Quickest Rejection Ever

Scholarly journals are notorious for holding onto your submissions for way too long, keeping you in a sort of torturous limbo about whether or not you've got the "right stuff." (Sometimes I just need to throw in a little NKOTB to keep my spirits up). My most recent submission, however, was rejected at lightning speed: 8 days after I sent the manuscript off via e-mail, I received an e-mail back saying, "Thanks, but no no no thanks." In so many words. 

It could've been worse - they could've taken 2 or 3 or 4 or more months to let me know they'd rather pass. But it also could've been better, and not just b/c getting accepted (obviously!) would have been ideal. The comments that I received from the editor both seemed to miss the point of contributing new scholarship to the field and the topic of my article, which made yesterday not only disappointing but also totally frustrating and mildly infuriating. 

Let me illustrate with a produce example: 

I wrote my paper, we'll say, on the wilting of romaine lettuce. First, the editor of said journal responded that wilting is a "theme" only "fitfully" under discussion in the criticism about romaine lettuce. To which I would respond (were I able to respond), "Yes, and not even 'fitfully.' No one's talking about it, and it's useful. That's why I brought it up." The point of scholarly commentary, as I understand it, is to further the conversation about and understanding of the topic at hand by developing already existing avenues of discussion and introducing and exploring new ones. 

The other majorly dumb comment was that editor had hoped to read an in-depth discussion of why there are so few varieties of greens available in produce section. Um, yes, well, great - but that's not even remotely my topic! And, as Butcher so eloquently put it: "There are a ton of greens in the produce section." Indeed there are. (Iceberg, spring mix, field greens, raddichio, just to name a few.) 

He might as well have said he was hoping to read a piece on Sense and Sensibility rather than something about a contemporary American novel. 

Everyone's always talking about how helpful reviewer's comments can be in the writing process. But what about when they're not? All this did was tick me off. The only legitimate comments he made were that 1.  he doesn't think the topic is impt. enough to sustain article-length treatment - an opinion he's entitled to, but that I and the professor with whom I worked on the paper disagree (in fact, she keeps encouraging me to make the paper longer) and 2.  that I offer only a "pat" discussion of people's responses to wilted lettuce. 

The first I will have to simply ignore, and the second, well, I don't actually disagree with him. I had about 4 more pages of stuff on the topic, which my prof. said to cut - so I did. Who's right and who's wrong? Only time will tell: I'm going to take the advice a former professor gave me years ago and send the thing out again ASAP (though the places I'm looking at have slooooooow response times, and many of them require snail mail submission - boo, get into the 21st century!). 

The very first time I played this game, back in late 2008/early 2009, it took the journal I submitted to 3 months to tell me that they didn't even send my article to reviewers. It was like the hugest slap in the face, and I believe there were tears (and probably many). I was ready to chuck the thing in a drawer and forget about it. 

But my professor told me not to do it; he found a journal I could submit to via e-mail, making the process almost painless, and said to just send the thing out without making even one change. So I did it. And five days later, that journal wrote back - and they wanted my piece just as it was. Just goes to show: it's possible to get accepted even faster than you get rejected.

Old Good News

I'm doing just about everything I can to avoid working on my critical history for medieval lit., which includes writing a blog post that I meant to write in August and every month since. As an aside completely unrelated to the topic of this post, however, I would just like to note that 

a. critical histories are ridiculous; 
b. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing; 
c. regardless of a. and b., writing this is still a better option than writing a 20-30 page legitimate paper on medieval literature about which, after an entire semester of sitting through almost 3 hours of class a week, I still know nothing (beyond a few key concepts). 

Now that that's been handled, back to the good news. 

This summer, about 4/5 of the journal article I published at the end of '09 got reprinted in a book. I had no idea this was happening - no one contacted me in advance, which is surprising despite the fact that the journal publisher owns the rights to my article and can therefore do as it pleases. It just seems like good form to let authors know their work is going to appear elsewhere. 

In fact, that only reason I found out is b/c I have a vain habit (I can admit it's a bit ridiculous) of Googling my name and, lo and behold, the new book came up in my results. 

Look - that might be me
in there! 

I proceeded to contact the book's publisher to request a contributor's copy, and they kindly complied. So I'm in a book. And it's on my shelf.

The two coolest things about this experience are, first, that the general editor of the collection is only like one of the most famous critics in the world of English literature. Love him or hate him, you know who he is. I, for one, happen to love him. (Nevermind the fact that he probably had actually nothing to do with picking my piece.) 

And the second is the fact that the excerpt of my article is the second longest in the book, which contains excerpts from a bunch of articles. Like, it's way longer than most of the excerpts. So I feel cool. 

That's my old good news. At this point I'm nearly out of excuses for not doing my work. Nearly.

I've become an expert - overnight

Sometimes, a totally unexpected/weird/cool e-mail from a random journal editor asking you to review an article being considered for publication shows up in your inbox. Okay, sometimes is an exaggeration; once is more accurate, but you gotta start somewhere, right? 

The scoop: yesterday I get an e-mail from the editor of a journal that I've never heard of, asking if I'll be an outside reviewer (!) for an essay that focuses on the book on which I published my first article. If not, the editor asks, could I recommend 1 or 2 people who I think would be qualified to do so? Oh, and he called me "Prof."! Haha! 

So, my eyes pop out of my head, etc. etc., and then I look up this journal online, thinking it's some silly thing that's existed for about 3.2 weeks, but siked nonetheless. Not so. It's been in existence for more than 30 years and some major theoretical bigwigs published articles there about a decade ago. Like, Jonathan Culler? Um, major bad*ss. 

Of course I said "yes" in about no time flat. (Well, 55 minutes or so.) And like that - 10 min. tops - he writes me back with the article attached. Now I've got 6-8 weeks to review this thing and make my recommendation on publication.

Just so you can understand the magnitude of my shock and how much this has tickled me: outside reviewers are supposed to be "experts in the field." (That's the exact phrase Brad and I use when teaching our students about peer review.) It's a little laughable that anyone could think of me as an expert in anything outside of, say, sitting on the couch, drinking Mt. Dew, or arguing. 

Brad's immediate response was, "They must have liked your article!" My response was, "They probably haven't read it. But there are like no articles published on that book." I'm willing to settle somewhere in the middle. They probably haven't read it, maybe glanced at it, and chances are the author (who cites me!) recommended me as a reviewer b/c lots of journals (and it seems, from the website, that this is one of them) ask the author to do so. 

Anyway, this is one more step in the direction of me feeling like a real true adult with an actual possible career. Instead of a flunky who's 29, still in school and stinks at it, and who's never going to get a teaching job. 

A seasoned professor who's been asked to review an article 100 times would probably groan and find it to be more of a pain in the butt than anything else. But when I think about it, I'm like, Wait a minute - I think someone might be taking me seriously . . . !

Humble Pie

Looks like that frightening, horrible thing Maryann made
Tara and Eggs eat in True Blood season 2 . . . yikes! 

I'm eating a big ol' bite right about now. 

So, I've been grading student papers for a few days now (very very slowly) and, for the most part, they're pretty impressive. Their ideas are sophisticated and well-organized; their introductions make an attempt to be engaging; the papers use good sources in a smart way and even seem to be getting somewhere with the dreaded Topic Sentence. And the students seemed to have grasped the need for evidence to support their claims and the difference b/t analysis and summary. 

Of course, this doesn't apply to all of the papers, but, on the whole, I'm pretty happy with what we accomplished this semester, and I feel like they've really learned something (hopefully multiple somethings). 

There are, however, writing habits you can't train out of people in 16 short weeks - for example, their beloved "From the beginning of time . . . " or "In all of human history . . . " statements in the introductory paragraphs. (Hate those.) Another bad habit? Relentless use of "is" and other bland helping verbs instead of interesting active verbs. 

But this post concerns not about a bruise to my ego for failing to be Super Teacher (I would hate that whole leotard thing anyway [though a cape would be awesome]). Instead it's about an ego bruise resulting from my own writing. 

While I should be grading, I've spent the last half hour looking over the article that I'm revising before returning it to the journal that has accepted it for publication. And what I've seen in this half hour of looking at my written-in-about-three-days-under-the-great-duress-of-a-looming-class-deadline essay is that the writing, well, kinda stinks. 

No, I'm not fishing for compliments (none of you have seen the paper anyway!) - I'm being serious. I pride myself, if anything, on my good writing, so I wouldn't say it wasn't so great unless it really wasn't. For instance, if the word "is" shows up one more time in that paper, I'm pretty sure the authorities are going to restrict my use. 

But that's not the worst thing I've found so far. The worst thing comes in the form of grammatical incorrectness and general non-sense-making-ness. The following isn't an actual line from the paper, but it conveys an appalling sentence structure that I can not believe I wrote and did not revise out immediately, let alone sent out for the world to see: 

The neighbor's attitude regarding Sally's new minimum-wage job suggests that having even low-paying employment can be viewed as being a hard worker, much the way Tony's willingness to accept a pay cut suggests blah blah blah. 

There are so many things wrong with that sentence - most notably the glaringly hideous mess pairing of "having" and "can be viewed as being" - that I shudder to think three people read (my real version of) it and had only to assume I thought it was a reasonable expression of my ideas. (Well, three people - at least three - other than me and Brad. Those were my professor, the journal's managing editor, and the outside reviewer). And the idea that this sentence could appear in a journal several pages below my name . . . 

The horror! The horror! (For all you Conrad fans out there.) 
It's okay if you're embarrassed for me; I'm embarrassed for myself. But I guess a kick in the butt is good every now and again, just so you don't get complacent (right?). 

Anyway, I'm gonna go work on that sentence, cut my students some slack, and try to get away from that awful offal pie . . . .

As Promised . . .

First (of course) a narrative: 

So, I'm laying in bed this a.m., not wanting to get up, flip-flopping over b/c my hips hurt, but it's 8:10, and it's time to move my behind. I know the article decision is coming in oh-so-soon b/c the status on the online system changed Friday to "Awaiting ME decision" and it's been more than 4 months. So before getting up, I do what every normal American does (bah!) before climbing out of bed on a Monday morning: I check my e-mail on my new smarty-pants smart phone. 

What do I find? Well, none other than a big fat rejection from the Modern Language Association (MLA) conference. 

This ain't lookin' like a great start to the week. I may or may not mumble some not-allowed-b/c-of-Lent obscenities, then right away text  Brad to report the bad news. Then I text Butcher to report not only the bad news but also that he owes me $5. (In a moment of low self-esteem on my part, he bet me $5 that my proposal would get accepted at MLA. Of course I will not accept my winnings b/c I know, even if he denies it, that he was simply being a good friend b/c I felt like crap at the moment - I know this is why b/c there was no reason at all to believe I'd get into, like, the best literature conference ever. Thanks, Butcher, that was sweet.). 

Now, of course, no one texts at the speed of light like I wish they would, so while waiting to hear back about my rejection, instead of twiddling my thumbs I go back to my e-mail to read the e-mail again and spur on the moping. But . . . ! 

In the time it took to send two text messages, I've gotten a new e-mail . . . I squint at the teeny-tiny text . . . I read, "We are happy to inform you that we have accepted your manuscript" - !!!!!!!!!!! 

Naturally, I go bat-sh*t crazy, lunge out of bed, call Brad, shout happily in his ear, and relay all of the exciting details. Repeat with Butcher. Repeat with Mum. Text to Shannon. E-mail to Amanda. There: now you have my morning. 

Happy me! 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
And now, the exciting details . . . 

The reviewer's comments were really positive (!), which is amazing considering

1.  This is an unrevised paper turned in for a class, the majority of which was written in 3 days. (Anyone who knows me and my writing, knows I don't roll like dat.)

2.  Reviewers can be niz-asty. I've heard many a horror story about reviewers' responses, so it definitely could have gone another way.

This reviewer, who recently taught the book on which I wrote in a seminar for English majors, said my presentation of research and historical context was "valuable material for teaching the novel." Which makes me want to shriek with excitement - ! But it gets better! She - it's a blind review, so I don't know that the comments come from a woman, but there's something in the wording and tone that suggests to me they do - thought my paper was "very timely, full of good information as well interesting analysis" and said my application of theoretical material to the novel was "first-rate." 

Like, ah! Thrilled! Not feeling as stupid as usual when it comes to the literature stuff! 

Her suggestions for revision include: 
- cutting out a handful of lines to make the paper not-so-long (it's only as long as it is b/c I was trying to make a page requirement for class; a requirement which, it should be noted, I still did not meet);
- replacing a phrase with a less (politically) contentious one; and 
- "strengtening the conclusion if possible" so that it's as strong as the intro. 

Not half-bad for a neurotic grad student who hates theory, eh?! 

They didn't give me a deadline for returning it, but the last (and thus far, only) time I was in this position, I had virtually no work to do, and I still dragged my feet. I hope to knock these changes out in the next, say, three weeks, so the article can get slated for an issue. Scholarly publishing takes FOR-EV-ER, meaning the sooner I get this back to them, the sooner it will see the light of day (that is, the pages of a pretty darn good journal!).

Ahhhhh! Double Ahhhhh!

My article got accepted! 

Straight-up accepted! Of course the reviewer suggested some small revisions (which I will definitely make), but nothing "mandatory" and nothing conceptual! 

Maybe good things come to those who (are forced to) wait 19 weeks?! 

I could hardly be more thrilled! Details later!

Addendum (revision?) to "Addendum"

(This feels meta, but I think everything is meta, so it's probably not.) 

Turns out, I do have reason for my misanthropy: 

         17 student papers to grade
     +  guy singing/mumbling the lyrics to the music at Starbucks 
         grrrr 

If you'd prefer, I've got another: 

         book I NEED for paper I'm writing is to be found everywhere
              except places that are convenient 
     x  STILL waiting to hear about my essay after 16.5 weeks 
         double grrrr 

I could keep going, but subtraction and division wouldn't really make sense here. Besides, I'd rather spend the energy on hate.

On waiting (in the academic world)

In early November (of 2010), I submitted an article to a journal for consideration for publication. And by "article" I mean a completely unrevised paper from a seminar that I took last spring. I did this on a whim (literally, I was bored and Brad was napping on the couch diagonal to me), fully believing the paper would be rejected quite quickly, but maintaing a glimmer of hope that it would be, if nothing else, at least sent by the editor to reviewers and maybe I would get some feedback about how to improve it. 

(You might well ask why I didn't, before sending, use my teacher's feedback to improve, and you would be right to ask this. I could, however, only respond with a very unsatisfactory answer: laziness. That is, if it turned out the paper was too terrible to even be sent to reviewers, I didn't want to bother spending any time at all on it.) 

I guess before coming to my point (which is always a long and digressive task with me), it would help to explain the process of publication (or not-publication) in a peer-reviewed journal. Although journals vary, the basic rigamaroll looks something like this: 
    1.  you submit an unsolicited article (either via an online system, e-mail, or snail mail); 
    2.  an editor of one form or another makes an initial judgement (reject it or send it to reviewer/s); 
    3.  reviewers, who are experts in the particular area of your article, are invited to read and "score" your article; and 
    4.  based on the reviewers/ scores, the editor makes a decision about your article (reject/accept/accept with revisions/revise and resubmit). 

This process can take anywhere from 5 days to maybe 6 months. (The first place I ever submitted an article to took three months to reject it without even having sent it to reviewers. That same article was then accepted by a different journal in five days - of course, I had to stop wallowing and send it out again first, which took me a few weeks to do.) 

The waiting room at a doctor's office:  a fitting metaphor for 
the academic world, ugly decor and all. 

The present article/paper/potential piece of nonsense, is at a journal that has a typical 6-8 week response period, a factoid I got courtesy of the MLA Directory of Periodicals, that dear dear database. For some reason, I was expecting 8-10 weeks. But yesterday marked week 14. And since about week 8, I've been checking the status an unhealthy (obsessive?) 2-3 times a day. 

Currently (and for the last week and a half), my diamond-in-the-potentially-really-rough is in the reviwer's hands (or, rather, his/her inbox) and my online status on the journal's site is "awaiting reviewer scores." And although I probably shouldn't, I'm taking it as an encouraging sign that the editor sent it to a reviewer in the first place. I mean, with the other one, I got rejected at the first journal with as little fanfare as possible. Except for the whole THREE MONTHS thing (yes, I'm still seething just a tad two years later), which in my waiting-to-hear-from-PhD-programs-and-therefore-going-insane-and-hating-the-world mind, was all kinds of fanfare. 

So, basically, waiting sucks. And it sucks even more to wait with your hopes up when at least half of your brain is telling you that your writing stinks, your ideas stink, no one wants to publish your stupid paper, and, oh! by the way, you're never gonna get a job if you don't put out at least one more article before graduation (which, admittedly, is a long arse way off). 

And I've come to the conclusion that working in academia is all about waiting:  waiting to get through coursework to do comprehensive exams; waiting to pass comps to get to writing the dissertation; waiting to get through the diss. to find that ever elusive first job in a super crappy market; waiting to make that first job a sure thing by getting tenure . . . and on and on and on . . . .