Seize the Opportunity

Seize the Opportunity

By Berry Pinshow, PhDS

There have been moments in my life when I’ve made snap decisions that profoundly affected my entire future. These impulsive choices spawned life-changing opportunities for me and my family.

The first such decision came at 14 when my high school headmaster in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I grew up, threatened to expel me for refusing to participate in daily prayers.

“What will you do next year?” he asked disparagingly.

“Go to Israel,” I replied instinctively. So, I did.

This seemingly vacuous adolescent statement stemmed from growing up in a family of liberal Zionists. In 1962, I traveled to Israel alone to attend boarding school. My family followed later.

After high school, military service and undergraduate biology studies at Tel Aviv University (TAU), I met my first mentor, Professor Amiram Shkolnik. Following a lecture on desert animals, I asked him how Negev Desert fat sand rats survive on salt bush alone. His flattering response—inviting me to investigate the question as his master of science student—precipitated another pivotal decision.

Based on my father’s advice, I applied to five prestigious universities and was accepted by Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where I would study under the legendary Professor Knut Schmidt-Nielsen. My wife, Hana, and I went to Durham in spring 1972.

For a year Hana worked in a shoe store. After Schmidt-Nielsen and I submitted a proposal to study emperor penguins in Antarctica, Hana was employed as a technician by my adviser, which made her eligible to work with me in Antarctica if the grant was awarded. In fact, Hana became the first Israeli woman to set foot on that continent.

Following my PhD and a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I took a position at Ben-Gurion University in Israel in 1977. During a 1983 sabbatical, I attended a conference in Honolulu, where, after the first session, I approached the well-known avian physiologist, Professor William Dawson, to ask a question. I was nervous and asked without properly introducing myself. Dawson did not know the answer and suggested I ask an Israeli named Berry Pinshow (me!) who was attending the meeting. I thanked him and walked away. Little did I know what would ensue as a consequence.

Months later, Dawson invited me to visit him in Ann Arbor and present a seminar at the University of Michigan. There, he unexpectedly asked me to attend his evening class, where he announced that I had kindly offered to give that evening’s lecture. I faced a burning choice: chicken out or rise to the challenge.

I chose the latter, delivering a 50-minute lecture on a paper I was drafting about birds flying at high altitudes. This spontaneous performance was one of the best snap decisions of my career, leading to a decades-long friendship with Dawson.

With hindsight, I realize that my readiness to seize opportunities shaped not just my professional path but my entire life. Each occasion required a gut decision with far-reaching consequences. It was about having the chutzpah to seize opportunities when they presented themselves, regardless of how unprepared I felt. That’s the essence of both scientific discovery and personal growth: the courage to act affirmatively when opportunities arise, even if—or especially when—they catch you completely off guard.

For better or for worse, to seize not just the day, but the moment, is the advice I’ve passed on to every one of my prospective students.

Berry Pinshow, PhD, is professor emeritus of physiological ecology in the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology and Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Pinshow continues to teach biophysical field methods once a year. His research interests include energy and water exchange between animals and the environment, burrow architecture, and physiology of thermoregulation and osmoregulation in desert animals.

This article was originally published in the July 2025 issue of The Physiologist Magazine. Copyright © 2025 by the American Physiological Society. Send questions, comments or column ideas to tphysmag@physiology.org.