{"id":3519,"date":"2015-08-28T10:40:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-28T09:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2015-08-28T13:27:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T12:27:35","slug":"in-which-i-lose-my-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2015\/08\/28\/in-which-i-lose-my-way\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I lose my way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An autumn breeze flutters the paperwork on my desk: a credit card bill; a daily report from my son&#8217;s nursery (complete with meals, sleep times and nappy composition); a manuscript I&#8217;m proofing for a colleague &#8211; all held down by a paperweight commemorating the Silver Edition of Lehninger&#8217;s <em>Principles of Biochemistry<\/em>, swag from a long-ago microbiology conference expo. <\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/lablit\/20954235281\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" title=\"Desk\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5808\/20954235281_b500c02a75_b.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" alt=\"Desk\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The desk is a mess: spent candles, empty tea mugs, a ball-and-stick Cochrane&#8217;s of Oxford model of penicillin G I use to teach undergraduates. (The plastic straws making up the square lactam ring, I notice, are bent with the strain of being in a suboptimal conformation for so long. I can relate.) The blues hover just beyond rational perception, rather like the halo of silvery-white on the periphery of my new spectacles: easy to screen out but always present.<\/p>\n<p>I find it difficult to understand why I am feeling so out of sorts about my scientific career. I tell myself that it&#8217;s the bad cold that&#8217;s laid me low. Or possibly an end-of-summer hangover, the logical shock of returning to reality after time off. I just finished my first fortnight back and had to deal with a grant deadline, a lab full of young researchers needing my guidance, and frantic preparation for a new term of teaching. And this, on top of the constant background hum of various administrative headaches familiar to any principle investigator &#8211; broken equipment, safety cabinet maintenance, staff contract issues, website updates, scheduling conflicts, BSc project proposals, committee tasks. Massive email chains copying in too many or the wrong people.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps most pressing, next week a new project I&#8217;m leading will officially kick off. Our goal is to bring a novel microcapsulated drug formulation through preclinical testing to a small clinical trial in patients with chronic urinary tract infection. This step is exciting, but also stressful: we are underwritten by angel investor funding and we are expected to deliver good return on their financial faith in our science. There will be tight budgets, non-negotiable milestones. After my experience in industry, I know the drill, but it will take some mental readjustments to throw off the more relaxed attitudes of academia for this portion of my time.<\/p>\n<p>I think the stress would be easier to deal with if I had a better sense of job security, of my own worth. But at the moment, these elude me. I feel old, tired, uninspired and uninspiring; I move through the world, but I leave no mark. <\/p>\n<p>All I can do is wait for the spell to pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An autumn breeze flutters the paperwork on my desk: a credit card bill; a daily report from my son&#8217;s nursery (complete with meals, sleep times and nappy composition); a manuscript I&#8217;m proofing for a colleague &#8211; all held down by &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2015\/08\/28\/in-which-i-lose-my-way\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-staring-into-the-abyss-2","category-the-profession-of-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}