It's time

The time has come.  It can't be put off any longer.  It must be done.

It's time to start writing papers.  As a researcher and PhD student, the job entails coming up with a novel idea, designing elegant methodology, executing experimentation and preforming thoughtful analysis.  Unfortunately, the job does not stop there, because once you've poured yourself into your work, you then have to offer up your results to your peers.  I don't know if I've made the point in the past couple months, but I love my work.  I get a kick out of experimental design, learning by doing and collecting data in the lab.  However, if I have any desire to continue in science, I have to publish.  To be fair, there's pressure to publish not only to tick a box, but because in the process you explain to a wider audience not just how and what you did, but more importantly why.  A scientific paper is a neat (or should be) package that frames the motivation for a small contribution (that's the experiment) within one or more broad fields and typically concludes with a discussion of the implications of the reported results. With that in mind, there's nothing about a journal article that's unreasonable to ask of the graduate student.  And I would suggest that for a capable student there's nothing too difficult about formatting and drafting a manuscript.  Well in theory at least.  With the countdown clock ticking away, the reality is I already have two papers and a thesis that need to be finished by July.  Add to that the other projects (and subsequent output) that I'd like to additionally work on and it's clear I need to start knocking items off the "master" to do list.

So there it is, the planning of the week has arrived at the simple conclusion, it's time to write.  I will have some data analysis and auxiliary experiments to run as I close in on my final draft, but for now the focus will be writing.