The proposalling wombat
The wombat is working on a big, collaborative proposal due in a few days. She has text from the collaborators in four different departments, but it’s her job as principle wombat to make a unified whole. The wombat has found herself a bit intimidated by the process. Today, she was tearing her fur out working on the section of another collaborator (who is senior to her and just had a Science paper come out last week). It just didn’t make sense. The wombat was feeling dejected and wondering why she was in charge of this project. She sent him a carefully crafted email explaining exactly what she didn’t understand. He replied that he would call her shortly to explain. A half hour later, the wombat received another email, “I must have had a complete brain-freeze when I wrote this section…just get rid of it. It is complete nonsense.”
The wombat was relieved! It didn’t make any sense! But the wombat had been intimidated into fretting for days, instead of trusting her wombatty instincts.
Silly wombat.