There’s an old joke that an academic career is 50% research, 50% teaching, and 50% admin. From this quart-squeezed-into-a-pint-pot, it is the final third that is typically spat out with most obvious distaste. We got into this for the research; the value of teaching is clear enough; but the admin?!
Six Years a Sunfish
Very little is known about the lifespan and reproductive biology of the ocean sunfish, Mola mola, after which this blog is named. They can live to be at least 20 years old, however, and so one can assume that to dispatch one at six years old is to cut it off in its prime. Yet haul this one on to deck and administer a hefty blow from an oversized fisherman's priest we must. After years of kind support from first Nature Network, and then from scilogs.com, the plug is being pulled.
Who are you writing for?
It is widely acknowledged that a to pursue a successful career in science requires the hide of a rhino (or, as I put it in my first ever post, the skin of a sunfish…). Receiving, giving, responding to, and gossiping about criticism are such an integral part of the job, that to take such things personally is a recipe for misery. Over the years I think I have got better at reading criticism of my own work at one step removed, and - although of course I swear as much as anyone at idiot reviewers who cannot seem to appreciate my genius - it takes me fewer deep breaths now before I can knuckle down to the task of patiently and politely pointing out the error of their ways. But it turns out I do have an Achilles’ heel.