Meeting with Dave
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Rolled in late (does this even need mentioning at this point?) after having trouble getting out of bed, for no good reason. Been tense and testy and it has definitely impacted things with Kati.
Anyway. Printed out the figures I have so far to show to Dave. I have a lot of nice-looking plots now, and a couple more to do, but I still don’t know what this paper is about, and I think that’s one of the root causes of my anxiety about it. I spent the first part of the day trying to return to the text of the paper and write, back into the habit, even if the writing is poor. Got a couple of paragraphs about the phylogeny plot out, but it was like pulling teeth.
At 2:30, had my meeting with Dave, which went pretty well. He basically let me blather on about my plots unimpeded for a good half hour, and didn’t have too much to say, though he was quite encouraging—it looks good, he suggested, and I just needed to write up and get it done. He did want to make sure I didn’t harbor any misconceptions about being able to finish in May, and seemed relieved when I told him that I was aiming to be done by the end of 2012, which he thought was realistic. He did suggest that at some point the time for further sensitivity tests and such lark was over and it would be best to just write up and get done. But he was encouraging about my feeling that the biological story, the big-picture hook was still missing. He said that he often felt that way and only in the process of writing it up and and actually staring at the data, trying to say something about it did the final story emerge. This was pretty encouraging. The only bit that didn’t feel good was when I mentioned that Andy had suggested splitting the chapter into two parts, and that I thought maybe that meant I would get away with not writing one of the other projects up—he said he would consider that as an additional chapter, not a replacement for the existing platter of projects. Well, whatever.
He also said “that’s why you collaborate”, I forget in what context, but it struck me because JC had just asked me over lunch whether I had thought at all about contacting Gene and asking him for help. I responded that I hadn’t really considered it and paused to ponder why, and surmised that it was probably because I felt so embarrassed about my work that I didn’t want anyone to see it. But having talked for half an hour solid and seemingly satisfied Dave that I have a project in hand in which, as he said, “all the hard work is done”, made me wonder whether perhaps JC was onto something and I should maybe get in touch with Gene after all.
Something to mull over at least.
