Publish or perish

In science one of the main tenants is that to survive you must publish or perish. I know this is a hard concept, you have to have lots of papers to be considered successful and the level of journal matters. It means that you can do great work and it may or may not be accepted by your peers.

For the first several years in grad school it was difficult to actually get anything ready to publish. So for years it was, how many papers do you have? None, I have none. Thank you for reminding my that in the eyes of my peers I am totally worthless. This is only somewhat true, it does take a while to get things published but until something gets in print it just seems like you are not really a scientist.

Now when people ask me, how many papers do you have? I say five. Then the follow up question, how many are you first author on? I again say five. Now I sound like a pretentious jerk, five first author publications... And lets be real, I still have two more that I am working on...

The first time my name is first all alone, AMAZING

Yikes, I think I did well in grad school. I will be honest every time my name is in print I get a little bit more excited. There is nothing more awesome than reading the statement... Malcolm, et al. I just get very very excited.

Well I should actually do work but I just love being in science and I love getting things published!