My family will be on the street if I cannot place this manuscript! is the place that primordial research fear comes from and I understand it very well — likely better than you know.
Still I want to say that when I started to hear that anti-research drumbeat — you should not be interested in it, you will not be able to do it, you will never do it and your playtime is over anyway — and also they should not be making us do it, I had a recurring dream.
I dreamed I had had a child, a beautiful three year old now, and it had been caught by a mob and tortured nearly to death. It was pinned to a wall and no medical help was available, and it was in terrible pain; the only thing to do was to finish it off. In the dream I borrowed a pistol from the neighbor and shot my child straight in the forehead, and then went up to lay it down in its little coffin.
I had this dream again and again and it was a sad dream.
Nobody, personne, ingen, nadie, ninguém, but especially no assistant professor, no mentor, no adviser, and no department chair or former department chair or other supervisor of any kind;
nobody will ever tell me research is too hard or writing too inappropriate a pleasure for me, or that I am not capable of managing my own research program, or that I should sacrifice my pleasure in work for the sake of those who need to catch up;
or for the meek, or for those who suffer or those who mourn or anyone else, ever again.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 