Expect a lot of this

A quick check of the "Science" tag suggests that I actually didn't mention the PNAS paper we submitted in the fall. At the time, it seemed like a distraction from my main purpose, which was to submit Mansuscript #1 (a virology story) by the first week of October. Hahaha... Anyway, this was a really good oppurtunity, which is why I tolerated the distraction even though my patience was (is?) being whittled away day by day. One of our collaborators is a really well connected chemist, and a well reputed journal (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) asked HIM to write a paper about the great things he does leading one of the nation's drug development centers. And being well connected and kind of a bigshot, he managed to "write" the review by sending it to a contractor in his lab, asking her to pool the resources and current data from two labs and put together something.

Dr. Boss kinda dropped this on me in the fall- hey, do we have this data?
Me: Data on the chemicals my undergrad just got? No. We weren't planning on that. Should we?
Dr. Boss: Oh, I thought it would be a nice figure.
Me: Well, I can do it in 2 weeks if I pull out cells today. Do we want that?
Dr. Boss: Yeah, actually, that would be great. I want to put it in a manuscript. The deadline is the end of October.

I will admit to being quite offended that he wanted to put data in a manuscript without ANY idea what the result might be. Some might call that intellectually honest, but I doubt that he considered that this might not work. Anyway, the experiment came together in between teaching and hating the rest of my science, and then the figure got pushed back and forth a dozen times (edit font? save as pdf. edit axis? convert to pdf. improve resolution? convert to pdf....), and then the editor of the journal told us it was too big, and I resized all my data from half a page to less than a quarter, and both my undergrad and I tried to read through this incredibly thick chemistry manuscript that was peppered with phrases I was familiar with. We are 2 of some 20 authors. We are both pretty stoked- it is the best quality paper I have to my name, and it actually wasn't that much work. Dr. Boss is really good at seeking out that kind of opportunity for us- and with luck, my publication record will show it when I graduate.

That paper was accepted for publication today. Bring on the Girl Scout Cookies!

I know I've been really down on the science lately (the last year or two?), and it seems like a lot of these frustrations are becoming quite acute. I'm of the attitude that "A paper in press is with two in preparation," meaning that while we have plans for another 2 manuscripts (#2 - a drug screen and #3- Medicinal Chemistry), these are basically timesuck failures until they get submitted. I am frustrated by every little set back, and feeling a lot of pressure to make fast headway given my time limitations, which doesn't feel like headway until submission. So forgive me if I act like I am at the collapse of the scientific universe because Dr. Boss didn't return my email, and then instantly it's Girl Scout Cookie time because something good came from all that struggle. Hopefully there will be more reasons for cookies than tears as we approach the defense date (117 days), I'll try to keep the monologue here on balance in the meantime.