At my last committee meeting, at the beginning of the month, I presented my figures for my proposed manuscript to my committee and received the thumbs up to go ahead and start writing it (while finishing up a few loose ends and getting one additional experiment to hopefully work). While seated around the table, my boss declared that he would like the draft of it by January 1st – exactly one month later. The committee sat around joking that on the 31st, I’d be buying a plane ticket to California to get those extra three hours of writing in… and then hopping another plane to Hawaii to buy myself a few more hours… but oh, be careful and don’t cross the international date line!
I know that the comments were all in jest, a result of previous graduate students who were unable to meet deadlines and used all sorts of excuses. But when I returned to the lab later and mentioned the deadline to other labmates, they all furrowed their brows and made comments about how a manuscript in a month is no easy feat.
Yesterday, two weeks before the imposed January 1st deadline, I emailed my boss my manuscript so he could take it on his trip to Europe (what better to do with 14 hours on a plane than edit it?!). It took me a week to find the time between experiments to write a two page outline, and then four days to go from my outline to the finished draft, and one more day to get my figures polished. I suspect the reason the writing went so quickly for me is because I have been working on this project for so long – I already knew everything there was to know about it, inside and out, so I did not have to waste time reading through lots of papers. I also just gave my yearly data presentation to my department, half of which was on this project, and if I can stand up and speak about the project for 40 minutes, then I’d expect I could sit down and write about it as well. However, I still can’t drop the nagging feeling that I’ve done something drastically wrong, since I finished writing the draft so quickly and with such ease.
Now the worst part: the wait. Boss returns from Europe the end of next week. Will my draft be returned with some minor edits, or a giant “MANUSCRIPT WRITING: UR DOIN’ IT WRONG!” scrawled across the top?
do you need that manuscript to finish your PhD? (just curious)
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it is with manuscript but then, on a (bachelor level) dissertation, I had 2 weeks to churn out the paper with 14 references and I started to write it the very day I had to turn it in and wrote for two days non-stop (submitting it two days late).
The prof told me it was publishable material and gave me 83% (with 10% penality because I was two days late).
I really hope you end up with publishable material too. I too did know my subject well.
A.L.
I think it just means that you're "growing up" as a scientist. As a PhD student, I would never have imagined to put together a full manuscript in less than a couple of months, yet after a few years in an academic position, I can easily write it in a week or so (provided all experiments and data analysis are done, etc. like you said happened in your case). So congratulations, you've become a proper scientist! :-)
ReplyDeleteCommunicating and writing are strengths of yours, so it's no surprise to me that you completed your manuscript draft so quickly. I'm sure it is a great draft and that your PI will be impressed that you turned around a quality manuscript in that short time frame! :-) Also, it sounds like the light at the end of the tunnel is nearing... exciting!
ReplyDelete~Sherry
If your PI has a brain, they will realize you did a great job (under a time crunch nonetheless) & be constructive. I wrote my dissertation in 17 days b/c I had a deadline to graduate & wanted to get as many experiments done as possible. 5 of those days I was at a conference (though the only part of the conference I attended was my own poster). Don't listen to the naysayers... grit your teeth & focus on the end, you're almost there! Btw, found you randomly on pinterest. And you're welcome to visit me in cali (on your way to Hawaii) if you ever need those extra hours.
ReplyDelete-caroline @ c.w.frosting
Writing *can* take forever....but I think it is important, especially in writing manuscripts (or grants) to have a very firm deadline. If I'm given two weeks to write a grant, I will take 2 weeks. If I have three weeks, I'll take three...etc, etc. Bravo for being organized and beating your deadline!!
ReplyDeleteWell for what it's worth my PI will ALWAYS bleed on manuscripts. If your PI is anything like mine you just need to take it in stride and realize that if they take the time to read through the whole thing it's actually pretty good. Most of the time the editing process is the most tedious but makes your paper that much better for it.
ReplyDeleteNow back to that review article for me...