Macarons!

Tonight, my boyfriend made macarons - macarons! - while I worked on a paper. While the making of macaroons and writing a paper are very different things and take many different amounts of time, they both take a lot of patience and practice. The title of the recipe he used was "Almost Foolproof Macarons." Turns out it should have been called, "Almost Foolproof Macarons if You Try to Make Them Three Times." The macarons first came out very, very flat, cracked, and rather sticky. He was not happy. He tried again, and one out of the ten turned out properly. After a third try, most of the cookies came out right with only a few cracked.

As I watched him try again and again while I wrote, I thought back to my experiences gathering the data for the paper. With the amount of literature available on the protocols for my experiments, they should have been much easier than they turned out to be. I had to repeat everything at least three times, and I started this project a year and a half ago. That means I've spent 5% of my life on experiments that will culminate in a single paper. 

Oh science, if only you were as satisfying as a macaron...