I don't think I could survive such a calamitous event in my life.

I was young and thought I knew a lot more than I actually did. My Physics professor at the time encouraged me to publish the paper based on some work I had been doing in robotics under his supervision.

This was the 1980's, you couldn't go buy Arduinos and cheap I/O boards, etc. I had to design everything and build every single board by hand (wire-wrapped, if anyone knows what that is). It was a ridiculous amount of work but it was awesome. Oh, yeah, and machine my own parts, no 3D printing!

What's interesting is that I actually got a meeting with and an employment offer from a large multinational corporation based on this paper. So, not horrible, at least in the context of the times.