The lead-up to Christmas was a little hectic last year. I was trying to write up the results of two pieces of work I had been doing throughout the year for journal submission - I had presented these both at a conference in August - and my supervisor brought an “opportunity” to me for another published manuscript. This was supposed to be a straightforward perspectives paper but I find that kind of thing a lot harder than a research paper with a method, results, and discussion. Suffice it to say that preparing three papers for submission at the end of the year was a bit of a rush, considering all papers had collaborators that needed to review it, provide feedback and review it again.

My supervisor says this is an excellent start, already assuming that they will be published, and has me outlining my thesis with already. The problem is these papers are only a step in the direction for which I want to go with my PhD. The guts of my work was not supposed to be anything to do with this stuff. This is all preliminary work for what I want to do.

Still, three papers were submitted to journals, and now I play the waiting game. I have to admit I was expecting to feel a little bit relieved when the submission process for the manuscripts was completed, but to be honest I just felt nervous about the response. Will it be an outright rejection? Will the work itself be shot down in flames? Who knows. I just hope the response doesn’t take six months. Let’s just hope someone else doesn’t publish something similar in the meantime!