My 2018 was rocky but fulfilling. With less than 15 hours to welcome 2019, I decided to look back at some of the highlights that made 2018 a year to remember, both academic and personal life. Just a note to myself, many on twitter was reviewing the top 10 papers they have read in the past year. What a great idea, which I wish to take on next year! Cleaning and re-organizing my literature and reading folders just made to the TO-DO-List of 2019 January.

###January

I began the year by submitting a PGRP grant proposal to NSF, which was revised from the MCB proposal first submitted in 2017 November. Next flying to San Diego, I attended my 3rd PAG and gave a presentation on Dynamics of Duplicated Networks in Polyploids. Standing in front of the job board at the conference, my year of job searching started with fear and excitement.

###February

Using the opportunity to give a online presentation for Chinese Genomics Meet-up (CGM), I prepared and for the first time practiced my job talk. Over ten years’ research work was compiled into 30-40 ppt slides, for the first time, I thought I started to know what my future would be like.

March

So many to prepare for the big trip to China in May - wrapping up manuscript writing, planning visits to different institutes for workshop and potential job interviews. Mom and dad were busy making arrangements for wedding location, decoration and everything. Mitch’s work schedule became extra full, accumulating anxiety for the trip and our unknown future yet to come this year.

April

The darkest month of my life, almost unreal to look back now. Mitch’s mind shattered. I finally learned what depression means.

May

We got on the flight to China, like a miracle. Hopping from city to city, institutes after institutes, meeting friends and family, in the end it became the healing process we had prayed for.

June

Back to the States in mid June, I made the decision to apply for the 1000 youth talent project in China, in spite of the very slim chance to succeed. Going through another heavy blow, our everyday life started to recover.

July

It was harder than I have expected to prepare the application materials to the 1000 youth talent project, in Chinese. Soon after the submission, I was offered an online interview with the Chinese academy of agriculture sciences, agricultural genomics institute at Shenzhen (CAAS-AGI).

At the same time, there is finally news from NSF, we didn’t get the grant. All reviewers’ comments were very helpful, and would be addressable with incoming results and new data. Not bad for my first try for NSF grant, I told myself, and accepted the failure calmly or better say numbly. It was really not too bad, I mean, getting one “Excellent”, three “very good/good” and one “good” ranking from the reviewers. It was just not good enough to make my 2018 golden.

August

Getting back to actual research work was nothing but pure pleasure. Working closely with the Bass group in Florida State University, the MNase-seq datasets started to make sense.

September

On Sep 1st, I officially became “Assistant Scientist”, no longer a student or postdoc.

October

The pressure from deadline has always been the most effective motivator to me. On the 9th, I had to give a seminar talk about epigenomics and polyploidy, as a part of the ISU Fall 2018 Interdepartmental Genetics and Genomics “Workshop in Genetics” graduate course. By the time I managed to organize two months’ work into presentable materials, I gained a much clearer and deeper understanding of what I have learned.

Back in May, the perspective manuscript I wrote with Jonathan was rejected after major revision by MBE. It took me months to gather enough energy and faith to revise and resubmitted it to New Phytologist in August; after a minor revision this time, it was finally accepted on October 1st.

November

The job application with CAAS-AGI was confusing and complicated, no formal offer letter or any agenda to discuss terms was provided. My application to 1000 youth talent project didn’t make to the next stage of interviewing by grant committees. This result was expected but still disappointing.

December

One important thing I learned these years is that traveling (to a warm, relaxing tropical place) cures everything almost. Desperately in need of a vacation to shake the feelings of suffocating and failing in science, Mitch and I left for our Xmas vacation in New Orleans. Lounging in a patio cafe in the heart of French Quarter, the sunlight was extra warm and soothing.