Have you heard about this story?

A young man, who had a modest origin, had the ambition to achieve extraordinarily in the world since very young age. He caught the opportunity to know a mentor, learning every piece of knowledge to make a successful business. However, his endeavor was not for the fortune. It was just the approach to get close to his dream- a girl from a aristocratic family, who fell in love with him but married to someone else when he was away to a war. With his new status, he managed to reunite with the girl and win back her heart. When the young man was so close to make the dream come true, the girl's husband found it out and intervened, resulting in the young man's murdering.

This is, for sure, an oversimplified plot summary of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story symbolically embodies the American Dream, its pursuit, and waning.  In the bottom of Gatsby's heart, Daisy was the ultimate pursuit. He worked relentlessly and fully believed that he would win her back. Such idealism and optimism are the spirit of the American culture, while his downfall reflected the collapse on the hard cold reality and marked the end of the innocent era, just like the looming Great Depression following the pompous Gilded Years.  

Everyone who believes in the dream and pursuit for it without regret share their feelings and sentiment with Jay Gatsby. This is especially true for most of people who wish to do academic research. When they were young students, they found their passion in finding new knowledge. For that, they needed to develop the skills and expertise by hard working persistently. You would not understand the laws of physics without learning calculus, or understand metabolism without memorizing TCA cycle. It's an uphill battle: in each stage of schooling, they needed to spend more and more time in picking up different skill sets. They need to stand in front of bench for 10 hours, They need to come to do cell culture in the weekend. They fought it while enjoying the goals of knowledge they conquered.    

When they decided the pursuit career in academic research, they understood the risk. This is just the beginning toward more learning: research, new technologies, novel ideas, personnel management, public speaking, writing and presentation. It was literally a full-time job- every minute when they were awake, while the economic or even social status rewards were little. Even worse,  they were haunted by uncertainty all the time. All these were for the love of the game, the game of finding your eureka moments. That will be the best reward even happened to anyone of them. Their passion for new knowledge and liberation of mind was just like Gatsby's love of Daisy. That's the pursuit of life. 

Some of them reached the dream jobs, others needed to fight to keep their dreams. After arriving to US as a postdoc in 1985, Katalin Kariko was changing job to job in three or four years before getting a tenure-track position in 1990. Her research on RNA therapy could not get funding, so she lost the position and went to Drew Weissman's lab as a research scientist (non-tenure track faculty). That was 1997, and she and Weissman needed to keep fighting to make RNA therapy afloat on the ocean of ignorance. She joined industry to keep the dream alive in 2013. The rest is history.

Dr. Kariko has extraordinary achievements, but her experience was not unique for many researchers who want to develop academic career. Every some time someone we knew was moving between laboratories in different states, countries, or even continents. Every so often we heard from friends that someone did not get tenured and needed to find a job at the age of 40 years old. Most of these people, however, are persistent. They aimed to do research works relentlessly and kept looking for, or hanging on, it, at the expense of their years passing by.  It would be a great comfort for us to learn that someone secured a research, or even research-auxiliary, job, after many years of fluctuation. The dream came true for the love of science.      

And then, one day, the dream was snapped away without reason, just like the moment when Gatsby was shot and fell into the swimming pool. It was over- indeed, the glorious era of academic research was put to the end like candle in the wind.

I want to dedicate this quote from The Great Gatsby to all my scientist friends, whether I know them or not:

"He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."