Most of the hard work being done in the lab seems to fall on me (especially right before a conference deadline), but I somehow seem to be left out of the research that will actually result in publications (and when I am included in it, no one seems to care; there’s a journal paper I’ve wanted to publish since January that we keep having to add “just one more thing” to). The only major attempt that we made to publish something in my first year was a piece of research that I knew from the start would not yield good results… and by major, I mean I was told I should fix our results and write a paper up 3 days before the MICCAI conference deadline. It was rejected, of course.

Not that I particularly care whether my research is published so long as it’s available, but if I’m going to be forced to play the game, I’m going to have to play by its rules or I’ll just end up even more alienated from society.

I’m rapidly losing patience with the whole thing. Like algorithms, research in general is something I’d really like to do, but I’ll have to accept the fact that social pressure is going to make it too difficult to succeed in this area.

And if I can’t succeed, I don’t even want to start.