My Version Of A Not So Great Day

Let me preface this post by saying that I know I have it easy. Every day at work I am reminded that I am healthy, I have clothes on my back, I have a job that provides me with a comfortable lifestyle, I have a family that loves me and cares about me, and that I typically never go without. This is usually in stark contrast to quite a few of my patients, who are obviously sick, may be out of work, might not have a family that cares about them, and may have needed many of the basic things in life.

I'm not complaining; just venting on the disappointment of today.

Today I got the e-mail I've been dreading. The e-mail was from the Journal of School Health and it informed me that my research manuscript had not been chosen for inclusion in the journal. For those of you who don't know, I spent a huge amount of time and energy in graduate school and 17 months after graduate school completing and preparing for submission my master's thesis on What High School Student's Know About Traumatic Brain Injury and Implications for Brain Injury Awareness Education.

I am disappointed my manuscript was not accepted for several reasons: 1) I devoted a solid 6 months of my life to surveying 336 students for my research project; all of it now for nothing. 2) I spent 17 months staring at my computer trying to figure out how to convey information about my study in print; all of it now for nothing. And 3) I am now no longer as passionate about brain injury as I once was, which is by far the most disappointing fact of them all.

Like I said, I'm not complaining; I could be far worse off. Even more than the disappointment, I think I am finally coming to terms with the fact that we all become jaded at some point in our lives. I'm disappointed that I spent all of that time working on my research, not that people won't get to see the research I did or understand why brain injury education is so important. That is jaded.

But, the good news is that now I'm passionate about other things...