Okay, wow, the paper has been accepted by the big journal. The editors negotiated us down to reformatting it into a research letter before they sent it out for review, so my first instinct is to tell myself to relax because it’s not a full article, just a research letter, but the way my PI is reacting tells me that it’s actually a big deal, and he’s not the kind of person to make a big deal of things. I’ll probably be completely unproductive and see if it’s the kind of thing that puts me in a good position for an early career fellowship.

Even if it is, there is still the nagging voice in the back of my mind that tells me that the paper doesn’t contain good enough science that I could justify the kind of science I’d want to do in a fellowship. I’m also struggling to convince myself that someone won’t pop out of the woodwork and find some fatal flaw in the paper that the reviewers failed to see, and look, what a fucking fraud I am, trying to get away with publishing this nonsense.

K was one of the postdocs in the lab when I started my PhD and I remember when I told her the journal I was planning to send the paper to, she gave me encouragement in a way that felt a bit patronising, like, oh, you sweet summer child. I’d been a co-author on a paper of hers that she’d had rejected from the same journal so maybe it was coloured by that, but it did feel like there was an undertone of if I can’t get a paper in there, then you certainly won’t be able to. I think I deserve to gloat, but it’s not my style, partly because it’s such a struggle to truly believe I deserve it.

My current postdoc position is externally funded, which means my clinical work is completely gratis to my clinical department. With that in mind, I had a slightly odd conversation with H, my clinical training programme director, where she said she couldn’t guarantee the location of my clinical placement for the next academic year. Given that everything I do, research or clinical, is a gift to her clinical department, why would she want me to feel like she’d have to send me elsewhere? The only thing I can think of is that she doesn’t want me to get too comfortable; she doesn’t want me to feel like I can develop a feeling of security just because I do a bit of science, no way we’ll let this Billy Big Bollocks feel like he’s bigger than the club. It’s obviously ridiculous that that’s easier than giving me every single bit of support possible, but there you go. I don’t resent clinical work at all, but the bureaucracy of clinical training is designed to show you that the sky is the limit but the leash is short, and we can tug on it whenever we want to.

Celebrations in order, I suppose.