woe is the lab’s science editor or writer
posted by: acarr
For the past week and a half, it seems that I am called on more in the lab to do editing/writing for grants, etc…than to finish my lab projects. For example, I read through a 12-page single-spaced grant. And, I mean that I read-it out loud! My advisor has two computer monitors in his office. One he types on, and the other I read from. Sometimes I do get a paper copy to take home and correct, but I guess he feels that as a native english speaker, if I read it out loud, i can catch the problem areas. There is some truth to this….but it’s not fun….
And if there is a problem area, I have fix it right then and there…it’s sort of like I’m a walking thesaurus/dictionary/AP style book…(there is a little frustration in my tone). This is a little stressful, but more so it is demanding. This happens in “bursts” throughout the year, but when it does, I am not entirely so focused at times. I know that when I graduate, I probably will be remembered more for the editing/writing, then for the data results, lol. My advisor says that after this grant submission (Which I am really praying that we get both grants), he’s going to push me to write the next journal article. With all the writing experience, this should not be so hard…but then again, you need good results to write an article. The latter is where I need the most improvement.
But, guess what? Today, i am working on editing a poster for a conference…another EDITING project! The poster is going to go up outside our lab too. I am not the presenter, but I have been listed as a co-author. When I look at the data on this poster , I contributed a very small scientific part to the data and a very big part to the english. Sometimes, I wonder why most of my strongest work in this lab has been the writing versus the data….at least it seems that way…I do have some things done or I wouldn’t be this far in grad school…and I am here 6-7 days a week in lab….but I know it may take a little bit of a “selfish push” to kind of just work on what I need to get done for my lab science projects…that is the NON-WRITING projects.
this blog may have huge grammar errors, because I didn’t feel like editing anything else:-)
