Ah, well, darn

The article I submitted to a large regional journal this past summer - I just got the rejection notice back.

I am not nearly as upset about this as I thought I might be. I guess I kind of expected it as this was a "stretch" in terms of journals to submit to. (One of the ongoing questions in academic research: do you submit to the "unlikely, but would really have a big circulation if you got in" journals, or do you submit to a more safe bet that has less circulation and prestige? Prestige doesn't really matter to me these days because I already have tenure, and so I'm not grasping at straws to get it - but still, it's nice to see your work out there. I will admit in the past I've generally gone for the safer bets, because in my earlier career a mentor pushed me to submit to the "big" journals, and when I did, it was just rounds of frustration). Ah well. I haven't read the comments of the reviewers (which may be where I get upset about it; some reviewers can be harsh). I'll have to decide whether to read a "try rewriting and resubmitting based on the reviewer's comments" between the lines of the editor's rejection (I can't tell, but it SOUNDS a bit like that), or step down to a slightly smaller-circulation journal.

I think of a Charles Darwin quotation I used to have pinned up over my desk in grad school: "A naturalist's life would be a happy one if he had only to observe and never to write."

Well, I don't mind the WRITING so much but I do dislike the "game" of publication, where you wait months and months for word on something. (The waiting is the worst - this time it was just about 5 months, which is shorter than some, but I still feel like that's an awfully long time)

On the upside? It looks like the 8 am section of the major's intro bio JUST made (there were only 8 people in it when I left in December). A class not "making" means there are too few people in it and it is cancelled. If this class had had to be cancelled, two undesirable things would have happened:

1. I would have wound up teaching 2, 75-minute classes, right back-to-back. And on alternate Thursdays, I would be involved from 9:30 until 3 pm straight with NO breaks (because of faculty meeting - I could eat lunch during it, I would have had to, but bathroom breaks would have been a challenge)

2. It would have been a less-favored class of mine that would have been subbed for Principles I. (And I'd have to make up an all-new syllabus for that class).

Oh, and 3: I would have had to change my office hours. (We have to have 10 during the week, at least 1 each business day. I will simply compare the people in my dad's old department who are asked to hold at least 3....)

So, now I have a MWF 8 am (yes, and I specifically said I'd do that, I like early classes), an 11 am, and then a T TH 11-12:15 pm. And then three days a week 1 to 3 pm labs, and for a couple weeks, a noon senior seminar section. But it will be nice having that block of time Tuesday and Thursday morning; I will need to be disciplined and prep my class first, then spend the balance working on research (or, I suppose, rewriting that article... perhaps I will try Castanea for it instead)