La notte porta consiglio

Roughly translated: sleeping over your problems helps you find a solution. Yesterday I sent to my young coauthors PD#1 and S#7 a severely revised version of our joint work. In the afternoon we had a joint skype phone call about it, and PD#1 made a few very good points about the exposition. And this morning I finally figured out what he meant, and also what we have to do so that the paper becomes more readable. Unfortunately, it involves a substantial amount of rewriting.

Yesterday I also decided that if I want to be any use in my current collaboration with UnCo, I will seriously learn to need some of the background material. Unfortunately, the relevant book is not in the library here, and even if I were to buy it immediately it might take at least one week and possibly much more until I get it. So I decided to buy it, have it shipped to my home address, and in the meantime I xeroxed the first few pages. I also decided to buy myself a new notebook and a couple of pretty pens to take notes with, but today being May 1st I will have to wait until tomorrow for that. I like the idea of going back to being a student; after all, that's something I can do much better than being a professor, and I had only such a short time of it.

Yesterday I also spent one hour with S#4 discussing his thesis project, and we have another appointment today. He certainly works hard, but is still proceeding very, very slowly. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him.