an update on my Chronicle piece

Months ago I blogged about my forthcoming Chronicle piece about having ADD & being on the academic job market. A few weeks’ ago I started to become concerned that I hadn’t heard anything from the editor since the article was accepted as a “First Person” piece. I sent a follow-up email, and as it happens, they hadn’t checked the email account used to send the acceptance email since sending the acceptance message months ago.

<sigh…. they expected somebody with ADD to reply to a different email address without specifying this in the message?!?!?>

Regardless, they are still interested in publishing an updated version of the piece. I did this and sent it a couple of weeks ago. I hope to add the link here someday soon!

a conclusion about reviewers

For the past year, when I haven’t been busy with job market stuff I’ve been busy submitting and resubmitting manuscripts for publication. Nearly all of these use an advanced type of statistical modeling known as structural equation modeling (SEM; I linked the wikipedia reference but be forewarned, the description is likely to put most readers to sleep). The gist of it is that it’s stats based on matrix algebra, and it’s really hard. Learning SEM pre-medication was a bitch. Learning it with medication was a snap, and I’m now pretty darn good at it, if I do say so myself. Not everybody in my field can do it, as it’s still rather new in addition to being hard. More “younglings” like me can do it than established researchers, who may not have the time or opportunity to receive training.  But I digress…

As I was saying, nearly all of the papers I’ve done in the past year use some form of SEM. Every SEM paper I’ve submitted in the past year has been designated “revise & resubmit,” which means I get to revise the paper in response to comments from peer reviewers and the journal editors. Without exception, every set of reviews has had some really, really, really dumb comments about basic SEM details. This makes me feel superior to so many other people in my field, but it’s also really annoying because the comments are incredibly stupid and sometimes don’t even make logical sense.

I’m revising a paper at the moment, and one of the reviewers asked for me to include a correlation matrix. If you’ve ever taken an Intro to Psych class, you should know what a correlation is. It’s a coefficient that indicates how strongly two variables are associated with each other. It’s super-basic, baby-level stats. Compared to what I’m doing on a daily basis (i.e., fitting models that are so complex it takes my new computer 30 minutes to crunch all the numbers), it’s insulting. It’s also annoying because now I have to make a correlation table for 18 variables so stupid reviewer A understands my work on a very, very basic level. It adds nothing to the story. They just don’t get it.  Now I will spend at least an hour trying to make all the columns and rows fit on a single landscaped page in 12 point font. Not going to happen!!!

Things shouldn’t be this way. It’s a problem in our field that our methods are changing so quickly that  only a few people are able to keep up with the changes. It’s also a problem that established, highly-esteemed researchers are so poorly trained, particularly since they are the ones who keep getting all the grant money (caveat: They then must use this grant money to hire statsmonkeys like me).

peer review

 

I love icanhascheezburger.

 

I wish my peer reviewers were cats.

paper’s finished

Enough said.

I’m grounded…

…by my boss, that is. I’m “assigned” to work at home for the next two days. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

I was supposed to have a paper ready to go out by now, but haven’t had time to do it.  All the grad students & postdocs in my lab and the two others involved in a particular longitudinal study were assigned to write papers over the summer. The entire purpose of this exercise was to bulk up a weak section in the grant application for continued NIH funding.  Everybody else is in good shape on their papers except for me. I have had many other deadlines and responsibilities over the summer, and kept running into roadblocks on this paper.

So now I’m at home for two days, and must finish the introduction & outline the discussion by the evening of Day 2. Yet true to form, it’s noon on Day 1 at home and I haven’t started working on it yet. I slept in (hooray!), talked to another alum from Big Rural University about a job opening in her department at Small Suburban Liberal Arts College, ate potato chips for breakfast, took a shower, did my hair, and sorted my articles for the paper. The file is open on my computer, but I just don’t want to deal with it.

The writing thus far hasn’t gone easily, despite the fact that it should go easily. This is essentially an extension of my dissertation, conducted with a younger sample & longitudinal data. I only need to write 3-4 pages of intro & revise what I’d already written. This shouldn’t be too difficult. So why is it so hard to really get going and just get it done?!?