Proposal Lows & Manuscript Highs

I know all of you out there are thinking "Why hasn't Sneks been blogging lately?"



Well, various reasons. Two of which are my dissertation proposal and a manuscript on a side project.



The dissertation proposal has been (as you could probably tell by the title of this post) kicking my butt. I am floundering (ha) with it for many reasons. Like, I am not that excited about it, a tenured professor refused to be on my committee (because of his experience with my labmate and my advisor) (which then leads to further doubt about this research on my behalf), my advisor has given little feedback other than "I hate this part", and I am a perfectionist when it comes to writing, so each word is carefully chosen. Sigh.



But things are going well this week and I have a pretty decent draft in to my advisor that I am happier with. So, the low is getting less-low.



As for the manuscript, it's on the project I did with Dancing Fish my first summer here. We wrote up a short communication (you will not believe how difficult it is to write ONLY 800 words) and sent it off somewhere big. Somewhere BIG. Yes people. The BIGGEST journal (that takes short communications). Yes, that is right.



Science.



I kid you not.



Of course, I honestly think it will get rejected (not because I doubt our research or our writing ... the paper just needs more data that is literally impossible to collect). The chance of us actually getting published is like less than 7% or something. But, it's been 6 days now and we haven't heard anything (usually, papers get rejected within 48 hours of submission). OK, so there was a weekend in there, so technically it has only been 4 days. But still, a good sign. I have gotten other papers rejected much more quickly than this!

So, please keep your fingers crossed for me as I work on the proposal and as we wait to hear from Science (OMG -- I actually have a paper submitted to Science ... CRAZY!)!