A Tale of Two Pathways

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

But as much as we complain about being in a perpetual state of semi-confusion, I did, on reflection, appreciate the unguided nature of writing this research nature. The data was an open-ended puzzle for each person to solve in the way that made sense to them, and the instructors were a bountiful fountain of knowledge, ready to answer any question that was asked — the key was to ask. Let no one fall into the trap of thinking that a figure that you showed an instructor doesn't have any mistakes just because they weren't voluntarily pointed out to you.

I like to think that my time management on this article wasn't utterly horrible — I went into Saturday with only the Discussion, Intro, References, and Title/Abstract to do, which was technically only 30% of the article. But leaving the discussion for the last five hours before the deadline was not, it transpired, a particularly forward-thinking decision. Things that seemed right when I copied them down in lecture or when I outlined them last week suddenly made not a modicum of sense; on top of that, I found myself wishing for a few more hours to delve more deeply into the literature and come up with fully thought-out and unique proposals for explanations for our data. There were things that I never considered before that came to light while scanning articles to make sure they were satisfactory references, like the fact that HR really only happens in the S/G2 phase — surely there's something to be had there?

It probably took me about as long to figure out my article's narrative as it did to write the physical words. I played around with the order of my figures for ages, and then had to revise that order when writing the results, and then sat in consternation for hours again yesterday to figure out how to group all the results together into appropriate discussion categories. Maybe I should have tried to organize things with a spreadsheet. Or laying out post-it notes. We did that in 9th grade, and I do recall it being ever so useful then...

Anyway, it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known—

Oh, but wait! Now I have to study for 7.05.