2024 - The Year of Writing

Happy 2024, and I hope you had a great holiday season and a relaxing start to the new year. This week marks the last week before classes start, so I have spent my time at home writing. This will be the theme of 2024, as I have a lot of writing that I need to complete across three different themes: (1) dissertation, (2) manuscript, (3) applications.

My dissertation writing, at least for the first draft, is almost complete. I have a few final items to tidy up and then I will go through to check and edit the entire document. Without one of the chapters and its figures added, I have almost 140 pages of material. I need to add the last research chapter, but I'm waiting a few days because my collaborators and I are discussing some edits to the writing. Once I add this extra chapter, I will have a dissertation of between 150 and 165 pages, most likely, and then I get to start the larger editing process. I'm quite pleased because I've done what I think is some of the hardest aspects of the process, which is getting to this point. I have designed the experiments, conducted the research, done the reading and writing, analyzed the data, made sense of the results, and now here I am writing all my thoughts about this 5-year journey so that I can make a book out of it (yes a dissertation ends up bound as a book).

I mentioned that my collaborators and I are discussing the last research chapter, as we are working on developing a manuscript to present the results. In my opinion some really cool things happened and some interesting items learned from this experiment. I wish I could say more, but for the sake of science, we will have to wait. The collaboration and discussion process will occur over the span of a few months, likely, as we want to make sure that everyone's voice is heard and that all opinions are accounted for. It is my job as the first author on the work to incorporate the feedback I find most valuable and to let authors know why I might not be incorporating their comments. Already the team has made a really interesting point about one of the trends that I didn't think about and I can't wait to explore these ideas further.

Finally, I am writing a lot of job applications and postdoc applications. Today I submitted application number 17, and while many of these jobs require similar application materials, I need to customize the application to the school and talk about their curriculum, research spaces, local environment, and resources that I think I can support. This year will be full of even more applications, as there are limited microplastics research opportunities in the U.S. and it is difficult to break into the field in European countries. I am grateful for repository and/or listserv type websites that post job listings, because it is quite arduous to go to every coastal university career page to see if they have openings in your prospective department.

So here's to you 2024. This year will be a whirlwind of events, and thanks to you regular readers for returning every week to see what's going on with my research.