The long grind

 

 

 

Back during my undergraduate days my good friend Ed worked at a well known coffee chain (no endorsements on this site).  He would often come home at the end of a day with an air of disappointment after his boss had been complaining that he wasn't making the required quota of 40 SPH (Sandwiches Per Hour), only averaging around 34. One day he came bounding in
with a grin on his face boasting that he had reached his personal best of 65 SPH.

Currently I am in the middle of a large sampling plan, collecting sediment cores and dissecting them every 1 cm, with the aim of comparing varying sediment organic carbon levels over depth.  With an anticipated 80 cores each averaging around 20-30 cm I should finish with well over 1200 individual samples.  Each individual sample has to be dried, ground and sieved before analysis (and don't forget cleaning all the kit in between each sample) resulting in a very laborious and time consuming process.  The other day I set my own personal best of 20 SPH, except for me it was 'Samples-ground Per Hour', and I now know the sense of satisfaction that Ed felt.

Mike Jeffries often comments on the lack of personality in scientific work, how academic writing style dismisses the fact that science is carried out by people (http://pondstimeandplace.blogspot.co.uk/). No first person 'I ground 1400 samples' should be used, but instead '1400 samples were ground'. While I should be content with the greater good behind my research, I may have to try and sneak in 'I ground' into our next publication, after all, given the fact I am probably one of few people on the planet working on such a project, 20 SPH may well be a new world record!