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GOOD NEWS! My novel got picked up by a small genre publisher. I’m very excited. The good news arrived during our family’s weeklong getaway to our home away from home, and this is the third year in a row that I’ve received good news while there (the previous two years involved grant money). So, the home away from home is officially a magical place. 

On Tuesday, after Labor day, I will reveal the cover and post the sign-up sheet for ARCs (advance review  copies) for the sequel to Academaze. Trust me, it will be awesome—less a cool didactic breeze and more a maelstrom of midcareer rage. 

I taught all summer, so I am starting a new semester, with a teaching overload and seven gajillion committees, not actually rested. However, the aforementioned weeklong getaway (which I’ve enjoyed more than any vacation in recent memory, and not just because of the novel-acceptance news) did lift my spirits some.  

Not long ago, I attended the abstract-sorting meeting for a conference with a significant industry presence, which was also reflected by the program-committee composition. It felt like the Twilight Zone. I was shocked by: a) the degree to which the expertise of colleagues who submitted abstracts was questioned, as if all those PhD-holding scientists are somehow idiots while those who happened to serve on the committee were imbued with uncommon wisdom by virtue of said service; b) dismissal of interesting, exciting abstracts for reasons of unbelievable pedantry and pettiness; c) people who themselves do pretty unremarkable work being the most negative and dismissive judges of the work of others; d) it is a conflict of interest to read and score a paper where the author is someone from your institution you’ve never heard of but who’d author number seven out of fifteen total, yet it is somehow not a conflict of interest  to read and score a paper coauthored by your former student or postdoc; e) the part I cannot get over is that we had room to accept half a dozen abstracts more than we did, there was still room in the schedule, and I was the only one who advocated that we go back and look again at some declined abstracts that were close—we had a ton of good papers, not that you’d know from all the draconian slashes— because in my apparently unpopular view it is a good thing to have more  people come and present their work, only for my suggestions to be met with complete incredulity. The whole thing had the feeling of an NSF panel, if the panel were at its absolute pettiest, most destructive limit. But an NSF panel will always, always rally around funding as many proposals as possible. If the program director suddenly said, “We have money for two more,” even the most obnoxious panelists would come together with a consensus to recommend two more for funding. 

Anyway, I think I might be temporarily burned out on reviewing other people’s work. 

How’s the end of your summer going, blogosphere? Anything you loved/hated this summer? Anything you’re eagerly awaiting or dreading this fall?