I’ve been staring at these ancient soil samples for what feels like a lifetime now (and nearly is, I suppose), running tests in a lab so sterile it smells like my old barracks after inspection. I wonder, late at night, if any of this, my big doctoral project, actually matters to a single soul outside of some dusty academic journal. It’s hard to shake the feeling I’ve just… wasted my last good years on dirt, while the world burns, and here I am, meticulously cataloging sediment. (Sometimes I laugh at the sheer absurdity of it, a quiet bark in an empty room.) My commanding officer would probably just tell me to suck it up, but even he’d probably ask, “What’s the mission here, doc?” And I don’t have a good answer anymore.