And its off to the reviewers…



Going into the research article I was scared.  The data summary took so much time and that assignment was in bullet points and with your partner.  This time I was all on my own and had to write a complete manuscript. It was slightly overwhelming.  But it was helpful knowing that my methods were mostly complete. Finishing them for a homework assignment, gave me some comfort.  The first steps were to analyze the data. This data was definitely more straight forward than the data summary and included less daunting spreadsheets. I also think my excel skills are rapidly improving as I made many graphs and calculations.  I tried to follow the suggestions the communication lab gave about the order to write a research paper.  I spent my first few days just crunching numbers and making graphs and then recalculating numbers and making more graphs.  I also had to do some significance calculations and again edit and make more graphs.  After I finally had some figures, I could step back and look at what I was trying to show. I was fortunate that my data looked really good, in that I did not need to make a very convincing argument because the numbers could do that for me.  Little by little I worked on each section until Sunday morning I was finally able to write the abstract and put all the parts together. Did this report take over my life from Thursday to Sunday? Yes.  One thing that I really found surprising was how repetitive a report really is.  I think when I read a paper I like when they reiterate because it makes it easier to understand, but when I was writing the paper it felt like I was saying the same thing, over and over and over again but using slightly different terms.  I think this is what we were supposed to do, it just felt very unusual.  I can’t believe the report was actually completed and surprisingly it was not as overwhelming as I first anticipated. Now its sent off to the reviewers and now I need to focus on the project proposal… if I make it through 7.06 and 20.320 this week. 

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