1. seejanecompute
  2. Random bullets of Aaaaarrrrgh! December!!

Random bullets of Aaaaarrrrgh! December!!

By jane on December 3, 2008.
  • Prioritizing is good. Prioritizing is absolutely necessary in this job. But what do you do if you have time this month to do X projects, but X+1 projects are "high priority"? Is cloning legal yet?
  • Number of high priority projects = X+1 because a journal article I sent out for review before its time, which I thought would be a sure reject, just came back as a strong revise&resubmit. So that clearly needs to be fast-tracked. So yes, at least my plate is full for a totally awesome reason.
  • This is the first set of journal reviews that I've gotten back where there were no insulting/mean-spirited reviews in the bunch. This means (please choose 1): (a) my writing is getting much, much better and clearer; (b) people in this field are getting nicer; (c) there are no psychopaths that review for this particular journal; (d) nothing at all, just a very lucky draw.
  • Jane's Law of Journal Reviews: There is always at least one reviewer that completely misses the point of the paper. (Seriously, I'm curious...does this extend to other fields, too?)
  • Teaching. I haven't said much about it lately. It's going.....very well, actually. I am really enjoying this particular group of students. I'm much more comfortable in my pedagogy. Students are really learning the material, and are even willing to put in the work to get the hard stuff (and are getting it! even the really hard stuff that has given students nightmares in the past. one of my colleagues observed my class recently on a really tough conceptual day, and he was amazed at what I was able to get these students to do). This is A Good Thing to happen the year before going up for tenure. Fingers crossed that this good fortune continues...
  • Well, ok, teaching is mostly going well.
  • When the heck am I supposed to do my holiday shopping? Seriously, when?
  • I had the most bizarre conversation with Mr. Jane the other day. (No, this one is not about blog dreams.) We were trying to figure out what kinds of Christmas cookies we will intend to make this year. I suggested these really easy but yummy cookies that use pre-made sugar cookie dough and have mini candy bars inside (I'm sure there's a name for these, but it escapes me right now). Mr. Jane claimed that eating those cookies "made him feel guilty". Why? Because they contain candy. Now, this is the same man who will scarf down an entire plate of cookies without blinking and definitely without a second thought. I had no idea that sugar has a guilt continuum.
  • The standoff with the collaborators continues. Sigh.
Tags
Research
teaching
tenure
work-life balance

More like this

"This is the first set of journal reviews that I've gotten back where there were no insulting/mean-spirited reviews in the bunch. This means (please choose 1): (a) my writing is getting much, much better and clearer; (b) people in this field are getting nicer; (c) there are no psychopaths that review for this particular journal; (d) nothing at all, just a very lucky draw."

Actually, I've come to realize that in specific subfields, the number of people willing and able to review just isn't that high. You tend to get your reviewers picked from the same relatively small pool every time, and especially so if you tend to send to the same conferences and journals originating in the same area of the world.

So you may have only a couple of people that are consistently unpleasant, but they tend to get picked again and again whenever a paper about your subject appear for review in one of your normal conferences or papers. Try submitting somewere a bit different - a European or Asian journal or conference for instance - and you're likely to draw from a fresh pool of reviewers.

"Jane's Law of Journal Reviews: There is always at least one reviewer that completely misses the point of the paper. (Seriously, I'm curious...does this extend to other fields, too?)"

Yes. That, and the inevitable "anonymous" reviewer that insist you add references to half a dozen papers, all by the same author, that have nothing remotely in common with the main points of your paper but will of course improve the citation count for that author.

There is always at least one reviewer that completely misses the point of the paper.

Maybe not always, but very often. And it makes me wonder--is it because that person is totally stupid, or because I'm unclear? And how does the editor view that person? And how much do we have to go out of our way to appease them in the changes? Ugh. I really don't like that person.

Prioritizing is good. Prioritizing is absolutely necessary in this job. But what do you do if you have time this month to do X projects, but X+1 projects are "high priority"?

In my experience, you end up collapsed in a little heap. Not to mention with a frazzled brain from the excessive "multi" when tasking.

My own subfield of CS has great reviewers. I can almost always count on getting at least a page worth of comments from two of the three reviewers on any conference submission. Journal reviews are usually several pages long.

But when I submit outside my subfield, all bets are off. Usually I get a single short paragraph from each reviewer, and there's always at least one that clearly had no clue what the paper was about and made very little effort to figure it out.