publish or perish
sciencewoman | December 26, 2008Three papers, an introductory chapter and some broad conclusions. Those are the ingredients of a Ph.D. dissertation in it's simplest form.
That recipe doesn't tell you anything about all the blood, sweat, tears, and sleepless nights that go into those papers. It doesn't mention how your personal and professional identity gets inextricably tied up with the subject for the time it takes to do the work and publish the papers. It doesn't hint that those papers help define you as a scientist, get you a real job, and make a name for yourself. It just says three papers.
My first PhD paper was…
sciencewoman | November 30, 2008The month of November has but 11 hours left, and with it, I bid farewell to InaDWriMo, the month in which I (and many other brave souls) pledged to make significant progress in our academic writing. I set before myself three goals: complete and submit a grant application; complete major revisions to a paper; and do the majority of data analysis for a poster.
I got the grant submitted.
I worked really really hard on the revisions, but I still need to revise the conclusions, abstract, and one figure, and send the revised paper off to the co-authors before resubmitting it.
The poster data…
sciencewoman | November 22, 2008Having worked on my writing every day for the first two weeks of November, I concluded last week feeling rather optimistic about InaDWriMo's success in getting me to increase my productivity. But I was also very tired. And in order to make time for writing every single day, I was working longer hours (i.e., seeing less of Minnow) and letting lots of other things slide (i.e., my lectures were terrible and let us not even describe the house). What I didn't realize last Saturday was how close I was to the tipping point...
But by Monday morning I was a stressed out wreck, and then a logistical…
skookumchick | November 19, 2008Since my public confession, I kind of have gotten my writing groove on. I think I'm ready to turn revision-paper #1 around (at least, send it to my mom to see what she thinks), and I've made progress on the gender-diss paper. Yay me! Now moving on to class prep, and meeting prep...
skookumchick | November 17, 2008As Science Woman has noted, we're moving into week 3 for InaDWriMo and my progress has been lamentable at best. I found no word count thingies, I am way behind on my gender dissertation paper, and I'm avoiding the resubmit paper. In good news, I've asked my graduate student for help on the gender theory and literature paper (hi student!) and am hopeful we're moving forward on that a bit, but I could be writing the beginnings of the paper and have not yet started.
However, I have some time today -- no meetings until 1 -- so I'm sitting at my writing space and... blogging apparently. I'd…
sciencewoman | November 15, 2008It's Saturday again, time for another update of my progress towards this month's InaDWriMo goals.
I've been sending myself little daily progress report details, but sometimes it's useful to take stock of the larger picture. For instance, until I sat down to write this post, I'd forgotten that I submitted my latest grant proposal on Monday - that's less than a week ago, and already I've made lots more progress on the next task.
So, to review. My goals were to submit a grant proposal (check!), complete major revisions to a paper (in progress!), and get the bulk of data analysis done for my AGU…
sciencewoman | November 8, 2008Eek! We're one week into November already? How in the world did that happen? I've made good progress, but I still have *so* much left to do.
I've already told you how my writing month got off to a start, but below the fold you can catch up on the rest of my progress.
Sunday Nov 2: Added final sentences to proposal. Slightly reorganized methods section to clarify. Now have draft complete except what is needed from co-PI. Sent off to collaborator. (~150 words)
Monday Nov 3: Wrote budget justification (499 words.)
Tuesday Nov 4: Election day, too distracting to get huge amounts done, but…
skookumchick | November 3, 2008Okay, I'm in. I seriously need to get my writing in gear, and even though I'm still trying to do the tips from AFNFM, I'm finding I need an additional push to actually put fingers to computer and do anything other than email. So here are my InaDWriMo goals:
Write the first draft of the Gender Paper from my dissertation, to be submitted to this journal CFP.
Draft a paper on gender theory and literature outside of engineering education, with a colleague.
Revise and resubmit this paper.
I'm not sure how many words that will be, but I'll try to work it out and post a little meter thingie like…
sciencewoman | November 1, 2008
InaDWriMo did not get off to a good start. I had spent 3 hours working on my proposal on Friday afternoon. Before leaving for the weekend, I carefully backed it up into multiple places AND emailed the co-PI with the almost-complete draft. This afternoon, I opened up the file to fill in some of the remaining holes and made a maddening discovery. Somehow, I only had a pre-Friday draft. In multiple places. Including the co-PI's email box. All that work, down the tube. It's taken me all my stolen moments of work time today to get back to where I was at the end of yesterday. And now I don't like…
skookumchick | October 31, 2008My colleague Donna Riley just sent me a way-cool call for papers: inclusive science, for a special issue of the National Women's Studies Association Journal. Get your writing hats on -- papers are due January 15! The rest of the call is after the fold.
INCLUSIVE SCIENCE: ARTICULATING THEORY, PRACTICE, AND ACTION
Call for papers for a Special Cluster of Papers in the
National Women's Studies Association Journal
It is no secret that there is a national crisis in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), particularly in terms of the involvement of women and people of…
sciencewoman | October 18, 2008It's late. I've been working on this piece of writing all evening, and I've got one more meaty sentence to finish. But I feel like Cinderella over-staying her curfew at the ball, because every time I try to write that last sentence, it turns into a pumpkin.
"A comparison of A & B would be interesting."
Interesting? Yes, I'd find it completely fascinating and I'd love to do the work. But a hanging "interesting" is hardly going to move the reviewers, so I know I need to come up with a more compelling argument for the work. But all I can muster is:
"A comparison of A & B would be…
sciencewoman | October 3, 2008A few days later, but my story today bears some similarities to Alice's tale of reviewer requested revisions.
I too just got back reviews on a paper derived from my dissertation. The reviews ranged from minor revisions to reject with the editors landing in the middle. Mostly it looks like major rewriting and some rethinking of our arguments, but they'd also like to see some more data collection and analysis.
Only one problem. My field sites are >2500 miles away and about to be covered by snow for the next 7 months. So I suddenly find myself scrambling to make arrangements with co-authors…
skookumchick | September 30, 2008I got a paper review back yesterday. More revisions. *Sigh.* The history of this paper is: this is part of one chapter of my dissertation. I revised it into a paper last fall. I submitted it the first time in February, and got my first reviews in April. I revised it and resubmitted in June. This review is closer, but while 2 of the 3 reviews think that it's pretty much ready to go, 1 reviewer (who is otherwise very complimentary and I cannot otherwise dismiss as one of those nutjob reviewers) wants me to do more data collection. Crap. Unfortunately for me, the associate editor agrees…
skookumchick | September 10, 2008I've carried on with the activity of actively waiting in accordance with Boice's Advice for New Faculty Members that I'm blogging about this semester. And I'm preparing for trying Chapter 10: Begin Writing Early.
More below the fold...
I mentioned to a colleague that I was trying to follow Boice's exercises, but that I was being blocked by not knowing what to do during my periods of "actively waiting." She had started reading the teaching section (as Lab Cat also did), and found ideas there that parallel the idea of actively waiting to write. Advocated, in fact, is (p. 24):
doodling and…
skookumchick | August 28, 2008I've taken some of the last week to try to practice what Boice calls "actively waiting" in preparation for writing on a project I've been avoiding. See the project plan here and a discussion about "actively waiting" here. Some of my thoughts on this exercise from the last week are below the fold.
Full disclosure: I didn't manage to do the 10 minutes every day, but I think I did it more days than I didn't do it. I think.
I found it pretty tough to just sit with my notes "in the moment." I kept worrying that I was "doing it wrong" -- did I have the right notes? Should I open up the old…
skookumchick | August 18, 2008I'm very excited how many of you have said in the comments that you'll be joining me as I explore how to use Robert Boice's Advice for New Faculty Members (AFNFM) to help me with my writing during this semester. Even if you didn't delurk in the comments, you're welcome to join in. Hopefully your book has arrived, and your week didn't start off as mine did with two dead laptops (one is now revived; the other one, with all my research files on it, is at the Apple Shop and I bought a Time Capsule this afternoon).
I started off reading the introduction to the book as an overview, and then dove…
skookumchick | August 6, 2008ScienceWoman blogged about her thoughts about going into Tenure Track Year 2 in time for Cherish's August Scientiae on transitions. I've been thinking about it too, and in particular with respect to how I accomplish some of those academic goals - good teaching, good research, good citizenry - without killing myself. Having my husband in the same town and only one house to worry about will be a start, and it is that latter aspect which makes me propose a new book to discuss this fall.
I was packing a bookshelf this weekend, and I came across a book a friend gave me when I graduated last year…
sciencewoman | May 23, 2008On a day when I am feeling increasingly dismal about the publication prospects of my current project, my mood was not lightened with the arrival of the table of contents for the current issue of a very high impact journal (say, cell/nature/science). One of the papers was right up my research alley and the lead author is someone junior to me. Why is it that the other guy is getting a very high profile paper and I'm struggling to get results that will merit publication at all? I've got some suspicions, and I'm going to attempt to rank them from most charitable to least charitable.
He's…
sciencewoman | April 19, 2008Dear PhysioProf,
You're wrong. Here's why.
In the comments on a post about a forth-coming paper and it's possible impacts on my own, you said:
Getting completed work out the door should always be at the absolute top of the to-do list of junior tenure-track faculty, without exception. It should come before teaching, administrative, doing new studies, eating, sleeping, or even taking a ... whizz.
In the comments section, I defended myself by playing the mommy card...my previous paper was submitted mere days before Minnow was born. And I'll grant that you conceded that babies come first. But I'…
sciencewoman | April 17, 2008A collaborator just sent me an in press copy of a paper that examines the -ology of my PhD field area.
Huh. I think I've just been scooped?!?!
I have a paper deriving from the last chapter of my dissertation that is just waiting for my co-authors to give their OKs before it is submitted to the very same journal. The in press paper and my paper use similar methodologies for somewhat different purposes. I want to use the field area as an example of process that I think is happening in other parts of the world; they use the field area to demonstrate the applicability of some analytical…