Jake P. Mann

I hope I never become one of those people who promises to review a grant proposal or a manuscript and just never does (or makes only grammatical changes).

I will end up doing it at some stage (I hope by accidentally missing a deadline). But not someone who consistently does it.

If I had an ACF interview tomorrow (and I know some of you do), then I would:

- Carefully prepare my 'opening' answer to include a bit about me, why specifically this job/location, and what I intend to do

- Have a clear idea for the initial steps in research I plan to take, but not necessarily map out the entire next 5 years

- Prepare a paper that I (hopefully, genuinely) find interesting

- Plan how I will respond to a question about combining clinical-academic time

And then get people to ask me practice questions

Life is the process of working to exchange one problem for another:
- Old problem: I am not getting enough research done
- Solution: I get a grant that allows me to hire someone to help with my research
- New (better) problem: my workload increases as I am now managing someone and doing more research

There's something a bit magical about the feeling of having submitted a paper.

For a brief moment, it's no longer your problem.

It's someone else's job to take it forward.

Completely removed from the to do list.

...

[Until you get an editorial desk rejection three days later, of course.]

But this weekend is a moment to appreciate that relative sense of peace in the knowledge that the papers are submitted and off my pile.