Although I am over a year into my PhD, until now I had not submitted anything for a conference. So, I decided that the research I have been doing to date should finally be put out there for discussion and review, and I thought that the Communities and Technologies conference would be a great place to do this. The conference is due to take place in Vienna, Austria, this June. I submitted a short paper (with my supervisor as co-author) for the conference in mid-late March, and I have just received confirmation that it was accepted! Exiting stuff! Kind of..
As luck would have it my literature review was due to be submitted on the same date as the reviewed and updated conference paper. I could already feel myself becoming overwhelmed. My experience so far with my PhD has led me to find that there are two polar opposite 'states of work' I find myself in. The first is relaxed, easy enough days at work when there are no deadlines breathing down my back and I have the opportunity to explore and ponder various things like my field work and literature. Then there are days when it feels like the world has fallen on top of my shoulders and everything is happening at the same time, leaving me feeling stressed, overwhelmed and confused. Needless to say the updated conference paper deadline combined with my literature review deadline had me in the second state of work. I often find myself confused about priorities, with my head feeling split in two, three, four.. each part focusing on a different task and yet combining into one stream of thought. This is not helpful. But it's the way my mind works these days. This isn't always the way it worked, but neurological conditions can do that to you. When I have time I will make another blog post about it (and link it here), but I'll continue with my conference acceptance story for now! So, I've received acceptance and I'll be going to Vienna. Great! I've a) never been to a conference outside of Ireland and b) never been to Vienna, so I was (and am) delighted. Finally I've got something to show for the work I've been doing. But first we (my supervisor/co-author and I) would have to rewrite it and integrate the feedback of the reviewers. The paper was reviewed and the comments were generally ok; the negatives they pointed to were both understandable and easily fixable. We had about two weeks to do it, so I was not overly concerned. I set aside time in the next couple of days to re-read the reviewers feedback and find areas in our paper where their concerns can be addressed. Then, we started to rewrite. All was going fine, until I find out that the paper is actually going to have to be reformatted/translated to LaTeX - essentially code that makes a fancy PDF with embedded metadata. I had never heard of LaTeX until then, but (unwisely) I assumed it wouldn't be that complicated, surely a PDF is a PDF and it's easy enough to do? Nope. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. Let this blog post be a warning to anybody else submitting papers to conferences - start working on the LaTeX version as soon as possible. It'll take at least a day if not more to turn your basic document into a LaTeX submission, so don't leave it until the last day(s). Between getting to grips with the software that creates LaTeX submission and referencing your various sources and turning those into BibTeX references, it's not an easy day at the office. But, we did it! My office-mate says I work best when I'm 'cornered like a rat', and honestly, I think he's right. Nothing makes me work harder than a deadline. With everything submitted all I have to do now is prepare my 10 minute presentation. That's the other thing that caused me to qualify my excitement at the beginning of this post; I get a tad (a lot) nervous presenting so while I am delighted that my paper was accepted, I'm already dreading the actual presentation. Yes, I'm sure I'll have it rehearsed 1,000 times before I actually take to the (stage? podium? I've clearly never done this...) but I'll be fighting every natural urge to run in order to do it. I'm sure there's a huge part of that nervousness that's a lack of self-confidence, but I where better to start building up my confidence as a competent researcher than in front of a crowd of academics. The C&T conference is due to take place in Vienna on June 4th - 7th, so I'll be sure to write an update when I'm back.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI graduated with a Masters in Research from the University of Limerick. My topic of research is cohousing. This blog documents my research and any news articles related to collaborative housing. Archives
August 2019
Categories |