What was it like to step away from academia into that more applied place? Did you find it comfortable, uncomfortable? Like, what rubbed? What felt very smooth?

Yeah.

Um, so I...

One of the best pieces of advice when I first started at NIH was when somebody told me, like, "It will take you a solid two years to really know how to do this job." And it was some of the best advice I've ever received because up until that point, like, the transition from grad student to postdoc, and then postdoc to, like, faculty position, like, that's a pretty, like, natural progression.

This was a very different beast because this was learning about, like, the inner workings of, like, how funding announcements are created, the, you know, what happens at study section, um, how do you talk to grantees? Like, what's the right level of information? Like, how do you help them, like, work through the process? And then, oh, also there are these side quests you can go on provided you're still doing this other work here.

Um, and so yeah, to your point, it totally felt like relatively lower risk, especially because I knew that I could continue, um, earning academic currency if I changed my mind.

Like, I could continue publishing there.

You know, as we talk about the paths you might be on, i- is there a part of you that wants to found something? Is there a problem that niggles at your brain?