I used to think slow progress meant something was wrong. Now I think it usually means something is real. The papers that took me the longest to understand are the ones I actually use. The skills I had to fight for are the ones that feel like mine. There’s something uncomfortable about that — it doesn’t make for a clean productivity framework — but I keep coming back to it. ...
Year one me thought research was mostly about having good ideas. Year five me knows it’s mostly about finishing things. Ideas are cheap. The hard part is sitting with an idea long enough to know whether it’s worth the next six months of your life. And then doing the work even after it stops being exciting. I don’t think I’d have believed that if someone told me at the start. I probably needed to find out the slow way.
Lab meeting has its own grammar. There’s the person who asks a clarifying question that’s actually a comment. The senior student who goes quiet when something isn’t working. The PI who says “interesting” and means three different things depending on the day. I’ve been in enough of them now that I mostly read the room correctly. I’m not sure that’s a skill I could put on a CV but it feels important. ...