share my individual journey from growing up in the sleepy town of Sangre Grande Trinidad and running bare feet everywhere, to moving to the US and how spending years in graduate school and beyond led me to a career in crop protection and now academia and how I managed to create a non-traditional path merging industry and academia. I will also discuss the importance of mentors, milestones, timelines and also how central it is to seek and maintain balance between personal life and career. Challenges will always be a mainstay regardless of your journey, but how we view and transform adversity into opportunity makes the world of a difference.
.jpg "Michelle Samuel-Foo photo")