Scribbles Blog Hop
Today is National Show Your Journal Day! Didn't you know?
I'm participating in the Scribbles Blog Hop. Do you have a journal? Do you write in a journal? Do you write in someone else's journal? Or do you just have a secret journal fetish? You've come to the right place.
When the lovely Anne Michaud asked me to show the world my writing journal, I responded; 'I don't have one.' That was until I realised that my entire career has been penned down in them.
I work in science. Since the dawn of this noble profession, research and results have been noted down in journals. Or lab books as we call them now. All famous scientists and inventors kept them and some are even accessible online, like Leonardo Da Vinci's, Thomas Edison's and Albert Einstein's.
My research is more mundane, but fills many volumes.
[image error]
I've just reached the final year of my PhD candidature project in cancer biology. The two years worth of reserach I have done here is about to fill my 6th lab book. In it I record the experiments I've done and their various permutations. With every experiment I note down the pages that contain the raw data results that go with them. This way I will always have a complete record.
Nowadays it's accepted to keep a digital record of experiments, but I was taught to use lab books and haven't managed the switch yet. Yeah, I know, I'm clinging to the old ways, but I have this irrational fear of losing all my digital experimental records. As if I don't have to haul all my lab books, every time the fire alarm goes off. At least with digital records, I would have a backup.
But I love my lab books and they will leave a lasting tangible mark on this lab when I leave here. My scribbles and scrawls will be forever recorded, or at least until my supervisors retire. I don't know, one day they might end up in the university's library; the notebooks are university property after all.
Tell me; do you keep a journal?
—
Continue your Scribbles Blog Hop by checking out these wonderful people and learn about their journal habits.
---
Victoria is a scientist by day--reluctant writer by night, Clarion Write-a-Thon survivor, slush reader for Dark Fiction Magazine, and founder and editor of the 'of Altered States' anthology series.
Victoria has short fiction published in the upcoming City of Hell Chronicles and 100 Horrors anthologies. She's also writing her first novel; a tale of magical realism.
Share
