Pace

I was talking to a classmate this week who is taking a year out to do research about the difference in pace between clinical-land and research-land.

In clinical-land you have a set of tasks to complete when you arrive every morning. You pager may spontaneously combust from going off so frequently, and you may have a seemingly insurmountable number of patients to see, notes to write, calls to make, etc. but generally speaking (there are exceptions), if you put your nose to the grindstone and bust your butt, you will get a considerable amount of work done. Maybe not all of it, but enough to make you feel like you did something that day. And then you get to run home and not have to think about it. Well, mostly.

In research-land you have to make up your own tasks. A lot of the time these tasks are sort of amorphous (do lit review on XYZ topic) that have no real beginning or end. Putting your nose to the grindstone works.... but it may take you several months before you can really see the fruits of your labor. Long story short, there are a lot of days in which you feel like you're going nowhere. And the day never really ends. When you go home, you could still be reading journal articles, preparing manuscripts, writing grants, performing analyses. Your day never truly is over until you are actually lying in bed unconscious.

It can be a difficult transition to make.

On the plus side, in academic-land you get to set your own tasks, make your own hours, and think about really cool problems.

On the minus side, if you do not solve said problems, you will not produce papers, and you will not get (or keep) your academic faculty job.

OH NO THE STRESS!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

It's a totally different kind of stress from having your pager be on fire's all I have to say. We agreed: It's definitely an adjustment.