Work and play

One year ago, I had a paper written and had started on a presentation for a conference.  Then the sponsor revoked travel authorization.  No presentation for me.  So I wanted and needed to present something this year.  It turns out I got the chance to do two presentations - one for each group I work for.

When I submitted abstracts last summer, I was very excited about the thought of presenting.  I need to write papers and present results to continue to advance in my career.

On a slight tangent, I took an Oceanography course last fall.  We were responsible for writing seven research papers during the semester, which really wore me down.  It was a very aggressive schedule and we had to use software and datasets that had high learning curves associated with them.  What ended up happening was I spent a large amount of time writing for class and letting my work papers slide.

So crunch time came today: the papers had to be submitted to make it into the official program.  One paper was in pretty good shape, as I’ve worked on that material for almost four years now.  The other paper was much more raw and unpolished.  I finished writing a draft this morning and sent it to my boss.  I met up with him earlier this afternoon and he laid down the hammer on me.  He basically said it was too raw and as written shouldn’t be submitted to the official program.  I would still present results, but he didn’t want what I had written to be in the permanent records.

He correctly summed up the paper by saying it lacked coherency; too many stray thoughts pushed together.  As I said, he was correct in his appraisal - I was thinking the same thing as I sent it to him.  But to hear something like that from your boss is fairly disheartening.  In the immediate aftermath, my confidence is shaken.  I know I put off writing it too long and couldn’t recover in time, but….

So he’s working on it now, hoping to finish it by the submission deadline later tonight.  He also made it clear that him fixing the paper really doesn’t help me.  I need to work on fixing it so I learn how to write better.  I’m debating whether I should look at a version that he uploads.  I need the experience in continuing to work on it.

Anyway, I’ve been crazy busy the past few weeks and am glad the conference is almost here.  I really just want to finish up with everything and put it behind me at this point.  I haven’t been able to write here about the things I’ve been keeping track of.  And it’s likely I won’t be able to for another week or so.  But, there’s a time for work and a time for play.

Speaking of which…