Progress [work]

[rebeccmeister]

Let's just say that things haven't gone quite as I'd hoped, for my time in Arizona, but things are generally moving forward anyway.

I am spending much more time working on ant projects than I'd hoped, and my attention is slightly more divided than I'd like. On the other hand, it feels like some things that took a lot of time and energy during grad school (and that weren't part of my dissertation) are finally reaching fruition. For one project, I have been aggregating data across a series of experiments that date as far back as 2005. (That includes the data from 2012 from that fat notebook which took a full week to enter). But now I'm almost ready to get underway with the first phase of the actual analysis, hurrah. There's always a stage with things that feels like it consists of muddling around in a large, murky swamp, unsure of whether I'm going in the right direction, but I have had enough clarity today to think I might actually be making forward progress. Thank goodness.

Meanwhile, in the background, my mind has continued to work on the next cricket paper that's in line, and figured out the thing that I need to do next, which I'd been stuck on. I will still have to sweat it out to get that thing filled out, but it's progress on a strangely difficult front (sorting out hypotheses and deciding how to portray them).

Also meanwhile*, I'm making forward progress with the grad student who's also working on leafcutter nutrition questions. I think we're converging on a plan of attack for leaf nutrient analyses, which should help me with some of the lingering questions from the Leafcutter Manuscript of Doom II.

Back at it.



*Herein lies the problem: Too much split attention, still! Hard to avoid it, though, sigh.

Comments

[missroserose]

"There's always a stage with things that feels like it consists of muddling around in a large, murky swamp, unsure of whether I'm going in the right direction, but I have had enough clarity today to think I might actually be making forward progress.

I'm ridiculously pleased to hear that scientific research has many of the same stages as artistic processes. :) Creation is creation, sometimes it's messy! And hurrah for progress.

[rebeccmeister]

Oh yes oh yes, heh. There's a lot of overlap in processes between science and art. Funny thing - I know a lot of scientists who do art, and artists who do science.

[altamira16]

I would experience so much despair during the muddling around. It is interesting that you have pulled work as far back as 2005 into something meaningful.