Abstracting an Abstract

Grappling with scientific writing was quite the challenge. I typically love to embellish my essays and revel in every little detail, so working to cut that out was different, to be sure. Nevertheless, eventually I felt comfortable enough to write the summary in a way I felt good about. I figured, after having worked through the rest of the data summary, the abstract would follow logically. After all, I’d delved into excruciating depth for each portion, so I definitely knew enough to write the abstract, right? Well, therein lies the issue. My first go at the abstract was horribly detailed, truly an essay in itself. Clearly, that wouldn’t do. I tried again, attempting to strip the abstract down to its bare essentials. After having worked on one project for so long though, my definition of ‘bare essentials’ was a tad skewed. Needless to say, it was still longer than ideal. I then resolved to just look to other papers for inspiration, after all, they’d had plenty of experience writing abstracts, I might as well learn from them. I had a go at analyzing their structure and how they broke down their ideas and tried to do that with our topic. Thankfully, this proved more successful, and I was finally able to write it in a way that seemed reasonable enough. Going forward, I think it would be helpful for me to draft the abstract first then flesh it out later, so that I have a sort of anchor point to work from. Hopefully, that will give me a better idea of how general the information I write should be. That said, I imagine only time will tell how well that’ll go.