A GOOD day

It’s easy in this job to feel out of your league. It’s easy to get down on yourself and wonder what the fuck you’re doing. Its easy for imposter syndrome to take over. It’s easy to get scared shitless that you won’t get funded, get tenure, whatever. I share a good deal of these frustrations here, partly as a sort of therapy, partly because of the kinship I feel and advice I receive from other bloggers.

But I thought it might be nice, for a change, to share the other side of my adventure, the GOOD side. Today was a GOOD day:

I finished writing a grant a week before the deadline. I received lots of positive feedback from mentors and other folks, and I feel good about it. It was time to finally let it go, and I’m sort of
proud of myself.

The lab is producing data, and my students are getting excited about their projects. If that doesn’t get a PI crazy happy, I don’t know what will.

I’m writing an invited review for my sub-sub-field, which is fairly nerve-wracking, but also quite fun. And besides the fact that my brain is jello from the grant-writing, I think I have a shot at writing a fairly decent review.

A new scientific relationship is developing between myself and another junior faculty in my field, and our increasingly frequent conversations are helping me feel less, well, alone. It’s a great thing to not feel alone in this job.

I’ve given my first couple of lectures at TTU, and they went pretty damn well, if I do say so myself.

Unlike the past several months, I don’t feel quite as much like a loser parent (one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging about that side of “the tightrope” lately). And with the realization that I’m not permanently damaging my young son, comes less fear over being at work, as well as coming home from work.

Tonight, I’m celebrating my GOOD day with a GOOD glass of wine.