Actually publishing a paper?

If you want to be an academic-type person at a ''research'' university now-a-days, you need to have a few papers published when you apply for a job -- even for an entry-level position.

I have a few papers in various stages of completion, but rightly or wrongly, I've prioritized finishing my Ph.D. Dissertation ahead of that.

However, by Thursday (tomorrow), I need to send in two writing samples to the hiring committee for the job that I'm interviewing for on Monday. The Lady and I both thing that **one** of the two needs to be a criminology-type piece (the other one is an organizational report I wrote last year, as part of my job -- but it's on family-friendly workplaces).

So, I was going to just send in my Master's Thesis. Took a look at it, though, and my writing skills have apparently improved over the last seven (??!!!) years, because there were parts of it that made me cringe.

More importantly, the way I remembered setting up my argument, and the points I remembered making, were not how I actually wrote it. Hm!

So, I've spent the last three days (including today) revising it. The down-side is that it's taking even more time away from my completing my Dissertation. The up-side, however, is that by the time I finish with the revision, it's essentially ready to submit to an academic journal, to see if they want to publish it.

In hindsight, I should've done this **years** ago. Although, arguably, the end-product I'm creating now will be stronger than what I would've had five years ago.


And oddly, I'm finding the writing process fairly enjoyable. A different process than writing my Dissertation, I suppose, because I **know** it's going somewhere useful. Plus, it's shorter and punchier.


--GG