The story that Barbara McClintock “didn't find a permanent job until she was 40” (NetWatch, “Mother of the jumping gene,” 23 Nov., p. 1623) is a laboratory legend that, although intended to buoy the spirits of long-term postdocs, might dampen those of junior faculty. In 1935, at the age of 33, McClintock became an assistant professor in botany at the University of Missouri. By 1940, she had become rather wary about academic politics; she seems to have believed she was about to be fired, so she took a leave of absence with no intention of returning. But in early 1941, Lewis Stadler, who had gotten her the job, wrote to Marcus Rhoades, McClintock's closest friend, that McClintock was “definitely slated for a promotion this spring, and Tucker (botany department chairman) has told her so.” Stadler continued, “God knows no one can guarantee permanence in times like these, though I think the job here is pretty permanent as jobs go.” When McClintock had been hired, the university “gave official assurance that the research jobs would be just as permanent as teaching appointments. Presumably her promotion this year would make her an associate professor, which is the grade here at which permanent tenure becomes automatic” ( 1 , p. 64-65). Instead, McClintock got, through Rhoades, a visiting professorship at Columbia University, spent the summer of 1941 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and was offered a stopgap position while Milislav Demerec, the director of Cold Spring Harbor, pushed through a permanent appointment, which took effect on 1 April 1942. Cold Spring Harbor was ideal for McClintock in many ways, but a center of maize genetics it was not. One wonders how different the story of maize-controlling elements might be had she stayed one more year at Missouri. As I see it, the moral for junior faculty approaching tenure is—hang in there. 1. Lewis Stadler to Marcus Rhoades, 18 March 1941, Marcus Rhoades collection, Indiana Univ., cited in N. C. Comfort, The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock's Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control (Harvard Univ. Press, 2001).