Shameless Graduate Student Update

As you might be able to tell from my last post, it's been a week. The bad part of it really isn't mine to tell, but let's just say that I have appreciated Derek's trial offices for the dead.

I think I was complaining a few weeks ago about being overcommitted. Well, I'm trying to clear my plate a little at the moment by the best route possible: I'm writing papers. My first first author paper is currently under review at one of the big journals of my sub-field. Today, I sent around my next paper for internal review, which hopefully will be submitted to a journal that doesn't hear much from my sub-field but has a fairly wide reach. So I just may submit two papers of my own this summer.

Monday, I learned that an abstract of mine was accepted for oral presentation at a big conference in October. To most readers of this blog, this will not mean much. But I've been submitting abstracts to conferences for more than three years now and I always have to present posters. Poster sessions frankly are depressing. They tend to be sparsely attended and repetitious. But worst of all, presenting a poster is a sign that your work is not particularly interesting. Speaking at a oral session is proof that I finally do something that a large number of people might find interesting. And that's kind of cool.