i can make a difference!: ok ok

29 octobre 2004

ok ok

ok so thank you guys for worrying...

the situation is REALLY too complex to explain, so i'll just give you a short summary of a few things:

- i was writing this article from my master's thesis research for a very important professional journal and they told me to make some revisions... which made me realize that the whole thing i did for my master's thesis is CRAP and so there, i can't have the article published because the whole statistical analysis is not even good enough to use as toilet paper!

- WHY did my advisors let me write that crap for my MA?? i'm seriously doubting myself!! --i guess only scott might guess why... sorry, not in a mood for explanations...

- i'm planning to take TWO hard classes next semester, which is highly unusual when you're ABD... but i really want to... plus they're useful for my research! but now i'm going to have to add a statistics class to that!!

- i won't be able to start writing my questionnaires/translating them/IRB/doing the pilot study as i had planned, which means i'll have to wait until next fall to do that which means i won't be able to do the actual study in the fall as i had planned... etc. etc. etc.... so i'm in for an extra 6 months to a year... feels like a prison sentence and i've just been denied parole...

- all this time i always thought that my MA thesis was really good, i REALLY worked so hard on that damn thing... and now to learn that it isn't worth shit is just hard... plus to have to give up the journal article which was my first door to success is really discouraging too.

the situation is a little more complex than that still, but nothing dramatic... mostly an extra 6 months, statistics class, and big disappointments... how can i have faith that i'll do better with the dissertation? i'm disgusted!

3 commentaires:

At 10/28/2004 11:38 PM, Lady Eve a dit:: Ok, ok, first of all, you are not *fucked*. You have hit some snags, but it does not change the fact that you are a passionate and fierce academic who cares a lot about her work. :) You are merely entering the strange conversation known as professional academia. :D Did your article get a "revise and resubmit" or a "revise and redirect"? I am just wondering what you mean by "revise." It is entirely normal that when you just begin to start publishing (which is actually great that you're doing it as a grad student!) that it is possible to get some rejections, but you must look objectively at them, not take it so personally, although, *I* did when I got my first OUTRIGHT REJECTION from an article I submitted to a very good peer reviewed journal. I was very, very disappointed and dejected. I didn't submit anything for a year. Then, the same journal had a themed issue that was related to my diss and I got over my dejection enough to send something else and it was accepted! I think in my experience, it really helped to read the comments from the editors or reviewers and honestly reassess my approach. Often, it is not about the quality of your research, but an issue with the paper's argument, or fit with the journal. In any case, I wouldn't totally trash your MA thesis. If your advisors support it, then as they are pros in the field, they have some clue, I am sure. I tend to react very emotionally to rejection, especially about my work, because it *is* personal! (even though it helps if you can detach a bit) Just a long-winded anecdote to encourage you not to give up. You seem to be very intelligent and proactive in your discipline and that means a lot!
At 10/29/2004 12:24 AM, lucie a dit:: Jun, thanks! the article was not rejected but I had to make some important revisions, and obviously, one of the revisions is to simply redo the whole statistical analysis of the data plus the whole interpretation of the results. and given that I had 97 participants and about 10 variables that interracted one with the other, plus i don't know how to do the correct statistical analysis and interpretation, i don't think i'll find the time and energy to do all that, so i won't "revise" the article and won't resubmit it. i mean, i have my dissertation to worry about now, and even if i did redo the whole analysis of this old data and revised the article accordingly, the article might still get rejected... so it's not worth it, which is very sad BECAUSE i had NOT be rejected in the first place. oh well...
At 10/29/2004 12:43 PM, Scott a dit:: MistakeYou know that it would be much better for you to revise and resubmit the article rather than give up. I suggest that you get some advice on the statistical side of things by going to the stat consulting office and seeing if you can get someone to talk to you about what the reviewers said. They have a walk-in help desk in the math building. In addition, deadlines often don't go away in publishing. If it took you a few weeks to figure out how to respond to the reviewers and then resubmit that wouldn't be unusual. What the editor wants is to be convinced that you addressed their criticism -- usually by going point by point over them in your cover letter with your resubmission.

Further, taking more courses looks like you are trying to delay the work. Even if you take stat 502, it won't teach you everything you need to know about collecting and analyzing the data in your thesis. You will still need to learn more about data collection and analysis on your own in a more focused way. Finally, do you need those other courses next semester? Are they required for graduation. If not, then you need to ask if you are more interested in graduating or in taking more courses.