The Neverending Paper

Oh fucking shit on a shingle. This paper is going to haunt me until the end of time. I truly and sincerely hope that they are not all like this. If so, I may very well end up becoming a carpenter or something. Because fuck this.

I am still doing control experiments. Still! No one seems to be satisfied with my explanations, let alone the data itself. I would like to remind people that data don't lie, but I keep forgetting that in their eyes I apparently don't know shit. Or something. Seriously, how many different methods will it take to prove that my new method works? Three isn't enough. And if three isn't enough, I have the sneaking suspicion that not even ten will.

I gotta say, supplemental info on journal articles really chaps my ass. And all of this dumb bullshit that I am currently enduring will just end up in some big stinking barfy pile of supplemental info that only the anal-retentive myopic fucks will read. One of my mentors, a true scientist who still comes in to the lab every day at age 80+, says this: Prove it, but don't over-prove it. This is something that has stuck with me for years, and I will remember it forever. I am all about this phrase. That is science. One well-crafted experiment should be enough. But no, in the age of supplemental info, it will never be enough.

One day, in the near future, I truly hope that this will be remedied. I will probably still be working on my paper then, to be quite honest.

I was always under the impression that grad students typically have a problem with not knowing when to end a project. Well I'm trying to end mine, but my PI and the staff scientist want to keep it going. I am NOT going to take three years to put out a paper. I won't do it. Fuck that shit. I swear I am not going to carry it over through the fall semester. So it is said here, in print, kinda-sorta. But for fuck's sake, the paper must die soon.