EEEEEEEE

A lot has happened in the last week, and I hope to blog about it all. The number one, biggest, bestest event, however, was:

I got my first peer-reviewed paper accepted!!!

This is so exciting to me because it is what I see as the point of my career from now on: to do good research, and to share that good research with lots of people. I love academic research because I'm thrilled by the idea of a group of smart people getting together to discuss puzzles, and potentially helping the world out through their puzzle-solving. It's interesting to me that helping the world out is less motivating than using my brain to solve puzzles, but maybe that's a topic for a different post.

As for the paper: I'm the second of two authors (pretty standard number for my field) on a paper that only begins to explain the research I've been doing with my advisor (first author) for over 1.5 years now. It's great to finally have a publication on my CV, but it's also great to see the work we've done begin to be accepted by the community. I think it's pretty novel stuff---we're building our own methods rather than relying on existing frameworks---so having documentation of our work is important to avoid getting scooped and also to begin sharing our progress with the wider community. I hope we can publish many more papers that really explore the depths of our novel approach.

My advisor and I submitted another paper this past weekend, which had kept me from blogging for longer than I'd wanted. If that one gets in, it'll be a big win for my year of research.