A big meeting

Well I’m excited, tired but excited. It’s been a long week and that is partly because I have a meeting tomorrow to discuss a project that will be a big help in my PhD, but also a really cool project in general. We also have a second big meeting next week with some guests coming to see the research side of the hospital, so yeah busy!

404 Break not found!! As it turns out my busy week just got busier as time when on. I’ve been working since before the sun comes up to well after sunset for the past four days and tomorrow won’t be any different. In fact, today’s post comes significantly later than usual due to the stuff going on. I’m just now eating lunch, or maybe it’s more of an early dinner. Either way, there’s been significant work getting done and I’m surprisingly okay with that because tomorrow will make it all worthwhile.

Tomorrow’s meeting is with one of the doctors who can help make “big idea” happen. To be clear, big idea doesn’t rely on this person, but this person would make big idea easier to accomplish. For those who don’t know I need to be vague about big idea (this post was when I had the idea). Big idea will most certainly lead to journal papers (plural) and I’m hopeful the project will be groundbreaking. I don’t like to get excited about projects in the works because for whatever reason when I think something is amazing generally speaking it doesn’t pan out that way (robot knee for example is cutting edge, but gets little attention)

This however, both hospital-PI and I agree it will be a big advancement, hopefully the neuroscience community will agree. So the meeting needs to go smoothly so we can get a running start on the project. I already had funds designated to me by hospital-PI to buy the things needed to make big idea happen and I’m happy to say (if I haven’t mentioned this already) that I have not one, but two devices that are technically prototypes, but you wouldn’t be able to tell looking at them. Both of which will give us the chance to make big idea happen.

The problem is we need people to work with and the doctor we’re meeting with tomorrow works almost exclusively with our target population. We have other doctors who would be good to collaborate with should it fall through, but this one is our best bet for a fast result. In the world of research, you need to move fast, so we’re trying to do just that.

Between now and the meeting I’ve been asked to throw together some slides to present big idea and to go over what we hope to get out of it. I’m a little nervous about the whole thing, but I’m hopeful at the same time. Due to a change in schedule however, I may be doing the presenting and selling of big idea myself, that alone is pretty scary, but I’m also excited about the possibility of this working out, so we’ll just have to figure out how tomorrow goes.

Oh and another factor in play here is the weather. It’s getting cold out and most of my lab mates will be working from home tomorrow, unfortunately both hospital-PI and I will be at the hospital. The good news is I don’t live crazy far, the bad news is I’m not 100% sure where the doctor we’re meeting with is living so they may be the one to cancel the meeting.

Since this meeting was hard to arrange with the conflicting schedules and other obligations, I don’t hold out too much hope for a semi-reasonable timeframe if we have to reschedule. Basically a whole lot of things at play here so I’m now at the, “hurry up and let’s get it over with stage.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have slides and about a bajillion other things that need to get done today.