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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

One Checked, More To Come


I've just submitted a paper for a 2011 conference last Tuesday. It took me almost a month to write six pages of conference paper. To be honest, I struggled a bit when I was preparing it. By end of June, this is the checklist of my writing looks like:

Introduction - check
Method - checked
Experimental set up - checked
Results from simulation -  checked
Discussion - ??? urrgghhhh
Conclusion - checked, OF COURSE you can't really have a conclusion when you have not yet completed your discussion. 

I keep pondering about what may I contribute to the research field. I have a handful of simulation results, and I've tried many possible routes of analysing the data. I surely must have something in there somewhere which I can put a stamp on and say "Hey, THIS IS MY IDEA". There is one area though which I think no one (to my knowledge) has even bothered to look at. But then, my insecurity started to creep in and I found myself thinking, "If this is sooooo great, why haven't anyone take a dip into it?"

So I hold back and squeezed my brain again trying to find other contribution. At the end, I gave up and just wrote down my initial idea. I e-mailed the paper to my supervisors and keep praying they'll accept it without much correction. Alhamdulillah, both of my supervisors appreciate my effort and like the idea I thrown into the paper. So now, I'm nervously waiting for comments from the conference reviewer. I have to be ready for any kind of comments and just try to be positive. Urgh... I know it isn't easy to keep your cool when your hard work is being criticized. I am reminding myself, 'If the reviewer takes time to read through my paper and give lots and lots of comments, my paper must have some worth in it'.

Note: Just be confidence. You'll never know. Ever wonder what happen if people like Ibnu Sina (more info here) and Al-Khwarizmi (more here) keeps to themselves their discoveries?  

Then on Friday morning last week, I met up with my supervisor for some progress meeting. After some discussion, she said "We think you are so ready to write a journal paper..."
What else can I say? Of course I want to write a journal paper. This was a task we discussed since err... January this year. Its get to be placed on the shelf for a while because I was hold up for THREE MONTHS studying and investigating one itty bitty part of my research. Yes, I spent three months and may be more ( I ignore the calendar when the going gets rough) on just one small part. But I guess its alright because that one small part will probably be my contribution to the research area. See, every cloud has a silver lining :)
Apart from that, I need to concentrate on the conference paper.

Now, other than continue with my simulation, reading and reviewing lots and lots of related journals and books, I really don't have any other excuse to not have a go at writing a journal paper. Oh! How I wish I have magic fingers...

2 comments:

ajezahmad said...

Madam nak present kat conference ker? All the best!

Jannah Ibrahim said...

Keep up the good work!!
buatkan satu paper boleh??
huhuhu...ni la tak tahu bila nk buat journal paper ni..fening2..