For her 28th birthday, which was also the first time we were celebrating her birthday together in our new relationship, I decided to create a research paper about my partner in collaboration with her friends. I intended the paper to cover all aspects of her life and serve as the biggest surprise possible to a person who was a scientific researcher by profession. In this article, I intend to share ideas on how you too can hack the internet to do the same.
If you’re interested in seeing my finished product or a template to help you do the same, make sure you go to the last section of this article. There you will find resources to create your own research paper that will show your partner how much you’ve learned about them in your time together.
To start, I made a plan for the topics I wish to cover in the paper. This list could vary based on your specific situation, but I chose:
All of it was written in academic language that resonated with her.
I reviewed the plan with some of her closest friends and decided to form a community of co-authors who would help provide the details of her life from various stages. After this, I wrote down the sectional headings that I wanted to include in the paper and copied them into a Google Doc. I reviewed the sections a few times with her friends before finalizing them.
In my execution plan, collaborators were to provide inputs for sections 2 and 3 — Observations and Discussions. Each collaborator would create one figure that described her, along with a small write-up about how they experienced her.
I reached out to her old friends on Instagram and Facebook for all the details and dirt from her past. Surprisingly enough, not only were her friends helpful in willing to share details, but they went even further to introduce me to her other friends from whom I could acquire more ‘scientific content’.
I collaborated with her close friends on a Google Doc and then ported the document over to LaTeX. LaTeX is a program used for the professional writing of books and academic journals. I also used a free LaTeX editor called Overleaf to get started quickly and easily.
My steps to execute were as follows:
Step 1: Draft a Google Doc with clear section headings and placeholder content
a. Write the first few sections to give collaborators a feel for the paper
b. Insert expectations from collaborators in each of the sections
c. Provide sample content and ideas for inspiration
Step 2: Share the Google Doc with her friends and give them a deadline of 2 weeks (not too little, not too much) to return with the content they created.
Step 3: Compile the friends’ content together in sections 1, 2 and 3 also, add your own information. Ensure that ‘scientific’ language is maintained throughout (Tips in the ‘Overcoming Primary Challenges’ section below).
Step 4: Prepare simple figures based on different aspects of her life. Use tools such as Canva and draw.io for putting them all together quickly and easily.
Step 5: Complete the paper on Google docs by writing the conclusion statement and your favorite grammar and spell check software (e.g. Grammarly).
Step 6: Port the content over to Overleaf, leveraging existing templates of academic journals.
Step 7: Export the document as a PDF from Overleaf and execute the final surprise and delivery.
For the grand reveal, her closest friends and I gathered at one of their homes. We printed out all 12 pages of the paper and stuck them to a wall, decorating the space around it to create an equally aesthetic and heartwarming surprise. When she walked into the room, she was absolutely mind-blown to see that we all had contributed so much to this gift. To make it even more personal, we each took turns in reading the paper aloud with piano music playing in the background. This approach worked out wonderfully for us — if that sounds like something your significant other would enjoy, make sure to use the tips below to create your very own surprise.
So how can you get started doing the same? Here are a few tips, tricks and ideas that I learned and can share from my experience.
Google My Maps allows you to overlay labels on a Google Map. This gives you a great opportunity to highlight details about your partner that are location-based. A few of these can include:
Who said everything has to be plain sight in the paper? You can add a QR code to your project which, upon scanning, can redirect them to any of the following:
Canva is a simple and free tool for quickly pulling memes and diagrams together– the background removal tool in Canva is very useful for this purpose.. It allows you to quickly pick any meme-worthy photo from your phone gallery, attach a background, and add a witty line of text to complete the meme. Likewise, if you’re a bit more nerdy like me, you can get creative in making charts and diagrams that capture their common behaviors. Some of the ideas you can create are
This is obvious, but I thought it might be worth mentioning, Microsoft Excel has a suite of charts and graphs that you can use if you prefer to showcase something that is more statistical. Some of the ideas you can pursue are:
There’s obviously more room for creativity than described above. If you need more ideas, feel free to try out any of the following:
In the end, you should capture the top 3–4 characteristics that make them feel special and one of a kind, since that is what they would appreciate the most.
The two primary challenges you’ll face in your journey of preparing this document are:
but there are easy solutions to both of them.
First, writing in academic language may not come easily to you, but remember that we’re not aiming for perfection. Your partner will be more than happy that you even tried. Here are three simple tips to keep in mind:
E.g. “She was born and raised in…” will be “the subject was birthed and developed in…”
Second, porting content over from Google Docs to Overleaf is definitely not an insurmountable challenge. I can speak for that as someone who has actually done it. It might take a day or so for you to understand the LaTeX formatting language, but after that, it’s smooth sailing. My best advice would be to pick up a template (like the one linked below) and start working on top of it so as to minimize your learning curve.
One important thing to keep in mind is that your first draft need not be perfect. When you finish the first draft of what you wish to create, I’d advise having a LaTeX expert clean up your paper to fix the typical issues with white spaces, positioning, and size of images. You can expect this to cost around $10-$20. Alternatively, you can also hire someone to convert your paper from Google Docs to Overleaf which might run you about $30-$50. Fiverr and Upwork are great places to find talent and I’ve linked below the person who helped me.
I hope this article plants a seed in you for wanting to do this for your loved one. It’s 2022! They deserve more than just chocolate, perfume, and flowers. They deserve a written testament that you know everything about them, and that you’re willing to go great nerdy distances to prove it.
Cheers.
This article was first published here.