The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

Met with my adviser today. Last week, she had given me the task of going back to my research and finding "just a couple of specifics" to punch up the conclusion of our AMS paper with better examples. This after I had rewritten the entire draft from a different perspective when we had decided the previous week that we needed to take the paper in a new direction, a draft which she loved.

This morning, she liked my new examples. I need to do a few small calculations and tweak the figures in Photoshop and such, and wait for her revisions (which she always classifies as "minor" to my papers despite visibly large amounts of red text), but we're down to the wire and may just make our latest self-imposed submission deadline of Labor Day.

We were about to wrap up the meeting when she said, "And I've been thinking,..."

I cut her off with "Uh-oh."

"No. I think you'll like this thinking," she responded, and, turning her monitor toward me, showed me the title page of the paper on which she had switched the order of our names.

Big fat hairy deal? I know a few of my classmates and other people in other fields and other schools have gotten first-authorship on their first papers from Master's degrees. My advisor, despite being a few years younger than me, is pretty old-fashioned when it comes to a lot of science politics and the student caste system (undergrad, M.S. student, Ph.D. student, post-doc), though, and is pretty stingy about granting first-authorship for a paper based on M.S. work. With my M.S., I was going along with it, too, because I was led much of the way since I was still learning cloud physics.

She said that with the new direction of the paper (selling the visualization application since the cloud physics results aren't particularly earth-shattering and submitting it to the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology rather than the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology as was our original plan), I know a lot more about the bulk of it than she does, and it's the right thing to do.

To some it might not be a big deal to get first authorship on a first scientific paper, so pardon me while I crow a bit. :-) Of course, it also means I'm corresponding author, and will be the first one to deal with the AMS and the reviewers during the submission/review/publication process.

One night in the last couple of weeks, during the heads-down pressure filled days of writing and revising my thesis, when I had just gone to bed, my brain decided to be weird and start writing a story. I didn't get up and write it down, but I liked what I came up with and filed it away until after I got through the end of the semester. I think I'll use this journal to work through it, posting snippets and such.

Turned in the form that schedules my thesis defense to the grad school today. It's a pretty tight schedule, and I'll probably be (more) insane by the end of it (and I want to go through all this again for my Ph.D. in about three years? ;-)).

- Monday, April 13: Give reading copies of my thesis to my committee members.

- Tuesday, April 21, 10:30am-12:30pm: M.S. Thesis Defense. A 45-minute presentation open to the public, with time for questions, followed by up to an hour private oral exam.

- Wednesday, April 29: Need to have any revisions suggested at my defense completed. Electronically submit thesis to ProQuest before 2:30pm.

- Thursday, April 30, 2:30pm: Thesis deposit appointment, Purdue Grad School Thesis Office. Need to have nice, bound copies ready to give to the grad school by this time.

I think I can make this. I didn't get any writing done today, thanks to tracking down three faculty members to get a free time for my defense. And I technically still don't have a room. It will be one of two - one downstairs in my building, the other all the way across campus in the management school. Obviously, I'm hoping for the former. I need to write a fairly brief conclusion chapter, rework one of my chapters into an appendix, and write an intro (and make any revisions suggested by my advisor). Tomorrow I'm going into the lab to get some figures made before I meet with my advisor, and from Thursday through Sunday will be writing and revising.

Why does this frighten me a little?

My advisor, who, even though she's been very complimentary toward my writing ability, still usually sends things back to me bleeding with markup. She's just that way, and she's emphasized that she's helping me transition to a scientific style. I've not taken any of it personally, and have come to expect loads of feedback and columns full of markup in MS Word when I get docs back.

I've sent first drafts of three chapters for my M.S. thesis, and bits of some others, to her over the last few months. Today I finally got one back.

It has virtually no markup.

My reaction does include satisfaction and accomplishment, but why is there also fear present?

Just need to clear up some references and replace a few figures tomorrow and my advisor can have it. First 2 chapters of my MS thesis.

Brain fried now.

Re-watching the Torchwood episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts", when Owen is having difficulty determining what happened to the skeleton they recovered, I thought he should call Bones. And then I thought of how bizarre might be a Torchwood - Bones crossover. :-)

Anyone want to run with that?