It's a Draft!

While I have written an exciting title, I am still working on finishing an exciting draft of my final dissertation chapter. I have been writing this manuscript for a while, but one of the difficulties in sitting with this experiment for so long, defending this research to the public and my committee, and talking about it with friends and family, is that I find it difficult to explain the research in a concise and meaningful way to a broader audience. This week I met with my collaborators to talk about some new directions for the writing. They brought fresh ideas, detailed suggestions, and we created a new plan, which has me writing up a new version with a different structure. What I also appreciate about this collaboration is that our team approaches the data and narrative from multiple directions. We have team members that are biogeochemists who focus on the nutrient dynamics, Dr. Ingels who is a benthic ecologist and largely focuses on the animals and the narrative surrounding their behaviors, and I serve as the microplastics and environmental scientist and I attempt to link the pollution research with the chemistry and the behavioral impacts of pollution on these tiny animals. As you can see from this week's picture, my process involves multiple windows of text open simultaneously, as I write paragraphs, cut them out, and then paste them in a new file, in case I want to come back and reuse that information.

Those who know me may also spot some of my personal writing preferences, including using highlighter of various colors to draw my attention back to make an edit. Not shown here are sections of the paper where I have written ideas and highlighted the idea sentence(s) to remind myself that I need to fill in my thoughts. I appreciate how much time I've had to work through this paper, though. Before, I was writing manuscripts while taking classes, running experiments, and teaching. Since I graduated, I can now focus on a few items: writing this manuscript, job interviews, and moving. Since I don't have to worry about moving for another few weeks, I can put more time and thought into this writing, and I expect to have this updated version sent to my team by Sunday evening.

​Who knows what will happen next week, but I will surely keep you updated. See you then.

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