The roads not taken.

Last month I came across a folder of papers I had written at the age of 16 for my high school English class. This occasion, in some ways like Proust's madeleine, triggered recollections of how I, as a 16 year-old, framed the thoughts I had about what I wanted to do with my life.One of those early papers was about Frost's poem The Road Not Taken. I remember not terribly liking the poem. But the image of paths leading off in different directions in the woods, leading to different futures stayed with me. At 16, I didn't know if I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer, write poems, be a journalist, run my father's business, or be a scientist. I found the plethora of choices bewildering, as I searched for clues to what my ‘optimal path’ should be. I worried how I would ever know what the ‘best’ decision would be. And, I had a palpable sense of loss for all of those unchosen futures. Then it dawned on me that there was no sense in thinking about ‘optimal paths’ or loss when giving up the alternatives. Instead, all one could do was choose one future and live it, as there were many possible futures that could lead to adventure and meaning, and it just mattered that the chosen path was a good one.When I started as an undergraduate I was going to be a lawyer, but I ended up a scientist. I made career-determining decisions without looking at the long future, but always asking myself, “Does this make sense to do now?” So I studied biology as an undergraduate, and I applied to graduate school. I went to Paris for a postdoc because I was angry at the US for Vietnam and was curious to see how JacSue Kehoe could do such elegant work and raise children. Did I stubbornly continue this path called academic science? Yes. Could I have been derailed or drawn into a different path by different circumstances? Almost certainly.Today, as a senior woman scientist and President of the Society for Neuroscience, I am aware that many of our most talented students opt to follow careers other than science. I wouldn't feel badly about the student talented in mathematics who decides to be a film maker as long as I knew that she had been well-taught in science. I am angry when I see graduate students deeply excited about studying the brain lose their joy when their laboratory environment becomes more about “getting the paper in Neuron” than about discovering new knowledge. I am angry when I see graduate students crying over gratuitously hostile or mean reviews of their first papers.Many of us are struggling for resources to do our work, with a sense of frustration because today's opportunities for scientific discovery are unparalleled. It is now, when things are difficult, that we have to be mindful that the biggest asset we have is each other. Our best and brightest young scientists came to science with the greatest of fascination with the mysteries of life. We should remember it is the drive to know and wish to help mankind that brings them to science. We are right to push them hard to explore the unknown. We are wrong to allow ourselves to be petty and ungracious in the way we treat our colleagues. Almost every manuscript that gets rejected carries the hopes and aspirations of graduate students and postdocs. We should be clear in articulating scientific issues that arise in review, but refrain from the imposition of arbitrary hurdles. We should discipline ourselves to ask for more experiments only when they are required for the scientific points of the paper, but not as an automatic response to all manuscripts when first submitted.There is no virtue in hazing the young entering any field. They have many possible paths to follow. Extracting new knowledge is difficult enough: we should take care not to drive our best and brightest from our field for the wrong reasons. I hope that the young will join us on the long and arduous hikes to open vistas of new understanding. I hope that they will come to know the joy of seeing something or understanding something for the first time. We should take care that they avoid the paths strewn with the detritus of broken dreams. False idols often arise in troubled times. Today, more than ever, we must say that it is what the paper shows that is more important than where it is published.