Busy Times

The last couple of weeks have been like a whirlwind. Sure I've had short breaks from time to time, but for the most part I've been swamped with work or attending commitments. My writing progress has taken a big hit, which I expected. The main cause of this business has been several experiments of mine, which really eat up time. The last two weeks, plus a third today, I've had experiments - each of which chews up a day-plus not counting time to prepare then one to two days afterwards to summarize, analyze and do "post-op" work. The positive note is that the experiments have been very successful so far! If today's experiment follows the same pattern, my advisor hinted yesterday (yes, we were both in on a Sunday) that I may have enough data to start writing up for paper #3! And, paper #3 is the last leg of my PhD dissertation, which has to be finished by the start of March for me to graduate in May. So, no pressure on today, of course. ha.


Another highlight is that the submission of my 2nd paper/manuscript to a new journal, after our first choice made a bad decision, was ACCEPTED with minor revisions. The reviews were VERY brief and positive. There was a single minor comment/question from the two reviewers and editor, which were outnumbered by comments like "well designed study," "Congrats, nice work," and "very novel work." Wow! That made my Monday last week. Unfortunately it took until Sunday to get to the paper, to make a few minor changes. It is funny how the reviewer process can be so different from journal to journal. Granted, this manuscript did get reviewed at another journal but we only addressed a couple of their comments and the new journal didn't know about the previous submission (no need). My first paper had somewhat similar issues as noted elsewhere, where in the second round of comments, the harshest reviewer asked for extra work that should have been raised in the first round. Sometimes it seems like such a crapshoot - get good reviewers (and/or brief ones) and the world is a happy place...get random comments from left field and the stress levels get ratcheted up a notch. Life in academia...

Also, something I'd like to keep in mind if/when I have my own lab to direct: making sure to integrate discussions about proper research conduct into regular meetings. We've talked about topics like this occasionally, but usually they get pushed aside by the daily/weekly items of note and the fact that most in our lab aren't planning to stay in academia and "don't care" as much - their loss. We aren't a poor-conduct lab by any means, but I like the method discussed in the link.

Time to finish preparations for today's experiment. Hopefully things go smoothly and I don't finish too long after midnight...I've got plenty to do tomorrow before leaving for Thanksgiving on Wednesday.