So what\u2019s a girl to do? A more senior colleague may have accused me of ‘having my head buried in the sand’ recently, but another way of looking at it is that I\u2019ve just getting on with the science. And the results have been a real joy. I\u2019m involved in several amazing collaborations, have brought in small grants and PhD studentships, have been the co-author on a number of papers in the unit, and am supervising a number of junior researchers working on my projects. My H-index and publication record are strong, and I\u2019m being returned in the Research Excellence Framework. At a recent American conference, I met all my major competitors and confirmed that I\u2019m on the right track. The intricacies of the pathogen-host interactions I\u2019ve been studying unfold like a flower of astonishing complexity, facilitated by the vast array of patients we have that kindly consent to being studied. When I open the lab door every morning, there is a spring in my step as I wonder how the previous day\u2019s experiments have gone.<\/p>\n
I still feel insecure sometimes, of course. Last week I travelled to meet a fellow academic to see if we had some common ground for a small collaboration. As I was ushered into his office and watched him speak with assurance, I felt like he was the real thing, while I was just an imposter. Looking at it objectively, however, we seemed about the same age, probably on equal footing with regard to experience. When I looked him up in the directory later, though, I found that he was considerably younger than me, having been appointed only this year and having received his PhD a full decade after mine, with a current publication list as short as mine had been in the late 1990s. So what was it that made me feel so inferior? Was it his gender? His confidence? Or was it something about the word \u201cLecturer\u201d stamped on his door nameplate, making me feel like a junior post-doc all over again? Words are powerful things, and titles do matter.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m happy to report, however, that I\u2019ve surmounted a real milestone in the past few days: the submission of my first two last-author papers. <\/p>\n
By the convention in my field, the last author is the lab head, the one in charge, the source of the ideas. The big cheese. Last authorship is the territory of those that have finally made it, wherever or however ‘it’ may be. Perhaps ‘it’ isn\u2019t something that has to be the top rung of a well-worn ladder of newbie dreams. Perhaps ‘it’ is just the place where you finally land, by whatever means necessary, and where everything just clicks into place. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I pictured my \u2018adult\u2019 life in academic science, it never looked anything like what it actually turned out to be. Trained as we are through the ranks, the neophyte scientist is constantly exposed to her bright future stretching ahead … Continue reading ![\"Submit!\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2885\/9512414807_91567b3315.jpg\")
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