I read about Venus spinning backwards after getting hit by something massive. Mars-sized, they think. Changed everything—its rotation, its future, why it never got a moon. Sitting here at 2 AM, re-running simulations that keep failing, I get it. Something hit me too during grad school. Maybe it was the third grant rejection. Maybe it was watching my advisor take credit again. Maybe it was realizing I'd been spinning backwards for months, working harder but getting nowhere. The study says Venus lost its chance at a moon because the impact debris fell right back. All that scattered potential, pulled down by gravity. I know that feeling—every breakthrough crashing back into the same crushing atmosphere. Venus ended up isolated, hostile, nothing like Earth. Some days I wonder if that's what academia does to people. We survive the impact, but we're never the same. #Science #AcademicBurnout #LabLife