friday cloud

I am working on a draft for my first published paper (well hopefully it gets accepted!) and I should be elated. It has taken a ton of time, and multiple steps (some backwards) to get here, yet I just feel deflated. Where is my motivation? For one thing I know I am not the best writer and for another since this is a collaborative effort I have to have two PI's read it... meaning twice the suggestions, or word tweaking. I know that comes with the territory but I am really not looking forward to it, they both have really different writing styles from eachother. I also need to catch up on my reading in this arena as I haven't kept up with the most recent findings. ah, and my results, I believe I have finally finished the analyses but what does it all mean? I really hate having to 'weave' a story out of the findings. Why can't it just be, look here is what we found. I don't know why this area was more active during X, or this area showed inhibition during Y, it just did ok? But of course that isn't really how you get your work noticed, and if you aren't careful it leaves the door open for someone else to misconstrue or misninterrupt your results. But I really hate how if you make a big case out of your data you get more attention, feed back and notoriety. The so called spin of the science world I guess. There have been times when a 'big' name has a paper with a 'new' phenomenon or effect and it is all in the news as being this unique finding etc., when in reality there are usually a few other papers that have found similiar effects only weren't made a circus out of. My stuff of course isn't like this at all, I just dislike the feeling that you have to 'sell' your research or findings. In my dept. there was a colleague of mine who did a presentation and kept saying things like, "well I was told not to do this, but I did anyway and so I found X..." etc. Incidently he won the award for best presentation. But, his research wasn't all that outstanding. Good yes, but his results followed what anyone would have predicted. I learned then that you do have to emphasize how 'special' your results are in order to be noticed... but I hate that! Just like when other (mostly male) colleagues brag about being in journal X, or discovering a new phenomena, I am just not like that. Shouldn't good work just stand on it's own and be recognized for what it is?