Marina Pranda
BIO
Business Operations Specialist at a pharma consulting company; PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Maryland (US). Mom of two boys.
Instagram: @marina_pranda
Twitter: @m_pranda_PhD
Marina Pranda
“When I decided to study bioengineering, a lot of family voices told me this isn’t a path for a girl.”
I have always been ambitions and I always knew I wanted to have kids. When I decided to study bioengineering in college, a lot of family voices told me “this isn’t a path for a girl” and “what if you get pregnant but you’re working in a lab with all the chemicals.” I ignored the comments but understood that having kids will require some personal and professional adjustments… eventually.
I met my now husband, Adam, in freshman calculus. He also cared about a future family and a lifestyle that would be conducive to that. I always knew that if I had to choose between not having kids or having kids at the worst possible professional time, I’d pick the worst time without question. Since we were considering having children while in graduate school, we agreed that long distance was not for us and continued to do our PhDs. at the same university.
I turned down what could be considered the “better” graduate school options, but I don’t regret it. However, while I carefully tried to find an adviser who would be understanding to any developments in my personal life, my husband felt freer to choose whoever he thought was interesting to work with.
Luckily, I had an amazing family-friendly department and found a lab with great support, and great science. Once Adam and I got married (almost 4 years later) and were ready to try for a baby, I developed anxiety over lab work and pregnancy even though my advisor (a mother of 3, who went on 2 maternity leaves while I was in her lab) was extremely understanding. I scheduled a lab walk through with Environmental Health and Safety and talked through any reproductive hazards. Then, I told my adviser, way earlier than I wanted to share but I needed to not work with certain reagents.
My supervisor was extremely supportive and excited for me. She assigned someone to help me with experiments and told me to focus on writing my dissertation. We made a plan for me to defend before the baby’s due date.
My university gave graduate students parental leave, but it was 6 weeks shared between both parents and that wasn’t enough for us, so I wanted to be done and take the time I needed. At 6 months pregnant I defended my Ph.D. My adviser generously kept me on with full pay until the baby came, letting me write from home for some of it. I was truly lucky in the amount of support I got from my adviser, department, and peers (my lab mates even snuck me pizza from events when I was always hungry).
I secured a great job, a full-time lectureship that I was going to start when my son was 4 months old. Daycare was arranged. Everything was all set. Little did I know that starting a new job with a new baby in January 2020 was going to go downhill fast. When everything shut down because of COVID-19 - I was barely holding on. I just couldn’t keep up and be good at my job. Being mediocre at best left me feeling disappointed and discouraged.
My husband got a job offer far away from family and friends, but it would allow me to wait out COVID-19 staying home with my son (at least I thought), so I quit my dream job and we moved. It took me a very long time to get over the resentment I was harbouring over this move – over the fact that it was me who had to leave family, who had to leave my career.
I was worried it was going to cause irreparable damage to our family but luckily, we made it through. I got a part time remote job but was still in charge of all the household day-to-day and I wasn’t happy. That came with mom guilt: what’s wrong with me, why am I not happy doing traditional “mom” things? I always wanted children, why can’t I just not want a career? We then had our second baby and I set a goal to get a job by the time he was 6 months old.
I interviewed between nursing sessions and applied to jobs from my phone while nursing at night. It worked, I got an amazing job working from home and by some miracle bypassed the horrible daycare shortage and hired a wonderful nanny.
There is still mom guilt because my children aren’t as socialised as others, and I don’t spend all my time with them. I can’t take them to activities like stay-at-home moms.