Publish or perish. Sigh!

Like every young researcher, I am yet again in a transition phase of my career where I am wrapping up the work of first postdoctoral research and simultaneously looking for another position. I feel as if I am being unfaithful to my profession. I didn't set out on this project to publish some incomplete and unorganized work. I wrote this project to advance the field of science.

But just as any other unfaithful postdoc, I too have to now settle for publishing something completely different from my original aim. It almost feels like giving up on your "knight-in-shining-armour" dream as a teenager to marry a real human with real clothes, not metal, on him. Not that I am complaining about the human in my life.

This whole "publish or perish" game is becoming more real for me. I cannot survive in the field of academics without publishing. This was made more real when a lab I recently applied to turned out to be yet another "publication is thy mantra" laboratory. I was being interviewed by the Professor of the lab who said that I should have moved onto another project if the current one was not working. I agreed, but it was rather hard to swallow the bitter pill.

But I still want to live in my fairyland of science and be there just for the sheer love of it. But I know someone will pop the bubble again. Soon.

Till then, happy sciencing!

Comments

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