Hi all!

Thinking about this year, and one of the only career things I’m proud of is that my paper got chosen as the winner of the Ecography E4 challenge.

But we often don’t see *how* papers come together! I just wanted to share in case it helped anyone, because it was hard https://twitter.com/austinrspence/status/1324748966970478593

This was one of @mwtingley and my’s first ideas in 2015(!) - and Morgan helped me get it through one of my classes in grad school.

The paper, that was published in 2020!, was 5 years later and completely different than the original!!

It took me a lot of time to learn about both the material and how to write a review. It was literally the hardest paper I’ve ever written.

The review process took 11 months with a “reject and resubmit”, “major revisions”, and “minor revisions” and I also cried at several points

I literally learned about so much - from why it’s hard to invade the deep sea to how birds fly in the Himalayas. But the reviewers helped make it better and Morgan helped me so much to get the paper out.

I’m telling this to say that I worked on one (1!) paper for the majority of my PhD, and it might be the only published paper when I graduate. It’s hard! Nobody talks about how hard it is. But you got this and I hope all the grad students are doing okay