If you need some encouragement to write that article you’ve been thinking about for years, consider the dying thoughts of the narrator of Hemingway’s Snows of Kilimanjaro: “Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.”
Posted by Lyrissa Lidsky on February 26, 2010 at 03:47 PM
Comments
Thanks Jack. The 4T journal is telling me that if i come back after the deadline they would likely offer me publication if* there’s space left. I would imagine that all slots would not be full after one week; that’s what I hoping anyway.
Posted by: anon | Feb 27, 2010 9:02:14 PM
Anon,
A 4th tier placement will always be available, if not now, in the fall or some other time. Reputationally, one top 15 placement is worth an infinite number of 4th tier placements (except in meeting an absolute requirement, like 3 articles for tenure). So: Whatever the Top 15’s process is (they are all different), go for it.
Posted by: Jack | Feb 27, 2010 1:54:51 PM
On this topic (somewhat)I’ll throw my hat in, as I’m in a bit of a pickle and I’m hoping folks here can help out.
I’ve never published. I have an offer to publish my first article; it’s from a “4th tier” school’s law review. Several days after receiving that offer, I was contacted by an editor at a law review from a top 15 school, who notified me that his office would not be able to decide whether to make me an offer by the expedite request date. The editor advised me to obtain a one week extension from the 4T school since I had made it past the T-15 school’s “initial phase” of review; i.e., he was suggesting that attempting to obtain an extension from the T4 school would be worth my while because I might be in the running for an offer from his office. The T15 school, however, does not want to state more than that I’ve made it past their “initial review.” The T4 school does not want to grant the extension.
Question: might anyone here be able to shine some light on the phases of the selecitn process such that I can better appreciate where I stand in the T15’s process? Does making it past the “initial phase” mean very little, or should I take it to mean that I have an appreciable chance of getting published in the T15 review?
Posted by: anon | Feb 26, 2010 11:28:22 PM
Lyrissa, you’re a treasure to the academy. Thanks for this.
Posted by: Vladimir | Feb 26, 2010 4:28:04 PM
Lyrissa, is this encouragement or a cri de coeur? Is it a statement of joy or despair about your sabbatical? Speaking for myself, I had a very productive teaching leave last semester, but can attest that all of that time spent in lost one’s own thoughts or staring at a page, sometimes blank and sometimes full, can, to paraphrase Max Fischer, do funny things to a person. Remember — TV is therapy.
Posted by: Paul Horwitz | Feb 26, 2010 4:00:29 PM