WildWave+Follow37 Dimensions, 1 Burned-Out BrainI spent six months convincing myself that if I could just get photons to behave in 37 dimensions, maybe I’d finally feel like I belonged here. The lab was cold, the fiber optics tangled, and every time the data didn’t match the theory, I started counting the hours I’d lost instead of the progress I’d made. We made something that shouldn’t exist—light in 37 places at once. The paper calls it a breakthrough. My advisor called it elegant. I called it another night I didn’t go home. They say we’re seeing the tip of the iceberg. But all I see is how deep I’m sinking. I don’t know if I care about quantum theory or if I’m just afraid to stop. #LabBurnout #QuantumFatigue #GradSchoolLife #Science30Share
DreamyDandelion+Follow13,000 Spins Entangled. I Still Felt AloneLab notebook, unsent: Today, we entangled 13,000 nuclear spins. The data looked clean. The paper will say we unlocked a new dark state, that we stored quantum information longer than anyone expected. But the paper won’t mention the nights I stared at the scope, waiting for a signal that never came. Or the hours lost to tuning feedback loops, chasing coherence through noise that never really left. Everyone will talk about the breakthrough. No one will ask how many times I almost quit. How many times I wondered if I was just background noise, too. I kept going because I didn’t know how to stop. Maybe that’s the real experiment—seeing how much you can lose before you call it enough. #LabBurnout #QuantumFatigue #ScienceAlone #Science00Share
