This seems to be my life right now…
- Write paper
- Have supervisory team look at it
- Get edits/comments/suggestions back
- Meet to discuss said edits/comment/suggestions
- Fix said edits/comment/suggestions
- Have my team check it again
- Get another round of edits/comments/suggestions
- Do it all over again, until quite literally the deadline.
I understand this technique helps me become a better writer. (And I am not just taking other people’s word for it… I have actually witnessed myself become a better writer just in the past month.*) But man, oh mighty, this has been challenging and at times extremely tedious and emotional. It seems I have spent all day, every day, for the past few weeks writing and rewriting a single paper: second-guessing every sentence, rewriting whole paragraphs, scrutinizing over every comma, changing the layout of each section and subsection, and still making drastic grammar mistakes.
I doubt an end will be in sight anytime soon. I am pretty certain there will always be something I could fix. And you know what? That’s okay. This is the first time I have written anything like this. I am still learning. I used to only care about writing mathematical proofs. Those were easy. Very logical. Very condensed. Little-to-no words. Now, I am developing the skills to write about translations of different texts, stories of ancient scholars, and the mathematical techniques used within manuscripts from the 8th-16th centuries. Yes, it is still mathematical in nature, but it’s historical as well. I want to improve my writing and if this is how I do it… well, so be it.
I just need to remember to go to bed at decent hours.
*Footnote: Don’t use this blog (or anything written on this website) as evidence of improvement.
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