I was sat in the lab last week trying to work out just how the hell I was going to make an in-road in to any of the ridiculous number of things that I have going on at the moment (I still do not know the answer to that). I was wading through my emails having been away for a while and the lengthy pubcrawler lists that I hadn't looked at in a while. Then I came across a paper whose title looked familiar and indeed it was a paper I was co-author on and had last seen about 6 months ago. Finally it was published. So then I went over to PubMed to check out my list of publications (don't say you don't!) and I suddenly realised something.
If it were anyone else I would be impressed at the number of papers. Ok they are not massive impact factor (I don't care if the admin think that is what we should have - let's see theirs!). Indeed, why should I always have this feeling of not enough. Then I realised. If I were to bow out now I would have nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe I should?
Saturday, July 5, 2008
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5 comments:
You're not doing a postdoc because you're satisfied with what you've done to date. You would have stopped at the PhD. You're doing a postdoc because you see that there is more that you can do. Satisfaction is temporary for scientists - we move on to the next thing far too quickly for it to become any kind of contentment.
Still, I'm glad you can view your achievments more objectively, something I can never do. Being able to recognise that what you do is good is important.
Yes thanks, I wasn't trying to say it was some form of long lasting contentment. In fact that moment of objectivity is also fleeting, I am just highlighting to emphasise how we have been trained to never be satisfied - or more accurately to never be happy. The point I want to make is that this not a healthy way to be. In fact it is profoundly damaging and goes right to the heart of the failure of academia to value people.
As for why I'm doing a post-doc, I know the reasons for that. Why I continue to be a post-doc, well I'm less and less sure.
Haha I love that you casually recognized the title. Maybe it's cuz I am such a newbie but I know the status of everything I remotely contributed to. Oh that reminds me, I want to write a post about authorship sometime soon.. evil shenanigans ongoing with that.
I know exactly what you mean. For the last paper I wrote, I thought "this is it, after this I am outta here, I have done enough, I have nothing to be sorry about, nobody can blame me for leaving now."
But here I am, trying to get another one. Still hating life. Maybe this time I will quit when it is done. And maybe I won't have a choice. We shall see.
hm, I got that feeling when I looked through my CV the other day and stared at my publication list. Sure, it's not Golden Star Wonderful Best in the World but it is pretty decent... and wouold it been anyone else I would have been impressed with the CV too.
I'm just going to pretend I am someone else then ;)
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