In my opinion, sometimes chemistry conferences are just one giant circlejerk.

/rant

@LordStryker: s/chemistry//

(Are you at the Toronto WHEC?)

@Aesin s/chem//? Nah, I was at a conference a few weeks ago. Some of the talks after the presentations were just silly.

s/chemistry// : "sometimes chemistry conferences" -> "sometimes conferences"

(In the language of sed or Perl regular expressions.)

ah yes, I get it now

"hey look, my number is 0.01 closer to the right answer now. Lets publish and get more funding!

So I have this paper sitting on my boss's desk... literally inches away from submission, and I can't get him to look at it with me...

Frustration ensuing

Say something really contraversial/stupid about it

Like "maybe we should redo all these calculations with AM1 for comparison"

genius... simply brilliant...

/me has only bad suggestions

I think its phenominal

Fits my personality as well

We could have potentially submitted this morning already, and here I am sitting with my thumb up my arse waiting for him.

Still a better love story than Twilight, but still...

"Do you mind if I add this picture of my cat as Figure 1? I think it illustrates the sort of chirality we're interested in."

(Actual example.)

@Aesin Not far from reality. Have a look at these golden TOC graphics in the JPCA journal... pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp3020723 pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp212015g

...

At least the one with the shop window is well drawn. :P

Indeed. I personally do not like the TOC entry requirement. I'd rather be doing science rather than formatting another silly graphic. But alas, we are required to have marketing skills as well...

There's always the fallback of just putting a picture of your molecule/complex/favourite orbital in.

That's what I did actually.

Probably more useful than anything else you could put there. :)

Oh well finally. He'll meet with me after he meets with our undergrads.... for the second time today... at 2

lovely

Hooray

Submission time

Well, hopefully

When do you prioritize an undergrad over a paper on verge of submission? I sound like a diva but he tells me he only cares about papers on his desk, act like it.

We need to put a cover letter together before we can submit.

Well, usually you prearrange stuff with undergrads a fair bit in advance, I assume

See, when I started here, the grad students always got priority over me. I was left to fend for myself for an entire year and a half

Now I'm the senior in the group and still have to fight for attention.

I should be more specific... the senior graduate students got priority over me. I didn't work for him as an undergraduate.

Anyhow I'll stop now. Thanks for letting me vent.

Kind of glad I'm in a small group.

Less drama.

Indeed. When I came in we had mostly girls here and drama everyday. People seemingly in tears all the time, screaming at each other, backstabbing etc.

Then they moved on and it was down to me and a co-worker. It was great. We got stuff done :)

Now we've taken in a few more just a few days ago.