“Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains. And there’s no end in sight.”

Régine Chassagne

Sometimes I wonder would my PhD have been simpler if I had broken up the findings into three smaller papers. In the end there were 7 main figures, 7 supplementary figures, 5 supplementary tables and one supplementary data section in one solitary publication. The contents of a 3 year 3 month tour through the helper T cell response to the inner proteins of the flu virus. The experimental worked comprised crystal structures, cell assays, tetramer staining and TCR sequencing. During the following years as it was batted back and forth between last authors, different journals and reviewers I continually reworked the figures and added extra bioinformatic analyses. I was fortunate that others in the lab kindly performed some in vivo experiments which helped cement the findings. It all started in January 2014, but the paper wasn’t published until July 2020. There are many terms which could be used to describe how the process of writing and re-writing felt as it dragged on through my 3 year post doc, for the purpose of this very public blog I will refer to it as, “a slog.