After being laid off this summer, Montrose Fell felt the pressure to scramble and find a new position. But after a year of funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the biomedical industry was flooded with overqualified candidates.
“The current scientific climate in the United States was not one where I thought I would thrive in,” said Fell, who currently lives in Bethesda, Maryland. “I didn’t want to bank on the systems changing or being able to be rebuilt.”
So instead, they are planning to relocate to Canada after a gap year of travelling.
“I felt self-conscious talking to my friends about it because they all have jobs or are full-time students and I am doing neither,” Fell said. But after graduating high school during the COVID-19 pandemic and moving around a lot, they feel they have the flexibility and wherewithal to make it happen.
“Knowing that I’ve done it once, it’s also made me more confident that if I need to pivot again in the future, I can,” Fell said.
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