I co-authored a published paper, cool

As most will know I graduated from University with Honours (in I.T) last year. I loved University, I honestly did. My first and second year were pretty uneventful, but by my third year I finally started to make an effort to get more involved, and by my forth year I was pretty entrenched in the University, known amongst all the faculty staff, present nearly every day, hosting and attending I.T events, and I even taught one of the practical classes (which was such a joy and highlight of my entire time there).

Late during my Honours year I was asked by one of the senior lecturers if I would like to co-author a paper with him, I was still currently finishing my Thesis at that time but jumped for the opportunity anyway. My part was going to be minor compared to his (due to my other commitments), but I put in the required effort and produced a good quality write up containing the area of research he needed looking into to support his primary hypothesis.

It was quite a while ago since I did that so I had almost forgotten all about it, until the other day he emailed to inform me that it has finally been completed and was accepted into the academic journal IEEE for publishing =)

Cool.

While I was only a co-author (and not the primary author that is), it is still a nice achievement and is not something everyone gets a chance to do in their life time, so I am glad I got the opportunity. My next goal however is to be the primary author of my own published paper, something I am in the middle of doing at this very minute so hopefully we will be seeing a second post about this topic before long.

I haven't written this post to brag or to fish for congratulations, I simply like to document any monumental achievements for my own safekeeping. What I would like readers to get out of a post like this is for you think about setting your own goals to work towards, so one day you can document your own achievements that you can look back on some day and be proud of.