(Not so) Technical paper

I have been writing technical papers recently. These are stuff that I hated back in college. Reading them made me feel like I was so far from my full potential, second great, and that I needed to read more. Who would have thought that I’m writing them now?

Believe me; it’s fun.

It’s only now that I appreciate doing the review of literature. When I did my undergrad research in college, rev lit was something I took in isolation. It was just Chapter 2, a standalone chapter. No wonder why I hoarded a lot of irrelevant literature just so my thesis would appear like a geek’s output. My adviser had a hard time editing my work. Had I understood the rev lit well, I would have aced my undergrad research.

Now I’m learning a lot. I enjoy browsing over pdf files, carefully listing down the bibliographic entries of each article, and noting down the important details. Before the day ends, my eyes are reddish, droopy, and I am all of a sudden turned to a wicked creature giving everyone a snobbish stare.

My first professional technical paper was a review of the interrelationships among rice, water, and forests. I was a fresh graduate then with no formal background on any of the said topics. I was new to my job so I did not have the nerve to say no. I accepted the task and gave my boss the “consider it done” look.

But then, deep inside me I wanted to shriek. “What’s this?” So I started reading papers, proceedings of international conferences, etc. etc. I read engineering and irrigation concepts, water-saving technologies.

A nine-page article, on the average, took me hours to read. I remember I kept a notebook, was surrounded with books—my desk was such a mess! I tried to redo the calculations whenever I saw a formula (as though I understood them). And then after reading everything, I would ask myself, “Ano daw???!!! That paper blew me off. The writing process took 6 months including sleepless nights, seemed endless revisions, mean words from my boss, rejections, and quarrels with my co-authors. Six months! It was like redoing my thesis!

When the paper was presented, I felt relieved. The process was painfully sweet.

One last blooper, in the about the author part, it was written there that I wrote about success stories of rice farmers and breakthroughs in rice farming, did publications layout, and produced a radio show. While all those were true, the radio show part appeared like I was doing a morning rush program type with cheap jokes and all (that was below my all smiles picture). I was doing an agri show then.

Now, I’m writing technical papers again—communication research papers. Well, this isn’t unusual. We can all find ourselves loving those that we used to hate.