Friday was a day with several pieces of good news, the most exciting of which was that the fast food / childhood obesity paper I was working on last spring semester has been accepted (after one round of revisions) to the special issue of the journal coming out later this year. One of the profs said that it was the easiest article in terms of revisions she's ever been associated with, so apparently it was in pretty good shape to start. It's been long enough since I worked on that project that I don't remember the details - I look forward to reading the paper and being reminded of what we found out.
The other good news was:
(1) I got funding for the first summer session. It's not very much, but it definitely helps.
(2) I did not have to do the drastic cuts on my dev paper that I was fearing - the prof said the extra length is fine as long as it is well thought out and meaningful (i.e. not a function of lazy writing).
(3) I found on Thursday that I got a 97 on my stats exam.
Robert and I discovered this weekend that the outdoor seating area at the local Jason's Deli is really nice. We can't count on having gorgeous weather and an unbelievably beautiful schnauzer hanging out at the next table every time we go, but I am hopeful that it will prove to be a good place to eat lunch, drink iced tea (or lemonade), and talk about my work. (Come on, isn't that everyone's idea of a good time?)
A while back, both Robert and Tam had expressed surprise that I do not have to write up my first year project as a paper (we have to do either a poster or a presentation later this month for the department colloquium). It took me a bit to figure out why their surprise surprised me, but I think maybe I have an idea of the disconnect now. In school, we are often required to write stuff up as a demonstration that we can produce papers. But in my program, we have ample opportunity to write papers for every seminar we take. The point of the research project is to, you know, do actual research. So basically two things will happen: (1) the research turns out and (along with any additional research that you do over the summer to bolster the project) you write it up for real to submit for publication; or (2) the research doesn't turn out so you move on - professors do not write up every project they attempt but only the ones that they want to submit for publication and we are doing the same. I guess the point that may not be obvious is that the research we do is our real work. But never fear, guys - the program does require us to write a big major area paper and a thesis before we graduate so even outside the coursework assignments, we are not being under-supplied with writing assignments.
4 comments:
Congratulations on all your good news! I'm sure it's especially gratifying to get a paper published, so extra congrats on that.
Good news - yay! And yeah, the publication is great, I'm really happy for you.
As far as the project is concerned, I don't think I was really worried that you weren't getting enough paper-writing experience ;-) I think it's just that, in my life so far, a "project" in college has always meant a paper (possibly with other elements like a presentation, but the paper aspect was invariant). Even our projects at work typically culminate in a written report. So that was surprising, but what you say here makes sense.
My work experience has been a bit more mixed - often the final product is a written report, but not always. There were many times a presentation was the deliverable, with a project culminating in me showing up to talk to a group of people.
Good news all around! Yay!
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