 Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here on this snowy day. I was fortunate enough to go to this Heed Foundation Resonant Retreat back in October and the director of it, Stuart Fine, asked that we come back and do a little presentation to everybody. And so this is fulfillment of that request. Just real quick, Thomas Heed, you might have heard of the Heed Ophthalmic Foundation. He made his fortune in the railroad business and he suffered from an iridus and his wife also suffered from a retinal detachment. So he developed this relationship with the ophthalmic, you know, industry at that time was he was in Chicago and he approached the Northwestern chair and he said I wanted to make I want to make a donation and he left a large portion of his estate to the to that trust and since then they've been funding mostly fellows as a Heed fellow and we have several fellows on our faculty here and you know, they've funded over a thousand fellows since they started and then they also have this yearly meeting this resident retreat and they they take, you know, like 20 residents or so from across the country and they bring 20 faculty in and they they split the faculty. They have maybe 10 senior faculty, which are mostly chairs from, you know, different departments and then they have young academic faculty that have just started into the academic and and really the the purpose is just to talk about academic career in ophthalmology and and kind of demystify some of the process and and motivate us to go into academic, you know, careers. You know, it's a two-day meeting. They just cover the basic facts and the younger faculty all get up and spend 15 to 20 minutes talking about how they decided to do what they're doing and and you know, some of the difficulties they've encountered and and we also spend a fair amount of time on on grant writing and some of the folks from the NEI were there to talk about the different types of grants and some tips on doing that. So I had a hard time figuring out what to talk about because, you know, we talked about everything and and there was so much information presented. So I thought what I would do is just maybe throw up some quotes that to me were influential and I thought, you know, insightful and then maybe get your input on, you know, we have great faculty here that have all gone into academic careers and we have some folks here that are in private practice and you know, this came up a little bit, but not much because the assumption was most of the residents there were you know, planning on going into academic careers. That's how we got selected to be there. But I thought Natalie Kerz, one of the younger faculty members and she said just be honest with yourself when you're deciding whether to go into academics or private practice and and you know, you don't want to do something unless you're really sold on it and you just need to really just be honest with yourself on what's going to make you happy. We talked a little bit about whether you should do a fellowship and not everybody there had done fellowships and it wasn't necessarily you know, something that you had to do to stay in academia. You should do it because you want to do it, not because you think you need to do it and you know, we didn't spend a lot of time on these, but I thought for us, you know, here this might be something worth thinking about if we want to discuss it. I guess we can just I'll run through these slides and then if you guys have any, I'd like to hear comments from the faculty on you know, on any any topic that we cover. So they said really academic careers composed of four components or it can be composed of four components. You know, patient care, teaching, research, either clinical or basic, and then service opportunities and academic responsibilities such as sitting on the IRB or you know, having you know, travel abroad to different countries and you know, traveling to speak and such. And they emphasize that you could probably just pick two of these that you're most passionate about and focus on them and Dr. Fine, you know, said spend time doing what's important to you. That's what's going to make you the most happy. We talked a lot about finding the right place to go work and these were the things that I thought were really insightful. You want to pick a place that has a sufficient volume of patience that you're going to be able to to you know, see a lot. Location is obviously one of the most important factors when you're finding a place to work. You need to like the culture, the department. They all emphasize that the chairman's direction and his outlook is very important. You want to look at the funding available if you want to do, you know, research, whether they have endowments, how much NIH funding, and whether if you don't get funded or if you miss a grant cycle that if they're willing to bridge your research and if they have enough depth to their department to bridge you. Sometimes there might, they might not be advertised. This was interesting to me. Sometimes an academic department might not be advertising a job, but if that's where you really want to be, you know, you talk to them about it. They may create the position for you. Dr. Cass is the chair at WashU. So things that they said would help you thrive in an academic environment. You know, there's, there's a couple things. Being passionate is key. You know, being passionate about what you do and your work. Because it takes a lot of extra work that oftentimes you're not remunerated for. Money cannot be the most important thing to you in an academic world. I thought that was a good point. It, you know, it still may be a motivating factor, but it probably can't be the most important thing to you. Dr. O'Brien said one thing to help you thrive in an academic environment is trying to say yes, even if at the time you might not see the what's in it for me aspect of it. And, but, and she followed that with you have to be careful about overextending yourself, you know, because you're going to be approached to do a lot more things than you have time to do. But, you know, try and say yes to people when they politics are so funny. Be where you are. Tony Aldavi said have a saint for a spouse. And Jennifer, this was an interesting, she said one time she's making a cake for her kids and, you know, you're putting the icing on the cake and some of the cake gets mixed in with the icing and just looks terrible. But, you know, she's like, I could have thrown the cake away and maybe started over, but she said, you know, when it's good enough, it's good enough, and you're just done with it. She said that's sometimes true with grant writing, with many different aspects of a career. It's never going to be perfect, but when it's good enough, it's good enough. And Stephen McLeod's one quote he said, the bottom line for getting parole is demonstrated excellence. It's really performing in your job and setting a track record for yourself. Just quickly on grant funding. Dr. Fahey, if you don't submit it, you're not going to get funded. I thought this was interesting. The first time, you know, if you're a PI with the first-time grant proposal, Lauren McNichols, who's at the NEI, they have approximately an 80% funding rate, and everybody's like, no way, but I guess it's true. That's what she's saying. A KO8 is a good way to get started as a clinician scientist and the salary for the KO8 is, you know, for ophthalmology anyway, they figured out a way to get the NIH to fund you up to a competitive salary, and they'll protect 75% of your time for research, and first-time awards are 70% to 100% fund rates, and you can't take rejection from a grant. Personally, I don't know if Paul's in here, but he has experience with, you know, the first time you might get turned down, but you have to keep trying and submit it again and again. And that's it. That's all I had, so you know, any comments from the faculty that I'd be interested to hear, you know, why you chose to stay in academics, some of the most challenging things for being in an academic career, and maybe from, you know, even the private guys in here, you know, why you decided to go to private practice, and you know, anyway. There's a lot of misconceptions about academic ophthalmology, and it's not one thing. It's worth it. There's a whole broad field of different areas that you can look into. You don't necessarily have to deal with them all, but I was surprised by the comments that we got, that even in residency, people had a real misperception of what academic ophthalmology is really about. And I think that people need to keep their minds open, and you can tailor your own practice within the department, as I think you want to do. And there are people who can do pure research. There are research clinicians who can do clean research, and you just can do pure clinic and teaching. And so I think there's a broad area that you can go into. So I encourage residents not to be turned on. I don't want to do that. I just want to go into private practice, because you can do, you know, depending on the department, you can pretty much tailor what you're interested in, you know, within the realm of the department. I mean, it's not that you have to do the time-based research. Especially here, we've got a good example. And here, you know, there's a whole range of almost pure clinic work, almost pure research, and everything in between. That's true. That was a big emphasis from everybody. The things have changed to allow that flexibility. Anyone else have any comments, or Dr. Green? I'll kind of look at all of this from the periphery, but someone mentioned the importance of the institutional culture. And it's just so important. I think it's just so easy, as we make our decisions for ourselves in life, to kind of be starry-eyed, you know, as we look at the big names, or the icons, or the institutions that have been around a long time. And, you know, we need to be real aware, I think, that really emotions will be obvious in a culture where people are good, decent human beings. Yeah, Dr. Buddy. I know that everybody had a problem with it there, too. Thanks. Anyone else? Okay, thank you. So I think Paul wanted to go last.