When I first saw the “liquefy” setting on the blender (at about age 7 or 8), I thought how cool it would be to put pizza in—you could drink pizza! Lo these many years have gone by, but I still haven’t done it. Someday!
It did require riding 45 miles on December 30th, but I hit the mark in the end. And I’m on track to do it again!
Some days when the job is getting me down, I remind myself of the times I’ve been halfway up some rock face and had things start going massively wrong. Hands sweating, running of out gear, pulling 30m of rope behind, and “the fear” grips you. (If it hasn’t happened, it will…) And then forcing yourself to control the situation instead of being controlled by it: you handle your emotions and then the rest is just something to be dealt with in order. You chalk up, run it out a little ways (“only a problem if you fall, so don’t fall”), get some slack from below, and you’ve finished another one. As long as I can lead trad, the likes of my coworkers aren’t anything to be afraid of.
While it was cool the first time my name was on a paper, it was even better the first time I was one of the primary authors. We happened to get the cover of the journal—I sent reprints of the article and cover to all my family members, since it’s the closest I’ll ever come to “the cover of Rolling Stone”.
At this point, I’d be happy to touching 5.11 again…this is going to be a long long term project.
I’ve actually recommended this book to people I manage to help them understand that perception is reality (do you know where your towel is?)
After spending almost 7 years becoming a full-fledged scientist, I now work in customer service for a software company. Granted, a scientific software company, but I’m still doing something other than what I and all my classmates thought we were training for. For me, the value comes down to the fact that if I hadn’t done it, I would always wish I had.
Make sure you’re doing it for yourself, because you want to do this for it’s own sake, not for anything it will get you. I usually tell people who ask that it is hard, thankless (and penniless) work and they shouldn’t do it. If you still think it’s a good idea after hearing that, it’s probably right for you.
(I do have to admit that it is always nice to be able to refer to oneself as “Doctor”.)
