As some of you may have noticed (to quote Major League, “in case you haven’t noticed—and judging by the attendance, you haven’t…”), it’s been quite awhile since I last posted, and even longer since I was blogging with any frequency.
First, I should apologize for my delinquency (especially to Dan, Ethan, and the other permaPrawfs). Moving and getting settled into my new digs (both personal and professional) has taken a lot more energy and effort than I was expecting, and blogging has been the first and most consistent casualty. In the process, I’ve lost the chance to discuss topics ranging from the decline and resurgence of the Mets to the conviction of Jose Padilla, although my thoughts on the latter are available here. (And my thoughts on the former can be summed up in one word: Ped-ro!)
As much as logistics have gotten in the way, I’ve also been really busy writing, which brings me to the substantive topic I wanted to bring up: The pitfalls of over-committing as a junior prawf (a.k.a., how I spent the summer of 2007).
With luck, at some point, most of us junior prawfs will start receiving invitations to speak at conferences, symposia, luncheons, and the like. Regardless of when they start arriving, it is tempting for those of us looking to get our name (and, more importantly, our work) out there to accept every little offer that comes across our desk, especially if, like me, you don’t have external familial constraints limiting your ability to travel. Conferences and symposia are great opportunities to meet like-minded peers and colleagues, to catch up with old friends in places you don’t usually go, and to otherwise get out and see the world.
- Plan ahead. Perhaps the biggest mistake I made was not having in my head an idea of how many conferences (and papers) I could commit to in advance. Thus, I recommend deciding in advance the maximum number of invitations you will accept for a semester (or academic year). That way, you can avoid the problem of having each successive invitation sound more intriguing than the previous invitation, at the risk of finding yourself committed to more than you can handle.
Factors to keep in mind are your teaching schedule, your summer plans, and the amount of time you expect it will take to complete the relevant project (which, if you’re me, is usually at least twice as long as you project).
- Timing matters. In two different senses, be sensitive to the timing of the invitations you accept. First, try not to schedule too many presentations in the same time period. I ended up at one point last spring with three different presentations in three time zones in seven days. I certainly enjoyed the boost to my frequent flier miles, but have reaped the consequences in other ways. Second, try to get a sense of when any expected drafts will be due. I was a little lucky this summer in that my deadlines were fairly well spread out, but it’s not unrealistic to ask in advance when the editors expect that requested drafts will be expected.
- Be sensitive to your institutional responsibilities. This, I think, is the trickiest point. On one hand, any school will be excited by the prospect of their junior faculty getting “out there” and representing the institution at these conferences and symposia. On the other hand, though, missing almost every workshop because you’re out of town might lead your more judgmental colleagues to conclude that you’re much more serious about your own professional development than you are about the intellectual life of your home institution. This may or may not be true, but it is certainly not the impression you want to leave. I lucked out last spring, but only because I had already told my colleagues I was leaving for American, and so they considered me as having one foot out the door already, anyway…
I should say that I don’t mean by any of this to demean my own experience. I had a really good time last spring, and thoroughly enjoyed all of the various events in which I was privileged to participate. I also will (grudgingly) admit to having enjoyed each of the papers I’ve worked on this summer, even if I didn’t necessarily enjoy them the most while I was racing to meet a deadline. In addition, I also recognize that this is a “good problem to have,” since I’m sure some of our prawf readers are not invited to nearly as many events/conferences/symposia as they should be. I don’t doubt for a second that popularity as a prawf is a good thing, but I also think it’s possible to have too much of this particular good thing.
In hindsight, I can see how junior prawfs would easily blunder into some of the same errors I did without thinking things through, and wanted to try to provide some advice in advance. After all, what’s worse than not having enough time to blog???
Posted by Steve Vladeck on September 3, 2007 at 08:38 PM
Comments
Trevor — Fair enough! I guess the point of disagreement between us is merely as to degree, but I certainly agree that the choice isn’t always consequential. Indeed, I think the larger point of the post was that even when the choice is _substantively_ inconsequential, it can still make one’s life a lot more difficult than one might predict…
🙂
Posted by: Steve Vladeck | Sep 5, 2007 8:54:59 AM
Hi Steve: I certainly agree that the risks of writing symposium pieces *on top of* a good amount of high quality “regular” scholarshp aren’t so serious — not serious at all, I would think. I had understood the “writing is writing” point to refer to the issue of writing symposium pieces *in lieu* of regular stuff.
As to doing that, I agree that a symposium piece *can* be every bit as serious as non-symposium stuff, and that it *can* be recognized as such. Your own work amply proves that, I think. And I certainly didn’t mean to suggest there’s any real risk you’ll be proven wrong as to your own choices here. There isn’t, I’m sure.
But I guess my point is that you may be something of an exception to the rule. There will always be such exceptions, but as a general matter, even holding quantity, quality, etc. of the piece constant, I think the choice between symposium and non-symposium writing isn’t always inconsequential.
Posted by: Trevor Morrison | Sep 5, 2007 8:16:30 AM
Trevor — Thanks for this. I guess I agree with you if the choice were as between a symposium article and a regular article. But my sense is that often, folks like us are writing these symposium pieces _on top of_ “regular” scholarship, and so the concerns you raise vis-a-vis tenure consideration won’t be quite as serious.
To be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that a 20-page symposium piece is equivalent to a 65-page “regular” article; far from it. But I do believe that symposium articles _can_ often be just as serious scholarship as the regular ones, and that, in _those_ cases, my own experience is that the concern that we might be punished for publishing as part of a symposium are a bit overstated. I hope not to be proven wrong… 🙂
Posted by: Steve Vladeck | Sep 5, 2007 12:25:01 AM
Nice post, Steve. But one quibble. Re the choice to devote time to solicited symposium pieces rather than unsolicited work, you say that you “don’t know that this is a big deal _professionally_, since writing is, at least for most schools, writing.” I don’t purport to know what’s true for most schools, but I do think that for at least some places, this might not be right.
There are a few different concerns here. First, although things can vary a lot depending on the topic of the symposium and the name of the journal, my sense is that many academics tend to pay somewhat less attention to symposium pieces than “full” articles. This might be due in part to an assumption — often unjustified, I’m sure, but I think it’s there — that symposium pieces tend to be rather more superficial than regular articles, and therefore are unlikely to represent an author’s best work.
Second, in at least some cases the student editors who convene the symposium may actively encourage the authors to contribute rather short pieces, the better to accommodate everyone’s contribution within the journal’s space limitations. And at some schools, the relative shortness of such pieces might cause them to carry less weight with tenure committees and the like. Indeed, at some places it might even be the case that two or more shortish symposium pieces would count for less than a single “full” article. (I think this is so even with the recent, welcome, preference of most law reviews for somewhat shorter articles.)
Third, some people may be inclined to give less credit for solicited symposium pieces in fancy journals than they would for unsolicited full articles in such journals, on the theory that solicited symposium pieces don’t have to survive the competition of the regular submission process.
I should be clear that I don’t mean to defend any of the above-described points as persuasive. The third one in particular strikes me as fairlysilly. But silly or not, my point is simply that these and similar factors may well affect some schools’ evaluation of a person’s work. And if that’s right, then it won’t always be the case that “writing is writing.”
I should also note that none of this is meant to apply to Steve’s own work, which I (and many others) like very much. It’s certainly possible to write excellent, full articles that appear as symposium pieces, and for those pieces to get all the attention and admiration they deserve. But that’s not to say there’s no risk attached to choosing symposium pieces over unsolicited articles. Especially for us untenured folk, as a general rule I think it’s prudent (though not necessarily fatal in every individual case) not to place too many eggs in the symposium basket.
Posted by: Trevor Morrison | Sep 4, 2007 10:18:34 PM
Yeah, over-committing is a hazard of an otherwise nice element of the job: almost total discretionary control over our work. I badly overcommitted the summer after my 1st yr — the summer when I had to do two new fall course preps, I took on a 2d Circuit appeal, joined the board of a local nonprofit, and was primary caretaker of my newborn daughter… and by July was getting visions of a butt-kicking from the Dean for doing nothing with my summer research grant. One thing I did that really helped: I was able to recycle some of my other work (i.e., the appellate briefing) into a quick law review article that justified my summer research grant. I think there’s a lot of recycling of outside work into law review articles that can be done, which is one way to mitigate the panic of, “aaagh, I overcommitted and now won’t publish enough for tenure.”
Posted by: Scott Moss | Sep 4, 2007 10:34:30 AM
Orly — I think you’re right that another of the perils is the impact that external projects can have on your own unsolicited work. I have an article I would’ve loved to submit this fall, but knew, by early June, that there was just no way I’d have enough time to put into it… I don’t know that this is a big deal _professionally_, since writing is, at least for most schools, writing. But it might impact the timeliness of one’s work, especially where the unsolicited project is on an issue of current (and perhaps passing) importance…
Posted by: Steve Vladeck | Sep 4, 2007 10:06:14 AM
Steve, reading this post, i almost thought for a second that i had written it in my sleep – thanks for apologizing [on “our” behalf?] to dan and ethan — with over-committing comes the guilt of not meeting deadlines; not blogging “enough”, and seriously, much worse, the guilt of being away from your kids, for example, on labor day weekend [yes, we booked a babysitter for a couple of hours this morning, because we each needed some time in the office during a long, beginning of the semester weekend. i think though that another thing you allude to in the post is the balance between your own projects, driven purely by your interests at the moment and the solicited papers which are tempting but always prove to be more work than you initially thought they would be.
Posted by: Orly Lobel | Sep 3, 2007 11:28:38 PM