When I was in college, we worked on a lot of biochemistry lab reports and papers in pairs.  We divided the responsibilities, and mine usually included formatting the paper.  This involved playing tables and images, deciding on the number of columns, layout of the title, colors, paragraph headings, etc.  And, invariably, no matter how early we started working on any given paper, we were ALWAYS up at 4 AM the night before it was due, perfecting things.  And I was always tinkering with formatting.  And by tinkering, I mean obsessing.  And by obsessing, I mean yelling at the computer, throwin goldfish at it, getting a high squeaky voice, and sometimes cursing (gasp!).  Amy, Tom, anyone wanna back me up on this???  Formating was the bain of my existance, but when it was done and right, it was the difference between a crap paper and a work of biochemical beauty. 

I'm heading to Atlanta for the American Society of Sports Medicine annual meeting soon, and am working on a poster to present there as we speak.  I have about half of the text written.  But I can't do more because I CAN'T PICK A COLOR SCHEME!!!!  You'd think that would be the least of my worries, given that I need to have it done by, say, tonight.  But I have to get it right! 

The writing part it pretty easy, and ultimately pretty worthless.  Being as I've been to many a poster presentation sessions before, I have an idea of how they work.  People walk up to your poster (because it's beautifully formatted, and stands out), then read the title, and then say, "Huh, interesting.  Tell me about your case".  And then you tell them while their eyes glance over the colors and pictures and any words you put in bold and/or red. 

In reality, all that really matters is the formatting.  And having an interesting case to start with that people want to hear more about. 

I'm off to sort through more potential colors... I'm on green and blue right now... it's a possibility.