Abstracts for the fall AGU conference are due today.
I hate writing abstracts. I really, really hate writing abstracts. (And I’ve only done it a few times, so I dread to think how much I will hate it ten years from now.)
The reason I hate writing abstracts is that you are trying to write about results as if you already have them in hand–when, in fact, you’ll probably be collecting a lot more data between when you submit the abstract and when you actually make your poster or give your presentation. Or maybe you have a bunch of data right now, but you’re still trying to figure out what it means. Or both, which is where I am now.
The next big hurdle for me was picking the appropriate session to apply to. See, I do relatively obscure work (Dr. Hand-Waver can only think of one group that does stuff very close to what we do), and therefore there are no sessions tailor-made for my research. Dr. Hand-Waver suggested two, none of which were particularly good fits. In the end, I ended up choosing one over the other because I just spent several weeks on a ship with one of the session organizers.
Now we’ll see if my abstract is accepted.
