You are not your publications.
You are not your awards.
You are not your grants.

You are not your CV.
You are a human being.

Your work is important and it’s great to want to be outstanding at the work you do. But, the numbers on your CV are not a good place to look to in defining your self-worth.

And...since people are showing up and telling me that I’m not allowed to say this, I’ll share some of the life experiences that have created this philosophy for me.

15 years ago, realizing that I had infertility and might never be able to have kids. Two miscarriages. Realizing that my work accomplishments could not replace the children I longed to have (yes, I am now fortunate to have two kids - they are more important than my publications).

Early in my faculty career, in a hospital bed with a chest tube to reinflate my collapsed lung. Collapsed because I had a biopsy to see if the mass in my lung was cancerous. My awards did not come to visit me in the hospital.

A few years ago, working so hard to build the metrics on my CV and then getting a bad tenure vote (at another school). Worst day of my life because I felt like I disappointed the people I care about the most. Those same people stood by me and reminded me that I’m human first.

Many mornings in the last year starting my day crying on my couch at 3am because of harassment I’m dealing with. My publications didn’t pull me out of it, but rather remembering that I’m a person who cares about people and has work to do to show up for those people.

And that’s just a sampling. I could keep going, but that’s not the point. The point is that we all have a story. We all have struggles. And, the people who show up for us in those times aren’t there because of our CV but because we are a human being.