The Data Was Deep. I Was Numb

I used to think Antarctica was empty, just ice and silence. Turns out, there’s a whole world under the glacier—thousands of microbes clinging together, surviving because they have to. I spent months in a cold lab, pipetting soil that looked dead, hoping for something that would make the hours mean more than just exhaustion. We found life. More than anyone guessed. But the only thing I felt was how tired I was—how every new species on the spreadsheet just meant another late night, another email I didn’t answer, another reminder that discovery doesn’t fill the hollow. My advisor called it groundbreaking. I just wanted to sleep without dreaming of data I’d missed. #ScienceFatigue #LabBurnout #InvisibleWork #Science