If you're one of those people who can publish articles while in a Ph.D. program; can balance writing and teaching skillfully; mostly get "publish with minor revisions" as a submission response; or can publish more than one article a year, what I write below may come as a shock to you. Or appalling. I don't care. I'm extremely thankful for this publication, and I know I couldn't have done it without help from the people around me every step of the way.
This post is for anyone out there who has ever felt like it's damn near impossible to get a publication out. I am here to tell you: It can be done; it just might take a really, really long time.
2009 December—This article started out as seminar paper I wrote for a seminar I took in Fall quarter of my second year in the Ph.D. program at UCSD. Thank you to the professor and my fellow students who gave me food for thought.
2011 March—That seminar paper morphed into my Qualifying Paper that helped me advance to candidacy. Thank you to my QE committee members and grad school comrades for all their input.
2012 March—That QP became the basis for my very first presentation at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Toronto. Too bad for me, AAS only lets you submit individual papers once. (Thank you, JKL, for coming to hear me present in the first session on Sunday morning—I know you could've been anywhere else at such an awful time/day.)
2014 June—With the comments I received at AAS and other helpful critique, the piece became a dissertation chapter that I defended in Spring quarter of 2014. Not sure if it was a successful defense, but at least I got my "union card", so to speak.
2015 April—If not for the generosity of two supportive professors, that dissertation chapter would never have gone through the key transformation it did to become the paper I presented at a symposium at Aichi University. Many, many, many thanks.
2015 July—More than a year after my defense, I decide it's high time I stopped dicking around and actually did something productive while at Nagoya University. So I revised my Aichi presentation further and finally submitted it to a journal. I couldn't have done it without my partners-in-crime who helped me through the 12-week Belcher program!
2015 November—Of course, that submission gets rejected by that journal... But no worries, because the reviewers gave me really helpful comments. Thank you! Now I have to revise the paper even further.
2016 May—After wrapping up my first year at CSUF, I put a stop to my revisions and submit my article manuscript to the journal that would ultimately become its home: Japanese Studies. Thank you to my colleagues in MLL for pushing me through this process.
2016 July—Surprisingly swiftly, I get what I think is a "revise and resubmit", though with major, major revisions. Hey man, I'll take anything; and I can't thank the reviewers enough for their insightful comments.
2016 October—Amidst my teaching I scramble to make enough of the revisions to justify a resubmission. I drink wine and celebrate. Thank you to my partner in everything for letting me stay up late.
2016 December—More comments arrive from the folks at Japanese Studies! This time the requested revisions are fairly minor, so I plug away at them after I submit grades for Fall semester and resubmit that month. Then I kick back at my parents' house to enjoy the holidays.
2017 January—Auspiciously enough, the official acceptance notice arrives in my inbox on January 1. This is not a bad way to start year 2017. Now I just need two more article acceptances to actually make good on my New Year's resolution.
2017 June—After communications and back-and-forths with the editors at Japanese Studies and Taylor & Francis, what started out as a humble grad seminar paper is published in the same venue as what my NU grad seminar students called a "perfect article". (If you want to know which article that was, you'll have to ask me.) I twirl around in my office chair and celebrate.
Holy shit, it took me 7.5 years to turn my seminar paper into a published article?! Tenure suddenly feels very far away... and yet, somehow, one step closer at the same time. I can't count how many people supported me intellectually by giving me feedback and guidance on this thing. The paper also changed dramatically at each step, with things getting cut, things getting added, paragraphs getting moved, and focus getting reshifted. There probably isn't a single pair of two consecutive sentences that has remained from the seminar paper to this article. But after everything, it's still got my name on it, and it's something I could never have done alone.
(If you can't access the article through the URL embedded into the first sentence, please message me, and I'd be happy to send you a copy!)
Indeed it is a long road... a very long road. I am honored to be with you on that path
ReplyDeleteThank you, Prof. Grinberg! :) If I am lucky, I will be on this path for a very long time, with all the people that matter to me!
DeleteCongratulations Satoko! And thank you for writing this encouraging piece. I think in general academics should write more openly about writing. I think Belcher has this passage saying it's this taboo and no one talk about it (because you're supposed to be supergood at it or something), but it's at the heart of our profession.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ben! I think I remember the passage you're talking about... And I've seen/done it myself, too. In grad school I feel like we often told our friends we were being lazy and not writing, but then we'd scurry home and work furiously... or we'd make it seem like we were constantly working, when in actuality we were just surfing YouTube. I agree with you, writing is central to wha we do, and we just have to do it, whether we feel like we're any good at it or not. :) It just matters that we don't give up producing!
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