Every few months in my lab you're required to give a formal presentation on some of the research you've been working on. The "formal" part of it consists of you presenting adequate background information to justify your research, dressing up, and also providing some form of food for the labmates in attendance. Our lab presentations used to be very casual, laid-back events although I believe we switched to formal presentations because people enjoyed having food every week.

This week was my turn. I presented some of my recent research on stents and Carolyn made some light finger foods for me to bring to the meeting. All in all, the meeting went well and my research was well received, meaning no one thought it was bogus which is always a plus. My professor commented that it was very good presentation and that most everything that needed to be discussed was mentioned. But after the presentation I found out that the journal that I had submitted this research to had rejected my paper on the very results that I had just presented! Talk about ups and downs.

The prof was very encouraging though. The comments from the reviewer on why the paper was rejected were informed and insightful, but there was nothing there that I had not thought about. The reviewer stated that I had left things out which were necessary in understanding the applicability and feasibility of my results to a hospital setting. Unfortunately, I had left out this information because this was a short journal which had a serious page limitation.

And actually, that night I came home and thought, "I could totally be bummed out right now" but I wasn't. Partly because in the grand perspective it's just a scientific article. But also because it's not that my work was trashed my some anonymous reviewer, he/she just needed more information. My plan now is to re-write the article with more data and submit to a bigger journal. It's going to require more work which will be good for me, but I wish this paper would write itself.