19 Years In. Still Not Sure Why

Found my old lab notebook yesterday. Page 47: 'Y8 batch—finally stable after months.' I remember that day. Everyone had left. Just me and the centrifuge humming at 2 AM. Nineteen years since I started this program. Colleagues call it a 'conservation success.' But they don't see the failed grants, the data I've thrown away, the nights I've questioned why I care about something so few people understand. That Y8 sample? It worked. Published in Nature. Career-defining, they said. But I was already broken by then. Injured wing, you could say. Still flying, but different. Sometimes I wonder if the work saved me or if I'm just too tired to quit. Either way, I'm still here. Still pipetting. Still hoping the next batch will make sense of why I stayed this long. #LabBurnout #GradSchoolLife #ImposterInTheRoom #Science