invitation - co-guest editor for special issue journal

[adel9216]

you may laugh all the way you want, but that book is going to be published soon. And I'm still making progress on my degree.

I reiterate, I should have not asked that question to strangers who know nothing about me as a graduate student.

And a book aimed at a general audience or undergraduates published as a graduate student does little to advance your career goals to be a professor. With all the free time you seem to have, you should be done with your PhD. But, you're right, we don't know you as a student, so we can only base our advice on the students we've interacted with.

Most of us have had students who will claim to be "making progress on [their] degree," but are taking longer than they should because they lack focus, and those distractions ultimately hurt their career prospects. Maybe you're different, but it's likely that you're not, and we have nothing but your protestations to believe otherwise. Protestations we have all heard before from students who have gone on to fall flat on their face. You have been amply cautioned numerous times on this forum, but, ultimately, that your and your advisor's problem, not ours. We are simply communicating that this is not the normal path to follow, and you do so at your own peril.

Take a step back, and think about what your goals are, and focus on the things that will actually help you achieve them. You trying to convince us that you can defy the academic laws of physics does not advance any obvious goals.

That's not the advice I have received from my mentors and professors in my field. Back off.

Then stop asking for advice on the forum if all you want to hear is already provided by the mentors and professors in your field. If a tenure-track assistant professor in my department wasted their time on kind of things you've chosen to occupy your time with, I would question their judgement too, and wonder if they were poorly advised and mentored about what a research university values. The fact that you've chosen to do this as a graduate student makes me wonder about the quality of advice that you're receiving, and whether that is consistent with your career goals.

The advice you received last year with regards to your book idea was nearly universal, that it should be sidelined until you completed your dissertation. At that time, you assured us that the message was received, clearly it was not. Look for affirmation somewhere else.

I know multiple graduate students who have published books before or during their graduate studies and it served their career very well.
Your advice is a bit out-dated.


Bye, I'm out of here

[Ruralguy]

Just keep in mind if you accept this assignment:

1. You will get more than one full prof submitting something that is worse than your typical student's term paper or even just a weekly paper. You will have to struggle with them to get them to re-write, or have you re-write.

2. You will get more than one full prof saying "the dog ate my homework" (computer crashed, had a health crisis, etc.).

3. You may have an editor arguing with you about your choices or telling you that they have to kill the entire thing...too bad...so sad.

So, more than whether this is a good or bad choice or whether Mleok was mean,
ask yourself whether or not you are ready, willing and able to deal with this crud.

[ciao_yall]

Bye, I'm out of here

Are you sure you aren't the same acquaintance who is trying to pick a fight with me on Facebook? And when I started ignoring them, they PM'd my spouse complaining about how meeeaaannnnn I was to them?

Bye yourself.

[jerseyjay]

(1) I have never edited a special issue of a journal. However, I am in the process of co-editing a volume, which I think has some overlap with a journal issue. It is quite a bit of work--tracking down late entries, asking people to rewrite theirs, telling people they do not fit in the scope of the book, dealing with the press, adjudicating peer reviewers, etc. And there is very little "reward" for this; it does not really count for tenure, and probably not for applying for a job either. Honestly, if you have enough time to do this, it might be better spent otherwise (finishing your dissertation sooner, publishing an article, applying for work).

One of our co-editors was a graduate student finishing up his thesis. He had publishing experience before graduate school, but also made it clear that he was going to need to pull out of the editing for several months to finish his dissertation. I am an assistant professor (not yet tenured) and normally I wouldn't do this, but I had just published a book and met the other requirements of tenure so this is a feather in my cap but not the cap itself.

(2) The reasons that many journals won't approach a graduate student to do this includes (a) most graduate students do not have the professional network to do this; (b) most graduate students do not have the time to do this; (c) since most graduate students have not finished their dissertations yet, it is not sure if they have the competency to do this; (d) there is an understanding that most graduate students would be advised not to do this for the reasons explained in this thread, so to ask a graduate student to do this would seem, well ignorant or desperate. None of this is meant to disparate the quality of the actual graduate student.

(3) You do not need to agree with the advice you get here. Sometimes it pays to go against conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is conservative and sometimes it is too limiting. But getting into a snit doesn't seem to be particularly productive. Ask a question, get  your response, and do what you will.

[mleok]

I know multiple graduate students who have published books before or during their graduate studies and it served their career very well.
Your advice is a bit out-dated.

Then get your advice from these students instead, clearly you're too hip and cool for the likes of us.

[theteacher]

Then get your advice from these students instead, clearly you're too hip and cool for the likes of us.

Why do you still engage in this Byzantine discussion? You're so patient.
I hope my supervisor had such patience. I was once kicked outside my supervisor's office for repeating a question twice.

[mleok]

Then get your advice from these students instead, clearly you're too hip and cool for the likes of us.

Why do you still engage in this Byzantine discussion? You're so patient.
I hope my supervisor had such patience. I was once kicked outside my supervisor's office for repeating a question twice.

That's a good question, I try to remind myself to never be more invested in the success of my students than they are, but sometimes I forget.

[mamselle]

I've been pondering the balance issues here; I'm recalling three moments in particular when something about listening and taking in the input that a more experienced or better-read correspondent had to offer came up for me, or for others I was in touch with.

1. One was at the Bib. Nat. when I was just starting my thesis work. I had (mistakenly) been working from a premise that had been disproven--but I didn't know it yet because my coursework in that area was general and I was just starting to do the more incisive readings that proved some of that 'everyone knows'/general information had been superceded.

I was asking one of the (rare, American, thus English-speaking) reference foiks there about the manuscript page I was working on, and didn't catch a correction they'd made to my assumption about when monasteries were doing book production: 'my' MS was more likely later, when the commercial Paris book houses were in full swing. A couple minutes later, I repeated a conclusion based on my incorrect assumption, and asked about it.

The reference person got VERY frosty, pulled herself up, and (we were, after all, speaking in English, so there was no way I could have misunderstood her), repeated her correction with an "AS I SAID a moment ago," and I blithered an apology, took the correction on board, and learned from it.

It was a wake-up call to the fact that, going forward, my coursework and general understanding of things was going to have to take a back seat to new findings, new inputs, and changing landscapes of informative work. What had been solid suddenly became fluid, which was more exciting, but also more scary.

I couldn't count on knowing what I thought I knew any more.

2) Someone on the old forum, also a grad student about to finish and starting to go into job-seeking mode, somehow fell afoul of a couple of posters in particular, who took exception to the fact that the student was expecting to find a TT position in the humanities straight out of their program, with no interstitial VAP or adjunct positions beforehand.

This was at least 10 years ago, maybe longer, and it was just starting to be accepted that grad students might do that--might, as in this person's case, even NEED to do that, because, bills--and that it might not be out of the range of aspirational possibility that they could land such a job. (In more recent years, that seems to be less an issue in some fields, maybe not all).

Something the student said made me inquire further; turned out I actually knew a mutual scholarly connection, and they not only had a good chance at the job, but it was pretty much already sewn up because of their work on a publication that shortly became very well-known, and was very influential in their sub-field. But the forum wasn't having it; some rather sharp, unkind things were said in the 'asides to the asides' thread that turned out to be wrong.

They're still in that job, in fact; I just noticed in a news release about a related matter, recently. So, we're not always right...and I remind myself of that as well. Even when we're right, we need to be kind; I'm sorry if anything I posted to Adel's attention was unnecessarily unkind, whether out of frustration or any other cause.

3) When I started my work in my minor area, American colonial liturgical arts, with a focus on dec arts and architecture, I was invited to be on the board of one of the relevant national research organizations in that work. I was still a student, and I was strongly considering it, was truly flattered at being asked, and thought of it as an 'in' to getting my work accepted.

Someone in the group (with whom I'm also still in touch) very kindly put me right, noting, "This group expects huge inputs of time and large monetary donations from its board members, and you're not in a position to do either right now. I'd think this over very carefully, and decline politely, and with regrets, so as not to burn bridges if they ask you later, and explain why based on your impecunious student status at present."

I did so, declined with regrets, cited my tenuous financial status (somethings never change, impecunity being one of them) and stayed on good terms with them, did presentations and worked with various group members, and never was asked again (whew!).

Narrative truth in there, somewhere, maybe. Or maybe not, but those are the things that seemed potentially pertinent to me in this discussion in retrospect.

M.

[mleok]

M., I think it should be clear that the advice we give tends to be conservative and generic, simply because we don't know the specifics of any case. As for why we don't take posters at their word to accurately convey why they are exceptions to the conventional wisdom, it's likely because we've encountered students who have protested incessantly that the rules don't apply to them when it turns out that they do. So, we're naturally skeptical and no amount of reassurance will convince us otherwise.

It's always the case that it's ultimately up to the person seeking advice to decide whether to follow them given their unique (and often unrevealed) circumstances. Simply put, there is an information asymmetry to the interaction which causes the people giving advice to err on the side of caution, and short of sending us a copy of their CV and dissertation draft (which I do not recommend), no amount of verbiage from the OP will change the content of our advice.

Or as jerseyjay said,

You do not need to agree with the advice you get here. Sometimes it pays to go against conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is conservative and sometimes it is too limiting. But getting into a snit doesn't seem to be particularly productive. Ask a question, get  your response, and do what you will.

[mamselle]

Agreed, and I've been among those raising the issues against doing the proposed book project, overall.

I was just pondering how that same advice has been helpful to me in the past, as well as the exceptional moment when, not knowing all, the forum had a different take on the issue.

And I still do think it would be wise to demur from the book project.

M.

[Mobius]

How's that dissertation coming along? (More of a rhetorical question, since I have graduate school classmates still struggling to finish years after I did while touting they are editor of such-and-such or working on their latest shiny project)

[mleok]

Publishing a book while in grad school is the freaking worst advice I've ever heard.

Not to mention that the OP is in the social sciences, which typically aren't book fields.

[Ruralguy]

i know its become a bit of a thing in some social science fields to somewhat popularize a dissertation topic from which one has already published papers, and then use that to gain both reputation and income. I saw it work for someone at my school. Also, some fields aren't quite precisely defined as "book" or "article."

[hungry_ghost]

This thread is full of good advice that I wish I had read when, as a postdoc, I undertook to co-edit an edited collection of essays (similar to a journal issue) with a full professor. My co-editor to this day remains a dear friend, but the edited volume was far more work than I'd anticipated and prevented me from doing other work that would have been more effective in advancing my career.

For those of you who offered candid advice, I would like to say thank you--this is what the fora are all about. Bear in mind that others are also reading, and even if the OP rejects every word you've offered, others will also be reading and learning. 

I initially thought to ask OP what they were hoping to learn by asking this question.  In hindsight, I am glad I did not respond until post-GCF, since I undoubtedly would have been attacked, as so many other forumites have already experienced on this thread.

I am very sensitive to tone, and for the most part, the advice given on this thread strikes me as sensible and blunt, but not in any way overstepping or inappropriate. The responses to this well-intentioned advice have approached what I'd describe as abusive.
I hope that the OP can find peace somehow.

[Mobius]

When I started my doctorate program, someone praised a 10th-year ABD who started his own e-journal. You want to guess whether this person finished?