Living the Dream

My first research article was published in the Journal of Music Therapy. I got it in the mail Monday night. Tuesday, I took it to work and made copies for the head of the hospital, the head of patient care services, my boss who was on the research team, and the surgeon who was on the research team. That afternoon, the head of patient care services (my boss's boss) sent me flowers to celebrate the publication of my first research article.

It is a dream come true, literally. When in my undergraduate classes, we would be assigned articles to read out of the music therapy journals. Instead of paying attention to what I was reading, I would daydream of the moment when it was my name underneath some dry sounding research title. I dreamed of the day I would have a body of research about some topic (I did not get so far as to identify my topic, only that I was a key researcher in that area). Luckily, somewhere along the line, I learned a few things and landed a job where I could devote my research to one topic. Currently, I have two articles in the process of sending in to journals and them sending them back foreditoriall changes. So I have started to develop my body of research in pediatric acute pain. I am living the dream. Granted it is a wicked nerdy dream, but it is a dream none the less.