Analysing writings

The Krauss article is now published, and I must say it contains more Krauss than I imagined it would. In my original version, all the stuff about the physics symposium was first, as I thought that's what they wanted, about the students and all. But maybe it helped that Simon edited this one, and he was nodding a scribbling and lot while sitting next to me in the talk, so I think he was influenced by Krauss' words too. Which is good, but it made me read the article several times to make sure I felt comfortable having my name on the top of it. I figured out a way to resolve this issue though: I imagine that if the editor had tried to claim it as their own, would that be plagiarism of my work? And then when I compare the article side-by-side with my original draft (yes I am that anal) I always find that almost all of it is mine, but it's surprising how much difference ordering makes to a piece.

I also had another piece in the most recent student newspaper, about how long it takes to become self-motivated to exercise. It takes a long time, is the answer, more than six months. Motivation is a problem for me these days, so I'm using my dedication to science to make me exercise instead! Soon I will have to start my daily squats to record the effect on my knee pain. It's quite an intense routine, building up to 250-300 squats in one session. I figure all I have to do is keep telling myself that if I don't do the exercise I will mess up the researcher's experiment, and I can't pretend I did the exercise when I didn't, because that's falsifying data!

I just returned from my second non-fiction writing class, where we were paired up to critique each other's essay first draft. The essay is about a person who has influenced us or we have strong feelings about. The guy I got paired up with couldn't have had a more different essay than mine. I wrote a very personal essay about my relationship with an ex-boyfriend; he wrote about the history and importance of the prophet Mohammed. Neither of us were English students; I an earth scientist (with a tendency to over-explain rather than abstractly hint) and he a history student (which explained the impersonal tone of his essay). I was my typical twitchy self, nervous to offer advice on anyone else's writing, since I was new to this business. But, as usual I blurted it all out anyway. I found his essay impersonal, how was he influenced directly by Mohammed? He told me he made a concious decision (but didn't know if it was necessarily a good one) to not talk about his moments of doubt, and his experiences. I told him directly I wished he would put those things in, for one it would make the piece more relate-able [I can't believe that's not a word!], and secondly it would be so interesting. His essay so far was more about how Mohammed's history relates to the world around him, but I was so intrigued by the prospect of a Muslim (who had grown up in the States) revealing his intimacy with the religion on the page that I tried to encourage him to open up about it. I hope he does for the next draft, it would make a very compelling piece.