One Prof's Ponderings, Predictions, and Proclimations

I realize it has been a very long time since my last post.  Quite honestly nothing of terrible importance has happened to me professionally recently to write about.  However, recently I have finally heard some reports on the status of a couple of writing projects that I have in the works.

First is my seemingly endless review of my research project that I conducted last year.  I have had a manuscript (ms) in to one of the more respected teaching journals in the field of psychology. It’s been there for nearly 6 months… I hope to hear a positive response sometime soon, but I am always nervous.  The first round of reviews resulted in a hung jury of types and the ms needed to be sent out to another reviewer or two.  Seems the story of my academic life.  People either seem to really respond well to my research and believe it is interesting and important or see my research as trivial and self-evident.

For anyone who wants an inside look at what authors often go through with the review process, please see this link.  It is funny, but also very close to real life – warning there is a bit of language used (which is not uncommon when the rejected decision comes through) –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY

I have already warned my colleagues that I may be shouting in German depending on the  decision that is made on my ms.

Second project was a chapter proposal for a book on the “Ethics of Teaching” that Eric Landrum proposed to the APA.  Just today I was informed that the book itself was accepted for publication, but my particular chapter was one of the 6 that needed to be cut due to page length constraints.  A disappointing decision for me, but I plan to pursue this project through other means (journal article, conference round table, etc.)
Such is the life of the academic.  We work for months on a project and sometimes we are rejected .  We need to learn to pick ourselves up, dust off the dirt, improve the product, and pursue other avenues in which to disseminate our work.  If you cannot publish in one journal, you move onto the next.  Sometimes it takes a couple of years to get a study published.  But for those that persist your research can often find a home somewhere.

What is extremely exciting is when you actually see your name in print and your study packaged in a journal.  But probably one of the most exciting things to happen to me in the past couple of years is to actually have one of my published works cited by other authors!  This means others ACUTUALLY READ IT!  What a pleasure to have gone through so much work and actually know that you have contributed to the field!