A Brief Update
LiveJournal tells me that it has been seven weeks since my last posting, and the last publicly viewable posting was a month before that, so I am a bit remiss in not keeping my LJ friends up to date with my activities. I do not have the time for a complete accounting (which may be a relief to some of you, although I did start this as something of a public diary). Suffice it to say that I have been amazingly busy.
Our collaborator is back in town, and the only reason why I am not at the electron microscope on a Sunday is that the vacuum system is acting up and will not be looked at until tomorrow. My lab submitted a paper in which every permanent member was an author, and while I was initially sceptical that the magnitude of my contribution was sufficient to put me on the author list, I managed to drum up enough work for it that I am comfortable with it now; I also learned a lot in the process, which will be extremely valuable for my own paper, which I will be working on as soon as our collaborator leaves.
The review paper that I have been labouring over for the last year-and-a-half has finally been gone over and made ready for submission; now I must pick a journal to send it to and format it according to the journal's style requirements. I also have to update one of the figures, which will be a bit of work but also a bit of fun, and is my biggest priority once the current collaborator-caused crunch is over.
My current TA position has been a lot of fun but also a bit of stress; I was initially very much on top of the marking, which is honestly not a colossal amount of work, but as the term has gone on I have gotten a bit behind with it. The workload has suddenly become a lot more substantial as I have discovered that one student has been plagiarising, and others may qualify for that unsavoury distinction as well, which means that it all must be documented. This is not hard, but it takes time.
I was at a party last night to celebrate the successful Ph.D. defence of a friend and sometime labmate. The hosts, for whom it was also a housewarming party, have a substantial collection of Legos (nothing like my family's, but still impressive), which some of us played with. My advisor was in attendance, and built a catapult for firemen; I built a more-or-less scale model of one of my research organisms. The host also had a substantial collection of liqueurs, which were sampled liberally. It was a fantastic time.
A friend and I have been hosting the grad society trivia competitions, which have gone very well. I co-ordinated another field trip, which was very poorly attended but much fun for everyone, and will probably be repeated. There is of course a great deal more, but those are the highlights. I am not sure that I will be able to fill more in, but at least that much is out here now. I plan on taking some time off once our collaborator leaves (which incidentally is also the last week for which I must TA) and I hope to get and stay on top of things more at that point. I am also planning on getting a FaceBook account, although I am putting that off for until the paper gets submitted. I hope to keep this Journal going in spite of that, but we shall have to see how it goes.
Our collaborator is back in town, and the only reason why I am not at the electron microscope on a Sunday is that the vacuum system is acting up and will not be looked at until tomorrow. My lab submitted a paper in which every permanent member was an author, and while I was initially sceptical that the magnitude of my contribution was sufficient to put me on the author list, I managed to drum up enough work for it that I am comfortable with it now; I also learned a lot in the process, which will be extremely valuable for my own paper, which I will be working on as soon as our collaborator leaves.
The review paper that I have been labouring over for the last year-and-a-half has finally been gone over and made ready for submission; now I must pick a journal to send it to and format it according to the journal's style requirements. I also have to update one of the figures, which will be a bit of work but also a bit of fun, and is my biggest priority once the current collaborator-caused crunch is over.
My current TA position has been a lot of fun but also a bit of stress; I was initially very much on top of the marking, which is honestly not a colossal amount of work, but as the term has gone on I have gotten a bit behind with it. The workload has suddenly become a lot more substantial as I have discovered that one student has been plagiarising, and others may qualify for that unsavoury distinction as well, which means that it all must be documented. This is not hard, but it takes time.
I was at a party last night to celebrate the successful Ph.D. defence of a friend and sometime labmate. The hosts, for whom it was also a housewarming party, have a substantial collection of Legos (nothing like my family's, but still impressive), which some of us played with. My advisor was in attendance, and built a catapult for firemen; I built a more-or-less scale model of one of my research organisms. The host also had a substantial collection of liqueurs, which were sampled liberally. It was a fantastic time.
A friend and I have been hosting the grad society trivia competitions, which have gone very well. I co-ordinated another field trip, which was very poorly attended but much fun for everyone, and will probably be repeated. There is of course a great deal more, but those are the highlights. I am not sure that I will be able to fill more in, but at least that much is out here now. I plan on taking some time off once our collaborator leaves (which incidentally is also the last week for which I must TA) and I hope to get and stay on top of things more at that point. I am also planning on getting a FaceBook account, although I am putting that off for until the paper gets submitted. I hope to keep this Journal going in spite of that, but we shall have to see how it goes.