Good Enough

After my prospectus was approved in May, I moved forward with my dissertation research as best as I could. I've also been preparing for the infamous academic job market by publishing work and creating documents I'll need in the future now. This post is about the academic highs and lows I've experienced in the last two months.

the best thing I could hope to hear from editors

Proposals

One way to get published is to respond to #CFPs (calls for proposals) advertised on field listservs and academic websites such as https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/ . In the last year, I've seen a lot of #CFPs for research I have done or am working on; there have been #CFPs on mental health, labor issues, generative AI, writing politics, and rhetorics of health and medicine. I've sent many a proposal with mixed results. I'd say about half of my proposals have been accepted for publication and half have been rejected with the typical "This is good research but we had overwhelming amounts of proposals so we are rejecting yours at this time." If you'll recall my overwhelming rejection sensitivity in academia and labor, you are probably aware of the fact that each rejection hits me hard. Still, I find the need to continue working on some of my texts in hopes that they'll be accepted next time I send them out whether that is to a journal directly or to a #CFP.

Publications

Publication processes can be very exhausting. You create your proposal, submit it to the #CFP waiting for their acceptance or rejection, then are given a date for the draft to be submitted for editing and revision. Afterwards, you have time to revise and resubmit for final edits. Then, you wait. It's a lot of nervousness, waiting for criticism and hoping it is light. So far, I've been blessed to have minimal revisions.

Of those #CFPs above that accepted my proposal, I am now working on four. The first one was submitted in February and got minimal feedback for revisions in June, so now I must wait for publication edits and feedback for revision there. The second one was submitted in June and I have until October to make some minor revisions. The third one was submitted in June and I submitted final revisions last week. The fourth was accepted in June and I have until October to submit a draft for revision.

Every time I get an acceptance or minimal revisions, I feel lighter. I feel like I'm earning my place in academia and my fields of research interest. According to these four articles and book chapters that have been accepted, my first article-length publications will be on graduate student labor, writing & religion, graduate student mental health, and neurodivergence & AI use. These are all areas I'm proud to research, each with its unique correlations to my own experiences as a graduate student with mental illness and religious abuse. I can't wait to share my publications with people and hear what they have to say in response to my ideas in the fields. Currently, I'm keeping a lot of these vague as there has been scooping in my university recently and I don't want my research to be scooped before I publish. When my works have been published, I'll share them then.

Scholarships

I have been more fortunate than most when it comes to getting scholarships. It's part of the reason why I got interested in teaching and writing grant proposals. I graduated debt-free from my undergraduate institution because of my various scholarships. I also got paid to do the teaching credential program because I was the only person who applied for a specific scholarship. Graduate school has been more challenging to fund. I apply to a few local scholarships that tend to support me years after year; I couldn't be more thankful to have organizations from my hometown support me.

This last year, I received one of the largest scholarships I've ever applied for. It isn't enough for me to quit teaching while I do my dissertation research, but it's enough to make sure I don't starve and can afford my upcoming surgery while in graduate school. Each time, I feel so humbled. I feel so seen. I hope to make each person funding me proud. I think I will once my work is finished and published.

Fellowships

Fellowships have been more difficult for me. They tend to be larger than most scholarships, and offer more funding than scholarships. I keep hoping and applying for them; my goal was to get one that would fund me enough to not require me to teach while working on my dissertation research this academic school year and be able to offer financial incentives to research participants. It hasn't happened yet.

I've asked of my writing program, my graduate program, my department, my college, and the graduate school. None have been able to help me. I recently applied for a university-wide fellowship; I checked my application multiple times and had it revised by over four people. It was rejected in favor of someone a year under me. That email cut through me and has haunted my attempts to sleep for the last two weeks. The fellowship was supposed to be in order to help people finish degrees on time... I would have hoped that I'd have priority over someone under me who has another year of funding left while I don't. It also hurts knowing I'm on the hunt for research participants while their dissertation does not require such. My rejection sensitivity slithers into the front of my mind and whispers what will hurt me most: You can't compete with her. You're not good enough. Your research is not good enough. Your work and service to the field are not good enough. Your writing is not good enough. Your personality is not good enough. You cannot change, and thus will never ever be good enough.

Last week, these whispers were so heavy on me that I didn't write my blog post. All I could hear were those whispers. Even with all my proposals and publications, money still hurts me most. If I can't make money doing what I do, perhaps all I've done in academia will be worthless. It hurts more when the people succeeding are not nice people, are not good people, and people in power know and still support them while the rest of us flounder under stress. I'm making progress; that's for sure. But man, is the road to dissertation research bumpy.

#academia #IDMD #IDisappointMyDad #publishing #scholarship #fellowship #rejectionsensitivity #research