
Writing a short blog post today to share one last photo from the series taken with the long telephoto on the evening we waited out for the comet. Not much to say about this photo, really. Just another of those opportunistic photos that seem to happen so easily. Or perhaps it’s that I’ve been writing quite a lot lately, between a report for a project that’s about to finish, documentation for various system administration tasks, etc.
A couple years ago I came across a paper by Scott Hotaling, a scientist working in a completely different field, who at the time had recently finished his PhD and started working as a postdoc. And who had the insight and linguistic skill to write about the not-often-articulated practical aspects of academic work, particularly from the point of view of the junior researchers who are in a position to best make use of that advice. He said it well: “At the end of the day, we’re professional writers”. (Since then, I made it a point to share this work with my graduate students. Oh, and if the photos of his workplace he shares on Twitter doesn’t cause office-envy, I don’t know what will. And I mean this in the best way possible, as I surely can’t complain about where my work takes me.)