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Is there a better expression for "not all roses"? "Not all roses" sounds a bit cliched. This is for my personal history statement.

Eg: Once the design was complete, I thought the experiments would go smooth. Contrary to my expectation, the next step was ____________________ (not all roses).

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    "... would go smoothly..."
    – Hot Licks
    Nov 12, 2017 at 3:49
  • "not all roses" might be replaced with something like "challenging." Or difficult--or synonyms. What's a personal history--what is it for?
    – Xanne
    Nov 12, 2017 at 5:36
  • For a PhD application. I need to write about my experience from working at laboratories.
    – Explorer
    Nov 16, 2017 at 2:16

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To keep parallelism with the previous sentence, "rough going."

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  • The sentence can be tweaked if you have a better expression.
    – Explorer
    Nov 16, 2017 at 2:18
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    @Explorer I think "Once the design was complete, I thought the experiments would go smoothly. Contrary to my expectations, the next step was rough going." is fine. "My expectations" is always plural for some reason.
    – empty
    Nov 16, 2017 at 17:29

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