Women in Academia

I am a 22-year-old Biology graduate student. I grew up in the Mid Atlantic, then moved to New England for four years for undergraduate work (taking a semester to study in the UK), and recently moved to the Midwest for a two year Master's program. When I finish my Master's degree in 2012, I'm going to move again for a five year Ph.D. After that, I will move again for any number of post-docs, and then again to get an assistant professor job. Assuming I'm able to get tenure, I can't envision any scenario in which my education will allow me to settle in one place for the long term until I'm 31. This has been the pattern for the post-docs I work with now, so I have no reason to believe that my anticipated career timeline is exaggerated.

I wanted to know whether any other women in academia on this forum would be willing to speak about how their education and career decisions have impacted their relationships and family lives. There are many women in science, I've wanted to teach at the university level for five years, I've been very successful in school and in research, and I do not want to give up on my academic goals for anyone. But at the same time, I'm worried about the effect my choices might have on my personal life. It is equally important to me to have a long term relationship and a family. I don't understand how people in general manage to hold together relationships while so much moving is going on, and I don't understand how women in particular manage the physical stresses of pregnancy while they are completing their dissertations, publishing often as post-docs, and going up for tenure as assistant professors.

In college, I was asked out on dates but I always declined because I was not ready to commit to someone else to the extent that in my mind a good relationship demands. I wanted to decide where to go to graduate school with nothing in mind but my own best educational interests. But toward the end of college, I got into my first relationship with a close friend (who had graduated from a different school a semester before me and moved back home, in the Midwest, to work). I'm still unsure of whether saying yes was the wise course of action, because I had recently committed to a graduate program a plane ride away from where he lives, and it became a long distance relationship immediately. But I thought it might be my only chance with him, and I cared about him too much to give up the opportunity to see what could happen.

Good things have happened, but I can't seem to shake some of my worries about the effect my academic choices will have on the relationship down the road. Sometimes our bimonthly visits even make me upset and tense before and afterward, because I love him very much and I'm stressed out about what I know I'll ultimately have to ask him to do if we're going to stay together: move wherever I happen to get a job. Now I have no idea on what time frame I should hope to be able to live together, I'm worried that he'll back out as soon as he's hit with the reality of how frequently I have to move for school, and above all else I'm worried that the scenario would repeat every time I meet someone in one place and have to move again a few years later.

Any moral support or stories from personal experience that you'd be willing to share would be greatly appreciated. I know I'm not going to give up my academic goals because they're part of who I am; I believe I am doing valuable work, and my research is such an important part of my life that I can't imagine being happy with myself after quitting. But I also am becoming afraid of being alone because I have made decisions that don't seem to make life easy for my partner.