Hard as I try to downgrade it trough scorn and ridicule, the truth is this: I like my job. For the simple reason that I am too lazy to be doing anything I would not really like. When I think about it, there are more than one reasons for liking what I do the most important of which being that it is the closest it gets to providing me with a sense of being inspired and productive.
Research is a sort of an art for the untalented. You are not really good in something, other than solving problems, yet you experience a certain feeling of fulfillment once you do solve them, no matter how trivial.
Fellow researchers (or for that matter, "researchers" like myself) may assure you that such a feeling arises far too seldom. Still the reward lies exactly on this rarity. In this way it better resembles an "epiphany" that makes it look like a true inspiration. The best part though is that it gives one the impression of having solved a difficult problem in the twinkling of an eye. Because apart from all sorts of metaphysical satisfaction, it provides you with the obvious advantage of having very little to do. Once you 've single-handedly solved the problem over lunchbreak, your work is done. You can spend the rest of your post-doc term in happy hours, holiday and general slacking-off, simply by attending the occasional conference.
But is it really like this? Until recently I thought (hoped?) it was. I still remember an early Saturday afternoon back in my old flat in Barcelona, sometime in April 2006. It now feels like a long time ago and it probably is. I haven't talked to my -at the time- flatmate Maria for over four months and that old flat is now being rented to tourists on a weekly basis. But it was on that distant afternoon, while Maria was testing her patience waiting for me to accompany her to the supermarket, that I had that idea, that brief glimpse through the peephole of truth (or at least something that seemed like it back then). It was that moment when, between getting my coat and checking my e-mails that I got a crystal-clear idea of how to solve the main problem of my qualified as "impossible" post-doc project. As I triumphantly switched off my laptop, I turned and gave Maria my "I 've done it again" smile. I walked out the door, certain that my job was almost done.
Well, it's been four and a half years since then and it looks like the job is still almost done. My initial brilliant idea had since developed into a computer program, whose performance had to be bench marked, compared with similar programs based on similarly brilliant ideas, its results had to undergo thorough experimental verification, the whole thing was put to paper sometime in the summer of 2007, reached the desk of my supervisor the next fall, had to wait there until spring 2008, undergo an unfathomable number of revisions, suffer the usual cycle of submission-revision-rejection-resubmission only to be published in its final form last Tuesday. In all, it looks like it took a bit more than the twinkling of an eye.
In the meantime, I have come, seen, not conquered and left Barcelona, having realized that it takes much, much more than a brilliant idea (let alone one that proves to be not so brilliant after all) to get the job done. In this sense research, profession-wise, becomes much more like any other job. Tedious, time-consuming, a stressful endeavour during which the truly inspiring, productive part is consumed within a moment only to leave the rest of the time to be filled by the boring, the tiring and the "what-the-hell"s. "Getting there" is not as easy as just having a great idea. The road is long and winding just like in any other thing that is worth trying.
In the end, no, I am not going to say that "it's the journey that matters" but I have to admit that one can get wiser on the way. Even if it's just by realizing the value of slowing down, catching a breath and realizing that what we do is not important but that it is important that we do it.
