Yikes.

I was close, so very close, to submitting my first paper, and then M had another look at the data.

M: Hm, maybe this is not what we thought it was.
Me: Huh. You may be right. But maybe what we initially said is right.
M: Okay. Well just to be sure, I need you to do like 10 more experiments.
Me: Uh, okay.
M: And also re-do the experiments that were going to go in the paper.
Me: @&%*$!!!

Now don't get me wrong -- I don't want to publish something if it isn't correct. And it's better to work these things out now, rather than have them brought to light by the reviewers (and thus risk having the paper rejected).
*But* the thing that bothers me is, I was ready to have this part done, out of the way, and possibly published, and now I have to wait even more. And it always takes longer to do things than you thought it would. I just don't want to have to wait another 6 months to get this out.

Crap. That's what I get for getting my hopes up.

The Waiting Game

The first draft is circulating. I had given M what I had written, and he then took it and contributed what he thought. I guess I was surprised that he changed it quite a bit. But I suppose that's what happens when you work with someone. I still like it, but there are a lot of big words in there now that I wouldn't have thought of.

Did you know it's actually spelled "minuscule?" I always thought it was "miniscule."

Seattle was great. Everyone needs to check out the Astrobiology Rap on YouTube. Oh wait, I'll bet I can put a fancy link in here, to save you the trouble of having to search:
Astrobiology Rap

I met the rapper in the video, and he was pretty great. I'm not sure how much his material helps people to learn, though. I think his objective is more to raise awareness, but I don't know if a non-scientist would get too much out of his rap, other than curiosity. Thoughts?

Now I have to wait a while for the paper to circulate through the lab. And then once we submit it, I'll have to wait for them to get back to us. I hope they don't want me to do more experiments.

In the meantime, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. But for now, I think I'm going to cut out early and enjoy the sunshine.

Bastille Day randomness

I've been typing typing typing, and making figures, and not doing lab work, and I feel weird.

I finished my work for the day and came home and watched a movie, and it's only 7:30.

I suppose I should do the dishes or something.

I should also write the presentation I'll be giving on Friday in Seattle(!), but that can wait until tomorrow.

I am content and fortunate.

Last night I had a dream that I went to a friend's house and wasn't wearing any pants, and I thought, "Wow, this probably would look really bad to someone coming in, but really, I just forgot to wear pants!"

That is all. This is what happens when I force myself to blog for the sake of blogging.

Big, important decisions

I'm back, and I have a lot to do. The Spain trip has already merged itself into one big memory, so here I will offer some bullet points:

We had wine with lunch and dinner every day. Since I'm normally surrounded by beer drinkers, I felt very much at home.

My Spanish is not as bad as I had thought.

Paella is awesome, even when the shrimp still have their heads attached (It's smiling at me!).

I got to stay in a palace.

Red wine + coke = surprisingly not bad.

I went out almost every night; the last night, the bar we were at played Like A Prayer twice and it was awesome. I still haven't gotten the song out of my head.

On the "last day of school," my group was giving our presentation on Titan and I saw that Michael Madigan(!) was taking notes. I think that was the best part.

So, perhaps needless to say, I really enjoyed the trip. I got to meet the director of the Centro de Astrobiologia; he was really nice. And I started to think: maybe I'd like to live here for a while. Maybe I could do a postdoc at the CAB. They do science that I'm interested in, and I love the country. I'm not sure if I'll be able to live outside the US as easily in the future. So why not?

Well, there are a few issues:
1. I don't speak Spanish that well. I am 100% sure I would do fine just getting around, but doing science in another language might be too much to handle. Luckily, it seems that words like "astrobiologia" are pretty easy to translate...
2. I'm not sure that the CAB has the best possible credentials. But honestly, I have no idea, they might be very prestigious -- I need to see where they have published. But I thought about it, and I'm not even sure this is a big problem. I think the NASA Astrobiology Institute would be happy to see that I worked at the CAB. And I don't really care about anyone else. Of course, I want to have a job, and a good one, but I think being happy with your life is more important than making tons of money. And if Spain = happy, then that's what I should do.
3. I have no idea about funding. I have to look into it.

This isn't to say, of course, that I'm only going to look for jobs in Spain. I'll certainly be looking for positions in the States, too. There is one person at Harvard who I'm pretty interested in working for, but Harvard is really the opposite of Spain for me (I'd be very comfortable there, which I suppose isn't a bad thing either).

Granted it will be at least a year before I graduate, but it seems that M is really trying to get me out the door (maybe this makes me lucky?), and multiple people have told me that you should start talking to people about the possibility of working for them about a year in advance. So I think I'm going to try to crank this paper out, and then really get on it. But I'm thinking about it...

Does this mean I'm a grown-up?