Happy 3rd of July!
Yesterday, boss sent the lab 10 papers to read. This morning, she sent us all 7 more. "Cheers, and happy 4th!" I don't have to read them all this weekend, but still - that's a lot of papers!
On the one hand, it's really cool that this lab is so focused on digging into the literature and discussing ideas as a group - my old lab did not do that at all. Old boss would read papers on her own, then not tell us anything interesting that she found unless it happened to come up in a discussion later; she also wasn't that interested in hearing about papers we'd read, unless it could directly apply to exactly what we were doing. That's not the way to foster a collaborative, exciting scientific atmosphere.
On the other hand, it takes me at least an hour to go through a paper thoroughly (longer if I'm not familiar with the background) and then I always end up with a mess of notes that I haven't figured out how to organize properly, so I end up losing them or needing to re-read the paper because my list of Important Things is scattered between three different notebooks. *sigh*
In other news, it's the day before the 4th, and half the office is on vacation already. At least I can take tomorrow off; all I have to do is read. A lot. Maybe I'll research "how to organize notes from reading literature."
ETA: I just googled "How to organize notes from scientific literature" and the first link that I clicked on opened with a quote from The Count of Monte Cristo Win.
“But for such a work you must have needed books - had you any?”
“I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times, I found out that with one hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, at least all that a man need really know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and studying these one hundred and fifty volumes, till I knew them nearly by heart; so that since I have been in prison, a very slight effort of memory has enabled me to recall their contents as readily as though the pages were open before me. I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.”
“The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas
On the one hand, it's really cool that this lab is so focused on digging into the literature and discussing ideas as a group - my old lab did not do that at all. Old boss would read papers on her own, then not tell us anything interesting that she found unless it happened to come up in a discussion later; she also wasn't that interested in hearing about papers we'd read, unless it could directly apply to exactly what we were doing. That's not the way to foster a collaborative, exciting scientific atmosphere.
On the other hand, it takes me at least an hour to go through a paper thoroughly (longer if I'm not familiar with the background) and then I always end up with a mess of notes that I haven't figured out how to organize properly, so I end up losing them or needing to re-read the paper because my list of Important Things is scattered between three different notebooks. *sigh*
In other news, it's the day before the 4th, and half the office is on vacation already. At least I can take tomorrow off; all I have to do is read. A lot. Maybe I'll research "how to organize notes from reading literature."
ETA: I just googled "How to organize notes from scientific literature" and the first link that I clicked on opened with a quote from The Count of Monte Cristo Win.
“But for such a work you must have needed books - had you any?”
“I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times, I found out that with one hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, at least all that a man need really know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and studying these one hundred and fifty volumes, till I knew them nearly by heart; so that since I have been in prison, a very slight effort of memory has enabled me to recall their contents as readily as though the pages were open before me. I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.”
“The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas