Thanks for all the comments on the last post. What started as a surprising result to an internet quiz turned into me lamenting again about writing. It is easy to do, I guess.
To answer unbalanced reaction's question. I have one publication in an obscure and local journal. It's nothing I feel very proud of. It got rejected from two other journals before we gave up and submitted to the local journal. The letter said it was peer reviewed but I didn't get any comments from reviewers about it. I have a lot of non peer reviewed items on my CV, a few government reports of which I'm first author on one of them and about one and a half pages of conference proceedings and I'm first author on 90% of them. I didn't do any collaborating as a graduate student so I didn't get a change to "share" publications with people (including my adviser who does none of his own research anymore).
I also wanted to clarify that I mostly enjoy the beginning stages of a manuscript. The organizing and coming up with what to plot and what to talk about. I dislike the review stage and not so much the journal review stage (since not many of my papers have even made it this far I don't have a good idea of this stage) but the adviser review stage. It's long and drawn out and I don't always agree with my adviser. I just want to get the papers submitted so they get to go through the "real" review.
What has inspired me to write today is my husband. He has been telling me that I need to get into a better mood. That I have nothing to complain about. It's like what Candid Engineer said in the comments, I need to have a good attitude (to paraphrase).
I've been in a funk for the past couple of months (maybe counting nine now) and I don't know how to get out. I've always been that person who looks at the brighter side of life. The go getter. The happy girl.
Maybe I put on that persona for too long now I can't hold it up any longer?
Maybe I truly just don't feel that way anymore?
Maybe I'm just being lazy?
I think it's the lazy part. I think my adviser has taught me that things take forever so why rush them. But maybe that is me being lazy again and blaming my laziness on someone else.
I've been doing this food challenge in hopes of helping me loose weight by not buying junk food. Well, both Wed. and Thus. I went to the grocery store and bought a pint of ice cream and ate the whole pint in one sitting. *Sigh*
I need to loose 20 lbs and just can't seem to do it. Even when I think I'm having a great week the scale doesn't show any difference. *Sigh* Ok this post is getting depressing.
What I want to say is that I need to have a better attitude on everything not only for my own mental sanity but for the sanity of my marriage. My husband also has a lot he is going through but he stays strong and it doesn't help for him to come home to a gloomy household.
He also keeps telling me that I need to submit manuscripts without worrying about my coauthors. This seems unethical to me.
My feelings of depression this week come from lack of direction. I have two talks I'm working on: conference talk and dissertation talk. Other that this I don't know what I should be doing!! I sent my adviser, what I feel is a final draft of our resubmit and then what. Should I be working on making the chapters into manuscripts? If so how? The chapters are in pretty good shape from my end I feel I need the coauthors (or committee) to give me comments for improvement. Or should I just prepare and submit one without any one knowing?
[thanks for reading this long post, which I feel likely lacks a theme or direction]
About Me
- Jennie
- I have a Ph.D. in Geology, which was on groundwater contamination. It took me five years of living on the East Coast and one year in the Midwest. Now I'm back on the West Coast (near the beach!) and have a job with a small consulting firm of around 30 employees. This job is 1 mile from my house. Let's see how I like consulting!
6 comments:
I wouldn't suggest submitting the journals without feedback form co-authors.
Do you have one that is ready for feedback? Is your advisor a co-author on everything you're writing?
I have had some really amazing co-authors who have incredibly great turn around times with really good feedback. However, right now I too get really annoyed during the advisor (now that I've graduated)/co-author review stage as well.
My advisor takes FOREVER to even read my papers, never mind get feedback to me. It's very frustrating especially when I'm probably going on the market in the fall and really need these papers to go out.
Keep in mind that the papers will never get pubished if you don't get them out the door.
"Do you have one that is ready for feedback? Is your adviser a co-author on everything you're writing?"
Yes and Yes.
All my work in now in the committee's hand. So it's all ready for feedback. For publication I'm pretty sure I'll cut come figures out of each chapter. Two of the committee members besides my adviser will be co-author on some of the manuscript. One because I analyzed all of my samples for one particular contaminant at his lab, which is at another university. The second because he funding most of my research.
So see why I feel I have nothing to do. I guess I can start thinking about journals to submit each chapter to . . .
I agree with psych post doc. I'd be very hesitant to submit anything without the co-author's approval. Usually there's something you have to sign saying that each author agreed to the submission.
As far as the losing weight/food challenge goes, don't be too hard on yourself. No one is perfect and it sounds like you're doing pretty well other than your minor slip-ups.
It's easy to get into a funk with all the stuff you have going on. There's all this uncertainty surrounding everything (what to work on, when is your advisor going to get back to you, etc.). So, don't be too hard on yourself about your mood and take care of yourself. Do nice things for yourself :-) Even if it includes treating yourself to some good food.
I know how you feel. It is easy to go into funks for significant periods of time when you are doing research/writing.
While you are waiting for all of the feedback on your other projects, is there something exciting that you could do in the meantime? I don't know your history (I take it that you are away from lab), and I don't know how close you are to finishing, but could you develop some new ideas for a side project? Computer simulations? Something to break the monotony?
I wonder if the funk is partly due to the fact that you've been mostly working by yourself from home, far away from your classmates and/or labmates. I find it helps to have other people around me who are more or less going through the same thing.
About the writing, a lot of scientists I know don't enjoy writing. Doing experiments and getting results is much more fun, and a lot of times, getting a paper published happens so long after you collected the data that it's totaly anti-climactic. So it's definitely not just you.
In some senses, a pub is a pub! I'm so glad that you got a date; hopefully things will start turning around after that. I suspect that after your advisor and committee see all your amazingness (I am a firm believer in that word, by the way), it will help push out some of your work to your advisor and coauthors.
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