Breakthrough?
Well ... maybe ... I hope so, but ...
I may have had a major breakthrough on a paper that I've been working on for ages. It's from my dissertation and it needs to do well. I wrote it last year and it got rejected from a top journal (not surprising). However, I did get very helpful comments in the reviews so the plan has been to rework the paper and submit it to a different journal. I wanted to get it done last semester, but there have been a number of tricky methodological problems to work out, one of which has been especially troublesome. I think I may have finally found a decent solution to it.
I have been determined to get this paper done this month just so I can stop obsessing about it. Honestly, it has taken on a life of its own (and practically taken over my life). I've been working incredibly hard at this paper for weeks now and I've even been waking up abruptly at 5 a.m. with ideas about how to make this paper work (a telltale sign of major stress for me given that I am not a morning person). Because of how long I've been working on this paper and all of the troubles associated with it, it now embodies all of my psychological hopes and insecurities about my future as an academic. This is probably not good. I do have other papers published and soon-to-be published and there will be many more after this particular paper. But this one makes a personal statement ... and that statement could go either way at this point, which makes me very, very nervous.
Anyhow, there's still more work to be done. I have to check the analyses and finish writing up the paper before sending it off. If all goes well, it'll be off my desk by the end of the month. The desk, by the way, is such a disaster that it is another obvious sign of how stressed I've been. I should also note that this last potential methodological solution came from a contact I made through my professional web site -- how awesome!
I'm rambling. I'm tired. It is Saturday evening, after all.
I may have had a major breakthrough on a paper that I've been working on for ages. It's from my dissertation and it needs to do well. I wrote it last year and it got rejected from a top journal (not surprising). However, I did get very helpful comments in the reviews so the plan has been to rework the paper and submit it to a different journal. I wanted to get it done last semester, but there have been a number of tricky methodological problems to work out, one of which has been especially troublesome. I think I may have finally found a decent solution to it.
I have been determined to get this paper done this month just so I can stop obsessing about it. Honestly, it has taken on a life of its own (and practically taken over my life). I've been working incredibly hard at this paper for weeks now and I've even been waking up abruptly at 5 a.m. with ideas about how to make this paper work (a telltale sign of major stress for me given that I am not a morning person). Because of how long I've been working on this paper and all of the troubles associated with it, it now embodies all of my psychological hopes and insecurities about my future as an academic. This is probably not good. I do have other papers published and soon-to-be published and there will be many more after this particular paper. But this one makes a personal statement ... and that statement could go either way at this point, which makes me very, very nervous.
Anyhow, there's still more work to be done. I have to check the analyses and finish writing up the paper before sending it off. If all goes well, it'll be off my desk by the end of the month. The desk, by the way, is such a disaster that it is another obvious sign of how stressed I've been. I should also note that this last potential methodological solution came from a contact I made through my professional web site -- how awesome!
I'm rambling. I'm tired. It is Saturday evening, after all.
posted by Janet | 9:13 PM
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