Milestone Moments: 1st Conference Submission

The last two weeks have been very intense in just about every way possible.

Weather-wise, DeKalb had some of it's coldest weather all year, with some of the nights reaching as low as -2 degrees...and we were all feeling it. Students were texting and emailing that they couldn't get their cars to start, the roads were so icy that no one drove above 30 mph, and my bed (which is right next to the two very large windows in my bedroom) was covered with every last one of my blankets (including the sleeping bag that I normally reserve for guests).

I also hadn't seen my boyfriend in an intensely long amount of time.
We said goodbye in the very beginning of January and didn't see each other until the first weekend of February.
Naturally, a reunion after 4 weeks necessitated a three day visit and really really good Italian food to celebrate a milestone for us... three years together as a couple! A couple of what, I'm not sure, although 'pranksters' seems to fit pretty well, as you know who asked me to write directions to the restaurant we went to with a trick pen that delivers a painful electric shock to the thumb of the person trying to open it. What a jerk!

We also had a lot of chill time with friends. This is me trying to drink something with my feet during the Super Bowl. My lack of flexibility failed me, but it was a valiant effort encouraged along by Eric. Maybe we're a couple of dorks?

However the most intense part of the last week or so for me was a conference deadline that was fast approaching (whether we were ready or not). The lab that I work in often has a myriad of projects that at any one time are in different stages of development (anywhere from conception and literature review to manuscript editing). I happen to be in the data collection phase of the newest project, and was given the task of turning our study into a tangible experiment description...you know, with like..a prediction. And a hypothesis. And and feasible abstract. No big, I wrote the application to get the study approved, this should be a piece of cake...

Ha.

It's not that I've never done this before, this is how research is accomplished. It stars with an idea, the idea becomes a proposal, the proposal gets approved, it's set into motion through data collection, blah blah blah. But as an undergrad I had someone holding my hand through it all. I could sound as fancy as I wanted saying I worked in a lab on a grant as an undergrad (which I did) but lets be real: I collected data. I shook the participant's hand and I explained the study. Data collection is the easy part (thats why they let the undergrads do it). Being in charge of writing up a project for a conference submission was a brand new experience that had me banging my head on the keyboard of my laptop more than a couple of times over the course of the week.
Nothing sounded right. And I don't even mean stylistically right, I mean straight up correct. It's so amazing, the difference between a surface level understanding of a complex study, and truly deep understanding of the same project. Through writing this, however, I learned something things about my own work ethic I didn't know previously.
1) I work best in the morning

2) with coffee
3) and silence
4) I have to take a minute to think about what I want to say, and then write for about 5 minutes without rereading or editing anything
5) Then I get up for a second (get a pop tart, go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, refresh my coffee)
6) and go back and edit whatever I wrote.

Normally the thing that I wrote in that 5 minutes was terrible. However, editing (no matter how much editing needs to occur on the product itself) is so much less dubious than a blank screen. I soon figured out that with a tangible product, I was making real headway with this draft!


So there you have it. Another milestone moment in the grad school baby book of milestones = a halfway intelligible project write-up to send to a conference! I've had so many this year. Looking back, I really do feel like a completely different person than I did a year ago, after receiving my acceptance to grad school. Little did I know, I had no idea what I didn't know. Pretend that made sense.