And the winner is…

Here’s a little in the spirit of “sometimes it IS worth it” or it gets better…” or “keep going even if you think your research is rubbish”.
My very first published article won the Voice and Speech Review Forum Article of the Year Award.
I was absolutely floored that I had won. Countless times over the past few years I had considered scrapping all the work I had done because I thought it was garbage.
The first time I presented my research on this topic, was in the Fall of 2015 at a conference in Brussels and the guest moderator completely panned my research in front of a packed room. He was going through the preceding presentations giving favourable comments on everyone’s research, except, when he got to me he said: “And I don’t even know what that was about…method acting or something??” I was, of course, crushed, and decided to toss it right then and there.
But I couldn’t do it, I had put too much time into it, (and frankly didn’t have anything else!) so I continued. The following summer I presented a paper on my subsequent research, (on the same topic) at another conference to a very small audience and was approached by an editor from the VSR to develop the paper into an article, which I did. It took 14 months and 7 drafts from my initial submission to the published article. and being a newbie to the world of working with an editor had to wrestle with myself, and my tendency to take the edits personally. She was terrific and kind, but firm. I learned so much. I really felt like I had accomplished “something”, and I guess I had.