Thursday, July 17, 2003
A Peer-Reviewed Article
It 10:05 am. I dropped the kids off at my mom's this morning. It sounds simple but there are so many steps involved -- dress the kids, pack the bag with bottle, diapers, bathing suit, and pacifier (10 minutes), get them into the car with Steve's help, drive there ( 20 minutes), make sure all is well (30 mintues), drive back (45 minutes with traffic over the bridge), parallel park badly (takes three times), nuke some old coffee, and fire up the computers. Now I'm home 2-1/2 hours later. I have to remember to go back downstairs in a half an hour to do the alternative side of the street dance. Still haven't had a shower or breakfast.
While I was waiting to make sure that the kids were going to be cooperative, I talked with my dad about this article I'm working on. I'm taking two chapter of my dissertation, 60 pages of genius, and whittlng it down to 20. The whittling is hard enough because it is difficult to hit the delete key on something that it took so long to write. But I'm also trying to get it to comform with main-stream political science. I can only do so much because my work is not statistical. One guy said that by doing interviews I was "on the fringes of the discipline". Without any regression analysis, I am not going to get published in the APSR, the main journal of political scientists and bedtime reading for the sleepless. A typical article might be on the effects of term limits in the Nevada state legislature from 1945-1946. Snore.
But I have to try to get something published in a peer-reviewed journal in order to get a job some day. The plan is to stay home for another year or two with the kids, and then find a position teaching in a college with very low standards. I want to teach in the morning, and then hit playground by 3:00.
To get this job with low expectations, I have to put something on the resume other than adjuncting. You don't get hired to be a college professor based on teaching experience, which seems totally insane. If you are a good plumber then you are hired as a plumber, not because you do something else well. If you have experience editing books, you get a job as an editor, not because you knit well.
It 10:05 am. I dropped the kids off at my mom's this morning. It sounds simple but there are so many steps involved -- dress the kids, pack the bag with bottle, diapers, bathing suit, and pacifier (10 minutes), get them into the car with Steve's help, drive there ( 20 minutes), make sure all is well (30 mintues), drive back (45 minutes with traffic over the bridge), parallel park badly (takes three times), nuke some old coffee, and fire up the computers. Now I'm home 2-1/2 hours later. I have to remember to go back downstairs in a half an hour to do the alternative side of the street dance. Still haven't had a shower or breakfast.
While I was waiting to make sure that the kids were going to be cooperative, I talked with my dad about this article I'm working on. I'm taking two chapter of my dissertation, 60 pages of genius, and whittlng it down to 20. The whittling is hard enough because it is difficult to hit the delete key on something that it took so long to write. But I'm also trying to get it to comform with main-stream political science. I can only do so much because my work is not statistical. One guy said that by doing interviews I was "on the fringes of the discipline". Without any regression analysis, I am not going to get published in the APSR, the main journal of political scientists and bedtime reading for the sleepless. A typical article might be on the effects of term limits in the Nevada state legislature from 1945-1946. Snore.
But I have to try to get something published in a peer-reviewed journal in order to get a job some day. The plan is to stay home for another year or two with the kids, and then find a position teaching in a college with very low standards. I want to teach in the morning, and then hit playground by 3:00.
To get this job with low expectations, I have to put something on the resume other than adjuncting. You don't get hired to be a college professor based on teaching experience, which seems totally insane. If you are a good plumber then you are hired as a plumber, not because you do something else well. If you have experience editing books, you get a job as an editor, not because you knit well.
