The Fora: A Higher Education Community

It's still early, so we all have big plans.  Share your plans here!

I've got three papers in the hopper so this summer is about writing.

You're missing "I'm going to be in the lab" as an option.

My ambitious list (I may almost certainly will laugh at this list at the end of the summer), in order of priority:

1. Getting a new big study off the ground. We thought IRB was going to have issues and instead they approved it expedited in a couple of weeks- go figure. So all engines go on getting it ready to run and starting recruitment. This also will provide some proof-of-feasibilty data for #2, so top priority.

2. Two R01s for October deadline (one collaborative). This is going to be the majority of my summer/early fall.

3. At least 2, maybe 3, grad student-lead papers submitted by the end of the summer (we'll see, but we do a weekly writing group and they've really gotten in the spirit of writing productivity, so I'm hopeful). Each of these will require multiple rounds of revisions from me.

4. Big, complex collaborative paper with too many cooks in the kitchen (or sometimes no cooks in the kitchen because everyone thinks someone else is cooking). If we at least have the pre-registration done and data files prepped by the end of the summer I'll be happy.

5. Last pre-registered paper from completed collaborative study. This is one where we don't believe others' claims and expect null results (but with better methods). If we're right about that it will be hard to publish and not make us any friends. But I don't think I get to talk about good data practices and replicability and then not try to publish things like this.

I'll also be spending a couple of weeks visiting family and friends and hiking in my beloved mountains. Oh, and I'm trying to buy a house. I think this summer is going to require a lot of disciplined efficiency with the work and a lot to caffeine, but I'm excited about most of it.

I'm loosely in the humanities, so no lab, but I suspect I also will be chuckling at my list:

Complete a critical edition and get it to the publisher.

Check proofs of two forthcoming articles.

Complete paper for summer conference.

Complete and submit one article.

Complete paper for fall conference.

Complete proposal for another fall conference.

Compose in my spare time.

I have a lot of research projects to catch up on but must also work on my tenure packet this summer while teaching two classes.  Here are some goals!

• Finish longitudinal study analysis, complete manuscript, submit to targeted journal
• Start collecting data for new study if my co-PI will ever respond to my email
• Submit IRB paperwork (finished it today) once my co-PI for this other study will ever respond to my email
• Collect more data for grant project that got extended through next year, yay!
• Hopefully will have abstract selected for special issue and can crank that manuscript out before September

Otherwise, I have one manuscript under review with a former student, a book coming out in August (finishing up editor queries right now), and an article coming out in August/September.  Who knows what else will happen!

I'm teaching all summer, with just two weeks off in which I'm expected to perform 74 hours of service. Sigh.


Still, there are a few modest goals:

• Write a piece for a special issue to which I was invited.
• Sort out what's going on with Prize Pub (i.e. remind them to publish it, fix it up a bit).
• Revise Rejected Paper, and get it back under consideration/finally published.
• Make real progress on book (i.e. 1-2 chapters).

There shouldn't be any trouble accomplishing the first three. That last one, though...

Quote from: Puget on May 20, 2019, 07:19:18 AM
You're missing "I'm going to be in the lab" as an option.

Good catch!  I have edited the poll.

I'm doing data collection and clean up, taking a week long methods course at a mountain lodge, and drafting two-thirds of a chapter which my co-author will edit and complete.

The mountain lodge has a lake, so I'm hoping for a beach.

Um. Well, a lot of research is already done and in various forms of unready.

A blog is nearly done, goes out this week, I hope.

Two different book chapters are waiting to be born. One will build on a paper I just gave, plus one I just proposed, and a bunch of others done in the past few years. (One sub topic keeps wanting to pop up and be its own....something, I don't know what yet...I don't want to suppress it but I'm not ready to have it take over, either.)

The other book uses the methods that took the blog from 400 to 4000 words....look up the deeds and probate records, and they'll run away with you!..but that's what needs doing, sooo... that's to be done.

Other stuff, like the materials I got in France, need to at least be filed and described so I can work on them later but I'm too easily seduced into trying to start writing them up, too, if I do....so, holding back on those for now.

Submissions?

Gulp.

We'll see...

M.

Thanks to increasing admin duties, my research and writing have gotten really behind. I'm hoping to get myself back in gear over the summer, and submit a couple articles that are nearly ready to send out, and tackle a new one, thanks to a promising find I've just made of a manuscript that was thought to be lost. I've been missing being a medievalist!

Ooooh.

Yes.

We like the finding of missing MSs.

Excellent work!

M.

This summer I'm moving my lab program to my new job, so I won't get as much research done as I'd like. But next summer I'll be in the field and the lab.

Right now, it's all about apply for permits to move my research organisms...

Quote from: darkstarrynight on May 20, 2019, 10:58:36 AM
I have a lot of research projects to catch up on but must also work on my tenure packet this summer while teaching two classes.  Here are some goals!

• Finish longitudinal study analysis, complete manuscript, submit to targeted journal
• Start collecting data for new study if my co-PI will ever respond to my email
• Submit IRB paperwork (finished it today) once my co-PI for this other study will ever respond to my email
• Collect more data for grant project that got extended through next year, yay!
• Hopefully will have abstract selected for special issue and can crank that manuscript out before September

Otherwise, I have one manuscript under review with a former student, a book coming out in August (finishing up editor queries right now), and an article coming out in August/September.  Who knows what else will happen!

Abstract got selected today and my collaborators and I met today to outline our manuscript which is due 9/15. Yay!  My co-PI for first study listed up there set up a meeting with me for Thursday to launch the data collection phase too.

3 summer undergraduates doing research and a CAREER grant to write.

Writing, researching, vacationing, camping. And a couple of talks.

Field and archival research, pivoting into a new book project that I'm really excited about.

Travel to Greece/Italy, totally unrelated to my research. (This will be the best part!)

Finish/submit a chapter for a collab book (Sept deadline).

A couple of talks and visiting with buddies.

I have scheduled two weeklong trips to work with different groups of collaborators, with a third possibly in the works.

Each group includes at least one untenured person.

Being responsible to other people definitely helps get research done.

I have two articles to finish up and submit by the end of September, as well as a chapter to draft and send to my chair sometime this summer. So it's definitely going to be a "lock yourself in a room and write" summer for me.

I have three short French pieces,
Two book proposal chapters
One short abstract...

....and a partridge in a pear tree... *

all to be done at home or in local libraries, since my weekly tours have me tethered to home over the summers....

M.

*(actually the creature devouring the pears in the pear tree here is a squirrel....he takes a few bites and leaves the cores on the gate post mantle...all summer long. Perhaps he's researching "Pear sweetness, hardness, and digestibility over time" or somesuch...)

I'm finishing a book project and sending it to the first of what I expect will be many publishers. My goal is to have a polished draft by the last day of June. Fingers crossed!

Once that is off, I'm beginning a new project! I've been awarded a short research fellowship for this one, and I'm antsy to begin. I've promised myself that I won't even begin the secondary reading until I have a full, polished manuscript for the old piece--I don't want to get distracted when I'm so close to the finish line!

AR.

Four paper revisions, a chapter to write, and some field work. And taking on some admin duties.

I am going to travel this summer, (I went to Vancouver for instance) but am working towards getting a pass grade for my master's thesis. I am starting a PhD in September. I'll also planning my move (moving from my hometown to another city that's two hours away from where I live).

Good luck!

M.

I had good intentions for summer. I got a conference proposal out, one article submitted to coauthors, and one article submitted to the top journal in the field. That last one has actually made it past the desk rejection stage. (We were hoping we got at least as far as peer review to refine the manuscript for the next submission.) I also did major reading for my new fall project and redid a class in preparation for the next grant application, and did my tiny part for another grant application. However, that was all in May. June has been terrible. The first week I had a week long grant thing and no writing got done. The next week I was participating in a paid training for a new technology that might lead to a new line of research and no writing got done. Then there was a sudden death in the family during that and no writing got done the next week because I had to travel to the literal middle of nowhere for the funeral. I leave for an international conference/vacation at the end of this week. When I get back I have summer teaching. So this week is the last writing time I have.

However, I am SO STUCK on this project. It's from Five's thesis. I wrote it up and submitted the manuscript to a journal. After four months of review they rejected for fit and suggested that Much Nicer Journal was the appropriate venue. MNJ has an extremely specific format and has like double the maximum word count, and I'm having trouble getting started. Five is a chronic oversharer so I really need to get this done next so I can stop dealing with her drama. At this point I'm hoping to get enough rewritten this week that I can pick it back up so I can do a little writing in the mornings before I teach. I will probably slink over to the work sprint thread this week.

Somewhat shamefully, I am getting a lot done even though I'm currently taking vacation that won't roll over past July 1. Three manuscripts and two proposals in various stages of completion, and eager collaborators who make it usually rewarding and sometimes fun. I am bound and determined to do more vacationey things next week. This is after giving three invited talks earlier this summer (well, late spring, but I'm not faculty anymore so the distinction isn't as meaningful as it used to be). I really do need a real vacation.

I am dividing time between the lab and writing. I will take some time off after July 15, though.

I have big goals too that I will likely also laugh at in August.

I selected other, because I am building a new program and received a summer stipend to do so this year. So I will be writing a lot of curriculum, setting up a newly renovated classroom space, working through a recruitment and retention plan, building a website and creating a social media presence, and thinking through an internship program. It's daunting but exciting.

Otherwise, I also have a research project with a collaborator that just got IRB approval at my new place, so we will be conducting interviews to generate some new data, and finalizing a book proposal. And I wanted to write two other articles this summer as well to get them into the pipeline.

I am determined to completely plan all four courses for this upcoming year this summer so I will have less work to do on that over the academic year (and can focus more on research).

But looking at this list here, I am mostly feeling overwhelmed. Time to make some lists and a calendar!

How's everyone doing on their lists? Here's my update for accountability:

Quote
1. Getting a new big study off the ground. We thought IRB was going to have issues and instead they approved it expedited in a couple of weeks- go figure. So all engines go on getting it ready to run and starting recruitment. This also will provide some proof-of-feasibilty data for #2, so top priority.

Grad student who's diss this is for seems to be making good progress with help of super awesome undergrad RA who got funding to spend the summer in the lab and who's honors thesis project this will be. Should be able to start collecting some pilot data soon.

Quote
2. Two R01s for October deadline (one collaborative). This is going to be the majority of my summer/early fall.

So far am pretty much on track with my schedule for revising grant #1, revised aims and working my way through approach. The collaborative grant has a rough draft of aims but my collaborator had other deadlines-- we will turn back to it after next week.

Quote
3. At least 2, maybe 3, grad student-lead papers submitted by the end of the summer (we'll see, but we do a weekly writing group and they've really gotten in the spirit of writing productivity, so I'm hopeful). Each of these will require multiple rounds of revisions from me.

All three grad students are making good progress and getting me drafts of sections more or less on schedule, with a few delays for analysis issues. I remain optimistic that all three will get submitted by the end of August. And one of them just got a really easy R&R on a paper we submitted this spring, so that's paper #4 and should be a quick turn around.

Quote
4. Big, complex collaborative paper with too many cooks in the kitchen (or sometimes no cooks in the kitchen because everyone thinks someone else is cooking). If we at least have the pre-registration done and data files prepped by the end of the summer I'll be happy.

Yah. . . this has been herding cats to add another metaphor. Just getting folks to respond to a scheduling poll is challenging. We'll see.

Quote
5. Last pre-registered paper from completed collaborative study. This is one where we don't believe others' claims and expect null results (but with better methods). If we're right about that it will be hard to publish and not make us any friends. But I don't think I get to talk about good data practices and replicability and then not try to publish things like this.

Zero progress with this-- need to bug collaborator again to look for the missing subjects' data files.

Quote
I'll also be spending a couple of weeks visiting family and friends and hiking in my beloved mountains. Oh, and I'm trying to buy a house. I think this summer is going to require a lot of disciplined efficiency with the work and a lot to caffeine, but I'm excited about most of it.

Visiting family in the mountains next week, visiting friends in the mountains combined with visiting collaborators in August.
House buying was successful much faster than anticipated-- closing at the end of July!

Congratulations on the house!

Too early for me to update.  Things are progressing.

Quote from: darkstarrynight on May 20, 2019, 10:58:36 AM
I have a lot of research projects to catch up on but must also work on my tenure packet this summer while teaching two classes.  Here are some goals!

• Finish longitudinal study analysis, complete manuscript, submit to targeted journal
• Start collecting data for new study if my co-PI will ever respond to my email
• Submit IRB paperwork (finished it today) once my co-PI for this other study will ever respond to my email
• Collect more data for grant project that got extended through next year, yay!
• Hopefully will have abstract selected for special issue and can crank that manuscript out before September

Otherwise, I have one manuscript under review with a former student, a book coming out in August (finishing up editor queries right now), and an article coming out in August/September.  Who knows what else will happen!

• Finish longitudinal study analysis, complete manuscript, submit to targeted journal

In progress, at least!

• Start collecting data for new study if my co-PI will ever respond to my email

Started yesterday, moving along well!

• Submit IRB paperwork (finished it today) once my co-PI for this other study will ever respond to my email

Got IRB approval, met with colleague today to get this rolling!

• Collect more data for grant project that got extended through next year, yay!

Seems impossible, but this was a two-campus project and my data link at my institution just took a job at the other one, so not all hope is lost.

• Hopefully will have abstract selected for special issue and can crank that manuscript out before September

Almost done with manuscript (after abstract was selected) and it is two more than two months before the deadline for it, yahoo!

Great progress darkstarrynight!

Today was the day for making sure the grad students productively work on their projects while I'm on vacation next week

Grad student #1 resubmitted the R&R paper today, after a day long panic attack yesterday that she'd done the original analyses wrong, which I could have told her right away she had not, but she didn't tell me until today because she was so stressed and re-ran them all just in case. So we had a little talk about how she should just talk to me instead of panicking alone next time, and all is now well in her world again. She leaves for a month in collaborator's lab this week working on new analyses.

Grad student #2 has her marching orders for while I'm gone next week. I dearly hope I will come back to a coherent full draft from her at long last. Poor middle grad-child--She tries hard, it just takes her longer and a lot more scaffolding than the other two.

Grad student #3 sets her own marching orders months in advance and then systematically carries them all out. She is really super easy to mentor, so I have to be careful to remember she's just finished her first year and not to neglect her. Fully expect to come back to a draft from her.

Quote from: AvidReader on June 06, 2019, 05:21:30 AM
I'm finishing a book project and sending it to the first of what I expect will be many publishers. My goal is to have a polished draft by the last day of June. Fingers crossed!

HAHAHAHA. Nope. Not at all. I finished my rough draft in mid-June, and had hoped to edit a chapter every day (I have many little chapters) for the rest of the month. Instead, most chapters are taking 1-2 days. I have four left, plus a list of changes that I am quietly assembling that will take more time than the polishing. Then I need to read everything aloud.

My new goal is to send it to a copyeditor by the last day of July, to start the new project then, and to look at the edited suggestions whenever they come back a few weeks later.

But I've just received positive reviews of my proposal and sample chapter from a press, with good suggestions for revision, so I'm feeling confident and motivated at the moment.

AR.

I'm still stuck on Five's paper, but she's nagging for reference letters and over sharing so I'm getting more motivated to make progress.

Well, my archive has moved nearly everything I came here to look at "into process" for a new collection. I walked into the stacks to find boxes tied up with string, and lots of empty shelving. I've written to the head archivist to offer any help I can in processing the materials, if I may also look at them while I'm here. This has worked for me in the past... but there is an even-money possibility I'm actually here for an 8-week vacation.

Quote from: nescafe on July 04, 2019, 11:07:15 AM
Well, my archive has moved nearly everything I came here to look at "into process" for a new collection. I walked into the stacks to find boxes tied up with string, and lots of empty shelving. I've written to the head archivist to offer any help I can in processing the materials, if I may also look at them while I'm here. This has worked for me in the past... but there is an even-money possibility I'm actually here for an 8-week vacation.

Wow!  I'd be livid.

Gutting.

Had you been in touch before, and no-one told you? Or has it always been easy to just go in and do the work?

I do know that particular pain....

I regularly visit a particular manuscript in France at a town library where they know me and practically meet me at the door with the book in its box.

One year, however, I'd neglected to call or write in advance (wasn't certain my schedule would let me get there that year) and then saw a window of opportunity, so I hopped the train down from Paris.

Oops.

The archivist met me at the door, but not with "my" book. Instead she explained that "The Beaux Arts" (national group in charge of art treasures) had come in to do a display in the foyer--and locked "my book" in a glass case to which no-one local was allowed to have a key.

I made do--there are a dozen other books to work from--but the kicker was getting to see "my manuscript" locked in its case with its interpretive card--which was a translation of something I'd written a few years earlier for a presentation I gave, coordinated by the local library...

And at least it was open to one of the pages I needed to photograph...

But I've (mostly) learned my lesson, not to go expecting to see something without checking to be sure it's not on loan for an exhibition elsewhere, out for rebinding, being archived (as you found) or...locked in a case in the foyer for which no-one local has a key...

M.

Quote from: mamselle on July 04, 2019, 04:55:27 PM
Had you been in touch before, and no-one told you? Or has it always been easy to just go in and do the work?

In the country in question, appointments aren't a thing and g*d laughs at your plans. But the good news is that I went back today and met some folks in the special collections dept. They thankfully are happy to let me see some of the items in the working collection, especially if I can help them create a finding aid along the way. A beautiful quid pro quo if you ask me.

But on the other hand, some of the items I located yesterday in the stacks were locked behind a steel gate today, and no one seemed to have the key. So I'll try again Monday for those materials.

I am writing proposals. I've submitted eight pre-proposals and three proposals thus far, have another proposal due next week, and am looking at getting five more proposals out before the end of the year.

It sounds silly to write so many, but a) they won't all hit, and b) it might just take four or five contemporaneous projects to fully fund my summer salary and a couple of grad students.

I feel like I'm in hell.

Quote from: nescafe on July 05, 2019, 04:36:23 AM

Quote from: mamselle on July 04, 2019, 04:55:27 PM
Had you been in touch before, and no-one told you? Or has it always been easy to just go in and do the work?

In the country in question, appointments aren't a thing and g*d laughs at your plans. But the good news is that I went back today and met some folks in the special collections dept. They thankfully are happy to let me see some of the items in the working collection, especially if I can help them create a finding aid along the way. A beautiful quid pro quo if you ask me.

But on the other hand, some of the items I located yesterday in the stacks were locked behind a steel gate today, and no one seemed to have the key. So I'll try again Monday for those materials.

Oooh, yum, yes, we like finding aids...good way of putting two problems together and getting a solution!

Here's hopes the elusive key to the stacks appears as well.

M.

Lecturer in CS at R1:

• two grant proposals (one proposal written and submitted as PI; one collaborative proposal still in the works as CoPI);
• two classes (one class face-to-face; one class online); and
• two education-based grant projects (both complement item 2).

Exciting times!

It's good to be among my people and realize I'm not the only one with too many plans and too little time!

Thanks to my college's odd quarter-semester schedule, I've finished over a month of vacation and have another 40 or so days left to go. (Yes, we have a *really* strange schedule and *very* short regular semesters -- although we meet for more hours during said semester). I've already managed to finish a very difficult revise-and-resubmit (which needed a whole new analysis, which in turn needed a heavily revised intro/discussion) and started on a new grant-funded study where I shepherd a small group of undergrads through their first research project.

In my remaining time, I would like to:

1. Finish off that grant-funded study -- which requires my teaching 4 more weeks of class (albeit only at 3 hours a week), co-creating a research survey with the students, getting them to finish their CITI training, and ushering the survey through the local IRB;

2. Finish an invited book chapter on pedagogy that's due in early September;

3. Do reliability analysis for two massive quant studies that I've coded already;

4. Revise and resubmit a previously rejected paper that I've already worked on to some degree.

5. Revise my courses for Fall 2019 -- mostly by tweaking the syllabi so I have far less grading to do during the semester. (First year hubris made me assign far more papers than I should have and oh boy do I regret it dearly).

6. Start up a fellowship application for submission early in the Fall semester -- I need that time off from teaching, damn it!

7. Maybe find some personal time...

God, does the summer grind get any more easy once you're past the early tenure-track years? Pase tell me things stop being so hectic eventually!

I am plowing through a bunch of things but am excited because my first book's publication date got moved up and it is less than a month away!

In order of closeness to completion:

1. Finish up edits on two papers and send off to coauthors for comments (then submission when comments are done). One paper is done; the next might be done by tomorrow.

2. Get grant pre-proposal submitted

3. Rewrite (once again) The Paper That Wouldn't Die

4. Install in the lab my big piece of very fancy equipment that my department bought for me because the end of the fiscal year somehow left them with an extra 30k and they decided to buy me toys with it. That was a very nice email to get!

Checking in.

Several gravestones started. 60 more to do for this chapter.

At least the archives with access to the online state deeds and probate records are super-cooled for the sake of the books.

Not so great in winter, but very pleasant right now...

M.

Well, I'm down to four major things that have to be done before September 15:

1. Write the last instrument for the grant pilot study and submit grant pilot IRB
2. Rewrite and resubmit the article that was rejected
3. Five's paper
4. Three conference proposals and a full board IRB

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on May 20, 2019, 11:45:45 AM
I'm teaching all summer, with just two weeks off in which I'm expected to perform 74 hours of service. Sigh.


Still, there are a few modest goals:

• Write a piece for a special issue to which I was invited.
• Sort out what's going on with Prize Pub (i.e. remind them to publish it, fix it up a bit).
• Revise Rejected Paper, and get it back under consideration/finally published.
• Make real progress on book (i.e. 1-2 chapters).

There shouldn't be any trouble accomplishing the first three. That last one, though...

I just sent in my paper for the special issue. Not bad, on the whole, since I had to prep and teach two classes at the same time, look for additional work, and had to read the whole book the contribution is based on before I could even write it. I'm pretty pleased.

I've sorted out some stuff with the publisher for my prize essay, too. I'll give it a few tweaks this coming week, and send it in.


Beyond that... I have two papers that I'm keen to revise and get back out into the world by the end of this coming week, now that I've got the writing bug again. After that, there's progress to be made on two co-authored pieces, and the stupid book. Which I should just buckle down and do, especially while I'm still in writing mode.

Looking forward to crossing off more of that list!

Quote from: aside on May 20, 2019, 07:58:01 AM
I'm loosely in the humanities, so no lab, but I suspect I also will be chuckling at my list:

Complete a critical edition and get it to the publisher.

Check proofs of two forthcoming articles.

Complete paper for summer conference.

Complete and submit one article.

Complete paper for fall conference.

Complete proposal for another fall conference.  [accepted, so another paper to write]

Compose in my spare time.

Making progress on my overly optimistic list.  Making significant progress on all projects even if not all will be completed.