Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Accepted!

Oh Dearest Internetz,
Today I am happy... the email I've been waiting for for weeks just arrived and my PhD paper was (finally) accepted. We'll celebrate this afternoon with champagne with the lab. It's perfect timing as I want to send out my postdoc applications (no I still haven't sent them... still waiting to hear back from one potential reference) and will feel much better now saying that it was accepted for publication. It's been a long haul (this is the same project I started working on day 1 in the lab many moons ago) and actually, I'm quite proud that things turned out as well as they did. I couldn't really ask for more.

Of course, in my PI's typical style, he came to the lab after forwarding the email to praise the paper, but then proceeded to tell me how it's amazing because, unlike all the other papers from the lab which were great intellectual pursuits with eureka moments and great thinking/reasoning/genius hypothesis-testing experiments, this story is only successful because of organizational skills, persistance and the insanity to try crazy things that he never thought would work. Ummmm, gee thanks boss. Hope he doesn't write that in my recommendation letters! "While she produced a fantastic paper, it's not because she's intelligent or a rigorous scientist, it's because she's stubborn and crazy." riiiiiiiiight.

But in tune with my positive thinking, I just chose to say "Thank you" and leave it at that. Good thing I can spill to someone (that's you) how he yet again managed to pat me on the back with one hand while slapping me in the face with the other. I can't wait to get out of this place! (edited to add that I know he doesn't mean it in a bad way, it just somehow comes out the wrong way almost every time we talk about some achievement)...

Anyway, what's important now is the party! I've got stinky cheese on my desk, champagne in the cold room and 10 more things on my to do list for the day. Better get to it!

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