Let’s make no bones about it, academic science writing is hard. This has probably been the most challenging part of my honours project thus far. To read the volume of journal articles to enable you to get a glimpse of what is already known is one thing, but to structure, order and know what to keep is a skill in itself. The first month involved a lot of reading, some of it I understood; but to be honest a lot of the literature was over my head, and it was almost like learning a new language. My former career had been very physical, on my feet all day and very little time to take a rest, so at the end of the day you felt exhausted. What I was not prepared for was to be exhausted from reading and trying to understand concepts - although my legs and feet were not sore, my brain was cooked, like a well-done overcooked steak. Getting my 43-year-old brain to store and process all this information is rather over whelming – regretting a miss spent youth in West Cork, Ireland – maybe I let one too many brain cells go to the Guinness ;-)
My next mission is to learn how to set out a better writing plan, one that makes writing a little more fluid and user friendly. I definitely want to leave honours as a better writer.
Here is a little quote:
"Anyone who says writing is easy, probably hasn't written well enough to know it is hard."
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