Jupiter’s Plasma Was New. My Exhaustion Wasn’t

I spent three nights re-running the same analysis, hoping the numbers would finally make sense. The data from Juno was beautiful—clean, sharp, impossible. Everyone kept saying how lucky I was to be first on something never seen before. I kept thinking about how my hands shook every time I opened the results, how I started to dread the sound of Slack notifications. My advisor called the plasma 'underdense.' I felt the same. The waves on Jupiter were a mix of things that shouldn’t coexist. So was I. I kept reading the paper draft, line by line, trying to find the part where I mattered. I never did. I used to think discovery would feel like winning. Now it just feels like staying awake. #Science #ScienceFatigue #LabBurnout