My paper finally got accepted. It was the fourth journal and the third revision... but it is done. It just goes to show... perseverance pays.

Friday I faxed in the proofs. Any day now it will show up on pubmed. It is my eleventh paper, third as first author, and first as corresponding author. It is the first one that I really did write... I've written others but after handing my draft in to my PI and making all the 'suggested' changes it was barely recognizable as my own. Not so with this paper. In fact, I'd been working on it for so long that I'd forgotten what I'd written. After reading it again for the proofs, I thought "Damn, I wrote a good paper!".

It is a bit disturbing that two years worth of work got condensed into 6 pages and three figures.

And then my two year old got her hands on the first page of my proof... and drew all over it. It looks not at all unlike those aforementioned first drafts, only she was an even more harsh critic, leaving little to recognize on the page. Now, when I read it, I really smile... because the blue scribbles make me think of something even better then work. I think I'll frame it.