Cheerfully Trying To Construct Our Abstract – Dr. Plastic Picker
 

Cheerfully Trying To Construct Our Abstract

| Posted in Published: Getting My Words Out

my new facebook profile! for my personal page.

January 27, 2023

by Dr. Plastic Picker

I’m midway through my 40s, and I realize that I’m naturally a very cheerful person. I was cheerful when I arrived to Cambridge at 17 to start my studies at Harvard. I think I generally was still cheerful after graduating from medical school, but somewhere in between being hazed as a medical student and resident and just life as a mommy doctor – I became less cheerful. But now I’m cheerful again, and back to my natural happy self. It probably helps that I’m back in San Diego, the city that raised me to be generally cheerful. It must be our generally good weather.

So here I am at 5:42 AM and I’m still plugging away trying to help our author group reformat our paper “Child advocacy through fossil fuel divestment.” There are illustrious co-authors on the paper, and somehow through my being cheerful and dedicated to the cause of saving the literal earth for our children – I am also a co-author. I have contributed I believe a good amount to the paper, but it’s again my turn to step up as the other co-authors have grant and IRB deadlines to make. I have some time to sit and try to further the manuscript to the finish line.

But it’s like having an essay due for class. I have to do it! And the last two days I’ve been not actually procrastinating but having to sit and dwell and figure out how to do something that I’m not really well-versed at. I want to learn the skill set, which is why I volunteered to take a stab at it. But it’s taking me longer than likely my same age academic colleagues, because I’m a clinician and not an academic physician. But you know what! After this abstract, and the next paper – I am academic! I declare myself an academic! I have more publications now and I’m super proud of them!

So I’m going to cheerfully go back to the word document I’ve been staring at and dreaming about, and construct a 250 word informative abstract. I have to do it, as fossil fuel divestment is likely the most impactful thing I can contribute to in the fight to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C.

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