A Neat Kind of Nitpicking

Two days after my full draft submission, I was a cockroach with 6 antennae. I was daydreaming= up and about thinking of 6 creative work/ paper ideas:

> TP study on learning support

> PhD journey auto-ethno Part 2 & Part 3 - HERDSA 2020

> a paper presentation based on my thesis

> website rebuild for my Scratch Paper

> 1 more blog for the Transformatives of Collab 2020

> an ethnographic study with research fellows of Collaboratoire 2020

HERDSA 2020 abstract writing  was top in my dropdown list.  But then, did that alongside other things: trying a not- the-usual chocolate cake recipe, chatting with the Transformatives, & blogging. So out came a so-so abstract.

Gaaash, Aleta. Can you be more focused and systematic?  Guess not.

Days later, I decided to sched a consultation with Dr D and try things differently. So what if, I compare my scores with the expert abstract writer-reviewer. Why not try to practice giving comments on my work, as if  I'm giving feedback to a student.  Again, compare. Neat!

As usual, things went un-recorded, tsk tsk. And why does the un-recorded leave me with mowwwhhh food for thought :)  What I witnessed is a nitpicking of the Doctor kind. Didn't realize how 'oc-oc' the process can be.

I remember saying, "Go ahead, just do the rating, no need to be nice".  I ended up quite amused with the nitpicking because he really went sentence by sentence, then for a few ones, word for word.  The automated-grammar-guru was still at work of course. He still found a few lapses despite me running that abstract through Grammarly. For a while I thought, "Is that what my examiners will do with my thesis? And if so, does that mean I should at least do that first to my own thesis? Omg, I haven't done that for some sections of my chapters!!!"

Anyways, the co-ratings for my abstract are here below:

Relevance -             a = 4     d = 3

Description -           a = 4     d = 4

Contribution 2R -    a = 3     d = 3

Clarity of writing -  a = 3    d = 4


I felt at some point, the ideas in my abstract got too 'scattered'.   Dr D noticed that I could have driven important points more directly.
And that one way to do that was to look at the wordings/ key phrases in the actual description of conference themes, then use those in the abstract. Hardly did that before!

Tried to visualize the phrases he used: 'slap their faces with it' (or was that 'drive it down their necks'? or 'ram it down their throats'?). While listening to those Englishingies, my quick translate was: saksak mo sa baga nila!  

That was almost 1 hour of a pretty neat kind of  nitpicking. But, I must say, it was quite tiring. And I'm just 1 out of the 3 or 4 more consultations for the day. Only a wizard can get those done. Glad that he's the wizard and I can just be a hobbit (for now).

So this is how it feels like to be at the receiving end of nitpicking. That was like Kuya Roger receiving explicit instructions from Teacher Aleta to hang this child's artwork this way > if that didn't work, do this > still not up to my liking, do that. Or while with Teacher Ron and reviewing his letter to parents > change this, change that. Or when Teacher Mai sets the agenda for our meeting > this goes there, this goes here > a better flow of discussion to make sure we don't overdiscuss. Gahhhd, that's funny. 

Seriously though,  now that I'm seeing the scores, I should be ready for a borderline yes. Awwwh. But hey, a No from HERDSA only means that I can relax and just enjoy the conference (in return for not entirely enjoying ASCILITE Dec 2017). Imagine getting nervous for a poster session a few days before my flight, instead of spending cozy time with E&N or A&A? That is if I can even get my study grant (extended version) approved in the first place.

Now the actual poster is another thing of course....hmmm.