Last week I completed my final task as a graduate student.  I had to stop in at the lab to sign a release for my last paper, which will soon be published.  That signature was my last obligation to completing my graduate work.  I was both exciting and a little sad.

In total, I finished with five papers, a very respectable number for the school I went to.  To see a list, see Pubmed (there’s only four right now, the fifth hasn’t been added yet).  I was a supplementary author on two of the papers, but for the other three I worked my a** off and as a result I am the first author.  The review I wrote as a qualification requirement (which, by the way are seldom published!) has been cited by over 50 other papers since it was published! My second first-author paper is the data paper that I spent years doing experiments for.  Ironically, that paper will get the fewest cites!  My last first-author paper is a review of my research topic (a certain human protein), so I expect that will get a number of cites over the next few years since so little is currently known about it and I think it has a huge role in mammalian cells.

So, I’m glad to be finished.  No more waiting for acceptance decisions or reviewer’s comments.  Instead, I have a ten page paper legal memo to write!