I've been researching and writing a topic for a book chapter. This has been quite a bit of work — it's in a field with which I am vaguely familiar but there are lots of subtleties and gotchas — and has completely sucked my lab time away. A book chapter is nice, but sometimes I wonder whether I'm going to use all these hard-earned gobbets of information, wrested from the fires of PubMed: or even if anyone's going to read the damn thing and take something positive away from it.
I enjoy writing, and I enjoy learning new things, but sometimes you just need to go away and clone something. Anything. The first draft will be done this weekend, and then I can have a proper look at the microarray data that arrived this week. This week? Last week. I don't know. There was a long weekend somewhere, I remember that.
These microarray data are interesting. They're not in total accord with the first batch I did last year, which is actually quite reassuring because Beta Gal isn't haven't much luck getting data that are consistent with what they told us. Which means, and this is good or bad depending on the angle you approach it from, that I have to re-do about a month's worth of analysis.
In seven days. Because then I have to make a poster for a conference.
So. Yeah. A couple of extra days, please. Might make a difference.
Comments
This is sounding like one of *my* posts... busy busy busy yadda yadda yadda.
Book chapters - ugh. I did one, once, and found it nigh impossible to read all the background material. Lot of work. Good luck with it and hope your poster goes ok.
Posted by: Ricardipus | June 16, 2008 12:32 AM
Poster? We can do you a poster. £5,000, please.
Posted by: Nige | June 18, 2008 08:35 PM
Mate,
5 grand is, what? 11 thousand Australian. That's basically 7 weeks of my time (at my current salary).
I'm going to be doing in three days.
Hell, I'm in the wrong job.
Posted by: bk | June 18, 2008 08:40 PM
Chapters? Write 'em from abstracts. I do, and no-one's commented yet. Or read them, possibly!
Posters? Grad students make posters...B-) Or you can, from Powerpoint slide shows. Just link 'em together and add a cool background. Something preripherally linked to your subject.
Like a Star Wars droid.
Posted by: retroid | June 26, 2008 06:05 AM