A pretty good day

Little things can a good day make.

First off, the new Scientiae carnival is up at hdreioplus.de. The very clever Jokerine did a fantastic job putting it together.

Secondly, I had a good interaction with my academic advisor today. This is the man who is faculty at my university, where I infrequently go. He advises my research too, but my topic is on the outskirts of his interest. Since I have a co-advisor whose interests are nearly identical to mine (the woman I usually refer to as my research advisor) and who occupies the office next door to mine, I interact much more with Research Advisor than Academic Advisor. I guess it was time to bust out the capital letters to establish official pseudonyms.

Anyway, my relationship with Academic Advisor has had its ups and downs. He has been rather overcommitted at times and since I have another advisor available to me, I have occasionally decided to not bother him so that his time could be spent with students who need him more. That probably wasn't the best choice in the long run. He was offended that I ignored him, which I learned in a roundabout way. There have been other times when I really tried to work with him, but he blew me off. Only fair, I guess. But currently, we're on the same page. I got him interested in my data and then he saw my talk at the conference in December and loved it (at least that's what he told me). So he's all excited for me to get the paper written and has provided meaningful mentorship to guide me through the process. I love hand holding, so this is good.

Academic Advisor advocates writing the conclusions of a paper first to flesh out the main messages. He suggested I write a draft of the conclusions before the holiday break, leave it, then revise it and give it to him right after the break. Feeling pleased that someone was offering advice, I took it. Today I sent him a first draft of the conclusions and he responded with excited and helpful comments in less than 30 min. yay! I have already addressed some of comments and will deal with the biggest one tomorrow. I have to admit that I have cheated a bit by working on the discussion section simultaneously, but I think that's because I really need to work out my ideas in writing.

Which brings me to the other good thing today. I have gotten in a good place with writing the last two days. I have worked on the paper pretty consistently all day and forced myself to just do it. What’s more, I have been enjoying it. I think maybe my writing muscles have been lubed by this blog.

I know I probably sound really immature with this post, but whatever. I remember that when I was learning to drive, my mom told me to not feel self conscious because everybody on the road had had to learn sometime. I feel that way now.