Meeting with Comm Lab

Dear Diary,

Today I met someone. Virtually only, yes. You know what I was wondering about the whole time? I was thinking about how a person can comprehend the other person's week-long work product in less than 10 mins. And understand it to the level of being able to comment on it, suggest scientific and technical edits and also give tips on presenting the work. I usually get lost in seminars and talks because of the time frame in which I am supposed to understand what is being told, even though the speaker is making all efforts to actually explain it, unlike what happened in the meeting today. No, it was not a date. But it was special, really special.

Have you heard of the rubber duck debugging method used by programmers? You basically place a cute little Duckie. It doesn't have to be cute, it can have any expression you want like. It can be aggressive to keep reminding you of your mom, just kidding. Right, so you place the fake duck bead your laptop and assume it is humanised and tell them that you will be going over some code with them if that's alright. All I am trying to convey is that talking through your work and putting your thought processes in front of someone is a very effective way of recognising your own mistakes even before the other person points them out to you. And in the meeting today I validated this piece of truth. It was sad that I had so many silly errors in my work that I could realise on my own but at the same time I felt good about recognising them without help. That doesn't mean I didn't need help.

In fact, I took much more help than I had prepared myself to ask for. It so happened that a tiny 4 word question of mine would yield a paragraph full of advice from the Comm Lab fellow. At the end of what felt like 5 hrs and 2 mins at the same time (but was 50 mins on the clock just so you know), when I looked at my piece, it seemed entirely different from what I had taken into the meeting. Most importantly, it felt like a masterpiece. Yes, of course I fixed my next date appointment immediately after this meeting. I'll update you on how it goes.

Good night!

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