You receive your latest manuscript revisions from your PI. You stare at the neatly crossed out sentences and the penciled in suggestions. The words are familiar. You have written them before. They are your own.
“Is this going to be on the test?” they ask, and you know with a single word you can wipe the contents of their minds. It is too much power.
You don’t know why you do the things you do. You don’t know why the incubator doors must always be left slightly ajar at night. This is what the students who came before you taught you. This is what you will teach the ones who come after you. This is how the ancient ones willed it to be.
You are almost certain you have graduated several times and yet somehow you still seem to be in school.
You pore over endless pages of numbers and letters, searching for meaning. You find the value of p is .06. There is no meaning. You are insignificant.
Whose samples are these? Where did they come from? What does that writing say? Did something just move inside that tube?
Today you are discussing a paper with your classmates. You haven’t read the paper. No one has read the paper. You smile wide blank smiles at each other and argue your point more vehemently.
Your students’ grandmothers die when you give exams. One student has lost seven grandmothers this year. You are remorseless for your crimes.
You haven’t seen your PI in weeks. There is a light under his office door. Sometimes you hear noises.
There are no set working hours. There are also no set vacation hours. You don’t need arbitrary divisions of time. There is only research and guilt.
Today you are summarizing the results of the experiment you will present at the conference next year. In a few months you hope to perform the experiment.
“The paper is too long,” the reviewers say, “put more words in it.”
Several of your student evaluations speak glowingly of the excellent teaching skills of their TA, Nicole. Your name is not Nicole. Is it?
You are going to defend next year. Next year. Next year. Next year. It will *always* be next year.
You have carefully established repeatable protocols for all your experiments. Sometimes they stop working. Sometimes they work backwards. Once, you set something on fire. Life is mysterious.
A strange glowing orb traverses the sky daily. You are safe. Your office has no windows.
pixelskylines
origamiaround
