I recently got a paper accepted to the 25th FRUCT conference in Helsinki, around the same time that another one was published at the 16th CDVE conference in Mallorca, presented by my co-author and co-PI Alan. With the one I presented in Wellington in June, that makes three, not counting the one I gave a talk on in the PAP workshop at last year’s ECML-PKDD in Dublin. The latter didn’t appear in the workshop post-proceedings because of the preliminary nature of the results discussed in it, so it doesn’t really count as a proper publication.

There’s something pleasing about that number three; it makes me feel like I’ve crossed some kind of threshold here. It is, of course, traditionally a very special number, appearing over and over in the stories we tell, the speeches we give, the designs we create… That list right there is a case in point – giving just two examples wouldn’t have been enough, whereas adding a fourth would have been superfluous. There seems to be something inherently satisfying about it when significant things come in threes.

For me, the special significance of this particular three is that it’s been quite a while since I was last able to concentrate on a single research topic long enough to produce several publications on it. In the years following my doctoral graduation, and to some extent even before it, I had a few false starts, working on projects that were good learning experiences for me but in all honesty would probably have been better handled by someone with less learning to do. Sometimes these efforts resulted in one-off papers, sometimes not even that, and none of this was giving me a real sense of advancing either my own career or my field of research.

Against this background, when I started my current project it was potentially yet another false start for me, another new research topic to eventually file under “well, it was worth a shot”. There was a key difference though – this time I had won the funding for the research in my own name and with my own idea. I therefore felt more acutely than usual the need to prove that I’m worthy of such an investment, both to myself and to the funder. This, together with the knowledge that for the next two years I would be working on my own project and nothing else, helped me achieve a depth of commitment that had mostly eluded me between finishing my dissertation and being awarded the MSCA fellowship.

So, the reason for this sense of accomplishment is that while a paper or two can easily be dismissed as a fluke, three has the makings of a pattern: looks like I really am onto something here. It’s not that three papers is enough to make me happy about the results of the project, and I’m certainly not going to have much time for resting on laurels during these last few months, but it’s a welcome boost of confidence, telling me that there probably will be more publications and, further down the line, perhaps more funding as well. I’m no stranger to the impostor syndrome, so especially after a prolonged unproductive period it’s good to get some evidence that maybe I actually am sort of competent at what I do.

There is also another, rather more banal reason why I’m happy that the latest paper got accepted to this particular conference. Had it been rejected, I presume that eventually it would have been accepted somewhere else, but my project will end on 31 January and almost certainly the next opportunity to publish would have been sometime after that date. FRUCT is thus pretty much my last chance to spend the money in my expense budget, and even after that there’s going to be a fairly hefty surplus. Besides, while Helsinki in November may not be the most exotic or enticing travel destination, I have lots of friends there that I very much look forward to catching up with, and I’m also going to take a short holiday to visit home for a few days.

As my time in Ireland approaches its inevitable end, I’m determined to make the best of what’s left of it by exploring places near me, relatively speaking. Last weekend I visited Limerick city, and for the upcoming bank holiday weekend I’m hopping over to Edinburgh to see one of my favourite bands live at Queen’s Hall. Once I’m back from Scotland, I’m away to Finland almost immediately, and once I’m back from there we’ll be well into November already. I’ll probably want to take a little break from travelling after that, but I’d still like to make at least one more weekend trip before I go home for Christmas. I haven’t been to the northwest of the island yet – Sligo might be nice?