My First Paper

While there have been many "firsts" during my short time as a PhD student, the most gratifying (so far at least) has to be the completion and submission of my first paper. For those of you unfamiliar with research papers, it's basically a scientific record of my progress which is submitted to conferences, publications etc in the hope of others being interested and, perhaps more importantly, let the computer visualisation community know what I am doing and how I am doing it.

The paper was submitted two weeks ago for a conference in Innsbruck, Austria. I wont hear back with a yes/no for about a month or so but here's hoping!

I found the hardest thing, for me, when writing this paper (or anything related to a PhD -> bi-annual reports, literature reviews and so on) is that I found myself having to convince my own being that I was good enough to write about my research. For so long I have been stuck in the "It's my first year" mindset which I have concluded only hinders my progress. I am in the 2nd year of my research now, there isn't long to go and software systems, simulations and pretty graphics don't magically appear.

I have had two major crisis of confidence so far but no more! I have to find the self-belief that I am not only capable of getting the PhD but that I was in fact the right candidate to be picked for such a project.