"My sister wanted to be an actress, but she never made it. She does live in a trailer. She got half way. She's an actress, she just never gets called to the set." --Mitch Hedberg
"I have an underwater camera just in case I crash my car into a river, and at the last minute I see a photo opportunity of a fish that I have never seen." --Mitch Hedberg
"My sister wanted to be an actress, but she never made it. She does live in a trailer. She got half way. She's an actress, she just never gets called to the set." --Mitch Hedberg
Yes. My personal level of ambition has always skewed heavily toward the life side of things, which I understand requires money but as I’ve gotten older I have begun to seriously come to grips with the fact that I don’t actually want to be a bigwig (in whatever field).
My wife is grappling with that now. She’s been ID-Ed as the successor to the current ED at her non-profit. She really doesn’t know if she likes that it would want it.
I used to think that kind of thinking was bad, particularly with all the eager young conquerors at Duke, but I’m trying to put it to bed.
This exchange from my annual review with my boss (around 10 years ago, maybe 15)
Boss: You are never 1st author on any of our papers.
Me: Are you going to fire me because I don't have enough 1st authorships?
Boss: No.
Me: Give them to people who need them for their careers.
Boss: Sure, but we could probably get you a couple of 1st authorships if you want them.
Me: When it's a play I've written, I want 1st and only authorship.
One thing I have discovered in high powered academic research (I am at Harvard after all), if you don't care about taking credit, you get tons of publications. My Q rating is rather high for someone who has never been a PI.
Once though, for political reasons, I was left off of a paper. Personally, I didn't care. Ethically, I did. According to the journal's authorship guidelines, I should have been an author. I had come on the project near the end to finish up most of the statistical analysis because the previous person had left. (I generated all the tables used in the paper.) My boss had loaned me out to a different department (a common occurrence) and the PI never interacted with me. Apparently he was the one who refused to put me on the paper. I wrote an email to the person who I did work with and told them the same thing about the difference between my personal and ethical feelings on the matter. Then I said that I was sending the email and keeping a copy just in case any ethical questions were ever raised about the paper. As gently as I could I told them I was adopting CYA mode. Then I told my boss what I had done and said that I was not willing to work with that group again.
Irksome is a wonderful word that is not used nearly enough.
Flightradar24! That plane above my house is going to Ethiopia from DC, that one over there is going to Dallas from Paris...Kyrie might want to think about that...
I delayed getting a promotion in the Navy, because at E-5, I was able to concentrate on doing my job of maintaining my shipboard target tracking/missile guidance radar, at which I was very good and which I considered relatively important during Viet Nam years. My radar had the highest fleet-wide target kill rate for that particular missile system. A promotion to E-6 became more administratively responsible, with less hands-on. It was only after getting married and needing more money that I relented and got the promotion. I was uncomfortable in that position, and subsequently did not seek a promotion to E-7 either.