Monday, March 10, 2008

Back on the job

Spring break is officially over, and today I was back on campus to get work done. My advisor had re-committed me to devoting Mondays and Fridays to my own work (not homework or work for him), so I tried it today. It went pretty well. Aside from a few minor tasks, I managed to focus. (When an assignment has to be walked over by noon to a professor's physical mailbox across campus, what are you going to do? You're going to do it, Monday or not.)

I spent most of the day editing an article. It's been rejected twice. Ironically, the place I'm submitting it this time is probably the best fit. To meet their word count, though, I needed to shave about 1000 words off. I went through it twice; some of the cuts were low-hanging fruit and others were more difficult. The funny thing is, I had thought it was decently written, but this time around I was dissatisfied with my writing. Shortening it up strengthened it considerably. It probably needs one more pass through, and my dissertation chair has offered to read it in a few days when he gets back from a trip. After he looks at it, I will heave it once again into the submission pile.

I also spent some time running Stata for a conference presentation that I'm turning into a journal article. I did this on my laptop, but it's a huge mound of data, and for the future it would be better to use the library's computers. I just have to find out when the lab is reserved and when it's free.

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