To wit: "Next week I will finally be done with a draft of my paper." I have been saying "next week" for over a month now. First there was the moving thing, then the new job thing, then SLAC decided to deactivate my account because I graduated thing. Lots of obstacles were getting between me and my "next week". But finally, my thesis has been condensed down to 9 pages and a draft is complete. Now it is ready for my advisor and his red pen. I feel like I am preparing it for the slaughter, as it will no doubt be returned to me bleeding to death.
As much as I love research, I so don't dig the paper writing portion. The paper always seems to fall short of how cool the data was when we got it. All sentences are transformed from "First we were really pissed that we crossed this threshold, but then we controlled it to our advantage and the beam gained a s**t-ton of energy" to "The beam was able to simultaneously ionize the neutral vapor and drive a large-amplitude wake." See, sucks the fun right out of it.
Lab work (for me) has always been a case of "What have you done for me today". As soon as you have accomplished something - examined and understood some aspect of an experiment - it becomes old hat. Its a little bit like climbing an infinitely tall mountain. No matter how hard it is to climb up the cliff, once you get to the top you immediately look up and see a huge mountain in front of you. The really great feeling you get from solving a weeks/months/years old problem lasts for what seems like 5 minutes, and then you start going again.
We very rarely look back and appreciate how hard it was to get to where we are and to appreciate the effort of those who helped get us here. Thanks, Caolionn.
Posted by: MillionthMonkey | October 06, 2005 at 07:55 AM