First Draft of My First Paper Done

I just finished spending about 5 long days going through a bunch of research data, analyzing the results, and writing the initial draft of my first paper. This particular project started off as a side project about a month after I arrived, while I was waiting on other settling in items to get taken care of. Some of that work was sloppy, and took a bit of practice for me to get my lab skills up to standard, as well as my note taking. As I redid some measurements over the summer, some of the results looked a bit strange and interesting, so my supervisor and I outlined a few further tangents to try. Then I got all busy with my battery project on the printer and put this work aside. January was slated to be a slow month, which made it the ideal time to finish up this side project. I booked the lab equipment for two weeks straight, to the disdain of some of the other students (this goes with the territory of doing research).

I redid some of the previous work, just to be sure all was still consistent. Some of the measurements seemed stranger than before, and when I checked my solutions after leaving them overnight, they were black when they were supposed to still be green. It turns out the solvent had gone bad, and had been decomposing all along. So the results were not as strange as we thought, and were very consistent after I switched to my new bottle of the same solvent. I spent the rest of the time getting all the measurements and variations I could think of.

Writing this paper was hard work. Normally, I probably would have about two weeks or so to work on the writing, but the pressure is on for me to have this paper done this month. I had to put all the data into spreadsheets and graphs, study the results, and come up with ideas why I think things ended up the way they did. That process was the most laborious. Once I had thought everything through, the actual writing wasn't too bad. The result was 25 pages long (13 pages without the graphs).

Now the draft is in the hands of my supervisor, and I'll be discussing the details with him on Friday. Undoubtedly, there will be edits, but I think the hardest work is done. It will be real exciting once I start submitting this paper to peer-reviewed journals. Stay tuned!