Vacation

7/26/2013 (I had started this post on the 26th, but as I was writing, there was meltdown, which required putting down my computer, diffusing the situation, and, well, at that point, mommy was in demand, so the blog had to wait): We are in Maine on vacation...sort of. Although we make this trip every year to visit both sides of the family, it really hasn't ever been a vacation. Last summer I returned from the summer break to start the fall semester feeling cognitively drained, physically tired, and mentally unprepared to start a new semester. I vowed then that the following summer I would allow myself a full two weeks of vacation. It is not happening. To some extent, I feel relief, as the work that continues during this trip is helpful towards making my tenure package look more appealing. I learned today, for example, that a paper was accepted to a journal. The papers is a bout a study that I conducted as a doctoral student at the University of Nebraska with undergraduate students who studied abroad. This means that I collected the data over 5 years ago. I first submitted a manuscript to a journal three and half years ago (we were on vacation in Thailand for the Christmas break when I submitted that paper and Molly was 18 months). That journal rejected the paper, so my co-author and I revised it and sent to another journal. It was rejected there, too. I revised again, sent to another journal where it was invited for a revise and resubmit, referred to as an R&R in the field. We revised, we resubmitted, it was reviewed, and we were asked to revise and resubmit again. Which we did. That revision was reviewed again. We were invited to revise and resubmit again, which we did. Each review period was at least 3 months and we usually have about a month to make the revisions. So, at last on the third review, the paper was accepted. Yeah! It will likely be published in 2014.

So, that was some good news. But the real reason I'm not actually on vacation in Maine is because two co-authors and I decided to submit a paper to a special issue with a very short deadline.