The Title I Didn’t Use

A computer made me a Principal Investigator in about ten minutes. It took me years to actually say the words out loud… Friday's Digest #164

Table of contents

1. Life Update
2. The Title I Didn’t Use

Life Update

This week I've been buried in a grant application.

Somewhere in the form, in one of the fields, it asked me to type my role.

I typed: Principal Investigator.

And I did it without thinking. The way you type your own phone number.

But this time, for some reason, my hand paused on it.

Because I remembered the first time a computer called me that. And how long it took me to believe it.

Number 164!

The Title I Didn’t Use

The first time, I didn't earn it. I clicked it.

🔵 Ten Minutes and a Form

I was a resident.

I managed to get a small grant to run a very basic experiment. Nothing fancy.

But real money, for real science.

With my name on it.

And the moment the money existed, the hospital needed me in the system as the person responsible for it.

So I opened the registration.

It didn't ask for my CV.

It didn't ask about a PhD, or a fellowship, or a single day of training.

It asked me to complete a few technical steps and confirm.

I confirmed.

And at the end of it, the screen defined me as a Principal Investigator.

That was it. That was the whole ceremony.

🔵 The Word I Left in the System

And here's the weird part.

I didn't use this title for a long time.

REALLY long time.

I knew what that word cost a "real" scientist.

The PhD.

The postdoc that takes three, four, five years.

The university appointment.

The seed money that lets you open a lab and hire a team.

And finally, after all of it, start doing your own science.

That's the road. That's what the title is supposed to mean.

I took a different road.

Years of clinic, of dental school, medical school, fellowships, and alongside it the PhD.

I worked.

But I hadn't walked THAT road.

The "official" one.

So the title just sat there. In the system. Unused.

I had the word. I just wasn't ready to say it.

🔵 Everyone Said It Before I Did

Then the work started to widen.

First, it was one master's student.

Then it was a few.

Then collaborators I hadn't had before.

Then more questions, more systems, more of the thing growing under my hands.

Basic research became translational research.

Translational research became clinical trials.

And somewhere in there, other people started using the word for me.

A student introduced me as her PI.

A conference program listed me as one before a lecture.

Grant forms asked for it. System after system printed it next to my name.

Until one day, I noticed I quietly started saying it myself.

I can't remember when, exactly.

Maybe it was when I added it to my email signature. I honestly don't remember.

But here's the part that still gets me.

If I had taken the "official" road - the postdoc, the appointment - the university would have handed me the title.

And I would have felt fine using it.

Earned. Clean.

Instead, I got the word on day one, from a computer, and then spent years refusing it.

And by the time I finally picked it up, the number of years that had passed were far more than the number of years the "official"road takes.

Same title. Same clock. Different road.

The system gave me the word for free. I just didn't take it until I've done the time.

Epilogue

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That’s it for this issue.

See you next week!

Shay

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