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[lozenge_of_love]

So after being rejected from Nature once (see previous post). We decided to re-organize the manuscript, try some new experiments, and resubmit somewhere else. During these preparations, (and a month after the initial rejection) we receive this email.

Comments

[kdaisy721]

found my way over here from runners, and just had to comment on this post...because omg I always have negative results too! :( It sucks. One of my classmates never EVER has negative results, how is that fair at all?? Makes me want to stay away from research as a career...fortunately(?) I really like teaching. I'm in the last stages of the PhD too, and almost every day I have to talk myself out of quitting, sigh.

[lozenge_of_love]

Are you sure your classmate doesn't get negative results? When I was in my master's program, I had a classmate who always seemed to have things going his way. He never talked about bad times, and I always felt inadequate!
And even now in my PhD program whenever I see classmates present, it's polished results, so you don't see all the negative data they went through to get those results.
But with labmates, it's a different story. there's no hiding negative results. It's evident to me now in my lab where I see that even postdocs have to struggle through projects.
I really want to teach too, because I can't deal with the inconsistency of research. It's 90% crappy, 9% tolerable, and 1% awesome in my experience..but oh how awesome that 1% can be :)