Well, I've reached the one week mark, and I have one very important revelation. My life is reading. At any given moment now, I have a dozen or more papers waiting to be read. This is not hyperbole. This is a fact.
Right now, I'm doing background research on plant-pollinator interactions for a couple of grant proposals due in November. On top of that, I've got readings for the departmental plant ecology and evolution seminar as well as my own lab's readings. I also discuss papers in weekly one-on-one meetings with my advisor. My life is reading and discussing what I've read.
Reading is amazing, full of entertainment and discovery. It's also, at times, very difficult. Scientific writings are some of the worst of the difficult. They often make full use of their own lexicon, sometimes even coining their own ridiculous terms. They can be some of the most poorly-written convoluted redundant and/or uninteresting works out there. I was even told by my advisor once that sometimes you have to be careful with clarity in your writing, not because lack of it can keep you from getting published, but rather because making your ideas clear can leave you more open to criticism during peer review. Does that seem right to you?
Sounds like classic "Catch-22"
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