Exactly one year and two months after the day that I graduated with my PhD (having listened to a beautiful commencement address by JK Rowling), I finally submitted my manuscript, which covers a large portion of the work I did during my years in school. The relief was immense, the anticipation dread of the reviewers’ decision is even greater.
There is a perfectly good explanation for why it took me an entire year to complete the manuscript. I couldn’t make myself do it. I couldn’t make myself look at those same gels and graphs yet again, after all the time I spent poring over them before my defense. And then life got in the way, my job search got in the way, a number of episodes of CSI got in the way, and I just wasn’t getting the manuscript ready.
And then I started to feel really bad. I had my degree, but without a publication, it felt empty, not fully mine, or not fully earned. Yes, I have a diploma, but without a first author publication, does it really mean anything? The program I graduated from is one of the few – I think – that doesn’t have a publication requirement for graduation. A number of schools are now requiring one or more first-author paper before they let you out with your degree. I always thought that was ridiculous and barbaric, considering that projects are different, time scales are different, and luck, or luck is so very different for each student. But on the other hand, it sure would be nice to have something to show for my time in grad school besides a thick book and a close up picture of JK Rowling. Something others can refer to, search for, some outside evidence of the work that I did.
Hopefully, my paper will get published and offer me the closure that I have lacked this past year. I am hoping to uncross my fingers soon. They are starting to cramp a little.
Good luck! That “Decision Pending” line is just pure torture…
Wooooo!
Thanks! Just got the reviews back. Think I would have preferred waiting another couple of weeks. Fingers still crossed.
Here’s to hoping Anna! I know exactly what you mean by the way. It was also about a year after my degree was conferred that I was able to finally see my name first on the list of authors. The whole things feels far more real after that.
If it were me, I’d value the pic with JK Rowling much, much more than a published manuscript :)
Robert – The degree definitely feels more solid, more corporeal now that I have a paper in the works. Whether or not it ever actually gets published, it’s nice to know that the effort was made!
Ken – If only it were a picture WITH JK Rowling. I would have literally combusted from happiness and died on the spot. Alas, it was a shot taken from far away, with much zooming. But valuable nonetheless!
Heh—I actually clicked on the link this time. Nonetheless, my comment stands. Just being at the event must have been phenomenal.
I was going to anticipate with “congratulations” but will settle for assuring you that the manuscript will make it in. If not that journal, than another. And your work will be better disseminated than in your thesis.
I went to two Ph.D. programs, both of which extorted two first-author publications in journals of repute (which was left to the discretion of the thesis committee). This stems from good intentions, to enable graduates to have even a shot at getting an academic position, but completely ignores the fact that it’s a very long shot even so, and many other graduates can do other things with their Ph.D. in pocket.
Fittingly, it was the U.S. program that accepted one published, one in press, whereas in France, all the universities not only are very hard-line but also have cracked down on the time allowed to three years, exceptionally four. Mostly because they got their knuckles rapped for allowing students to be enrolled without means to live on, so they must ensure now that all students have a proper fellowship.