Peer Review, Schmeer Review

More and more often, I get back reviews from the two peer reviewers where it's truly hard to know whether they read the same article.  Can the article that one person found to be "lucid and clear" really be the same one that the second reviewer deemed "unacceptable for publication"?

I can't send those conflicting reviews to the writer as instructions for revising his or her work.   What, hey, author X, how about you decide which bits are lucid and which ones are dreck?  Or, you pick which review you like best?  Yeah, right.

I also find myself shaking my head over situations where one reviewer finds the research solidly designed and the other one takes umbrage at the methodology.  Sometimes, you see, the reviewers misunderstand the intent of the article (through no fault of the author).  Or the reviewers don't know as much as they think they do about something.  (gasp)

Reviewing the reviewers, parsing out their biases, and determining their true expertise is onerous.  I think there is also some of the "I-am-reviewing-this-therefore-I-must-nitpick-something" phenonemon, which is sometimes balanced out by the reviewer who only "recommends publication" without further comment.

There are articles that come in and they are well written and clear.  You can just tell that they're going to be published.  There are articles that come in where the language is unreadable or the article is lacking in substance.  Those are easy to reject right away.  But, oh man.  The rest of them.    The rest of them.

  

Why the name change from "Beth 1.9"?  I've been wanting to change it for quite awhile, mostly because the whole 1.9 joke was growing pretty stale, but I wasn't exactly posting here a lot, and hadn't thought of anything better, and so on.  I'm taking part in a reflective writing project right now, and I've realized how much I miss writing.  I'm also fascinated with the ideas and issues surrounding writing for an audience, or not, memory, and I'm back to my old saws of re-reading, re-writing, and by extension, translating. 

Anyway.

While reflecting on the introductory sessions of the reflective practice project face to face meetings, it dawned on me that I had finished my MLS coursework at age 23.  Just turned 46.  This whole "half my life" thing is screwing with my brain a bit.  Okay, a lot.  And by "screwing with my brain" I mean making me think and motivating me and pushing me into some bright lights, out of some corners, luring me into peering over the edge.

Feels good.  It's time.

Reflections on Unit 5

Online learning isn’t for everyone.  It requires a number of skills and traits, including motivation, discipline, organization, ability to read and absorb information, and comfort with technology.  All of those are great things to have or be regardless of the educational setting, of course, but with face to face classes, the setting and presence of others can compensate for what an individual may be lacking.  The materials in the unit provide excellent advice for anyone taking online classes, whether it is for the first time or as a seasoned veteran.   Setting a schedule can be crucial.  Most of us feel extra excitement or motivation when starting something new, and therefore logging in daily or even more frequently during the early part of the semester is common.  Continuing that practice throughout the semester may be less easy to sustain.  The unit also provides concrete tips for bringing organization to one’s time and materials through the use of calendars and folders.

Working in teams is indeed a common event in the workplace.  Ken Haycock’s presentation contains excellent advice on managing the potential chaos that a group can bring to a process.    Haycock’s advice to reflect on one’s own contribution to a team project is solid advice for a variety of situations.  Recognizing which behaviors of others, as he puts it, “really push my buttons” is easy.  Dealing with it is more difficult, and I think many people tend to get angry instead of getting to Haycock’s fourth suggestion, which is to consider how you may need to change the way you work or to increase your tolerance for certain behaviors for the good of the team or the success of the project (slide 7).  Being able to accomplish this takes time, practice and patience. 

Near the end of her presentation, Enid Irwin reminds us that team assignments offer a space for practicing leadership and mentoring (slide 20).   But we need to remember that it also provides us with an opportunity to practice followership, to witness various leadership styles (or dysfunctional behaviors), and to accept mentoring. 

A few thoughts on social networking

I have a love/hate relationship with social networking.  On one hand, I’ve reconnected with people I knew long ago from my hometown.   I’ve even gotten to visit a few of them when I’ve traveled for ALA or other conferences.    It’s been great to have a network of people available to offer sympathy or advice.  It’s a great way to collect cartoons and humorous photos (if you’re on Facebook, and you’re not following George Takei, please rectify that asap).

For awhile, I was keeping Facebook neutral and using my Twitter account for my snarky comments, but even after I locked it down, it eventually dawned on me that it was inappropriate for me (due to my position, for one) to vent about work matters, even among a select group.  And that venting about non-work matters was just as ridiculous.

The “this day in history” feature that Facebook launches before the advent of the timeline made me revisit my thoughts about privacy and what we choose to share.    I had to spend a little time during my December holiday week going through and deleting or suppressing various things on Facebook that I had already done once anyway.   It’s very disconcerting to see references to the ex-husband pop up.   Especially after you thought you’d already cleaned up the online stuff.   I made some tough decisions, and I came through 110% better than ever before.  However, I just don’t want to see that three or four years ago I mentioned him in postings.   Isn’t it my timeline?  Or did posting about my life on Facebook end up resulting in it not being my timeline anymore?

Picking Up a Project, Ten Years Later

In the spring of 1996, I was a disillusioned PhD student who decided to use the MLS I had earned three years earlier and get on with life. I began my first professional position in academic libraries in 1997 but was still occasionally toying with the idea of trying to finish the PhD in comparative literature.

The American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) conference slated for 1998 had a number of attractive attributes: it was being held in Austin, Texas; it was being held jointly with the African Literature Association; and the ACLA had adopted a seminar approach for its conference. Papers were to be arranged in larger groups, and a cohort of scholars would meet together several times instead of just having one-shot panels. My favorite professor at Indiana, Eugene Eoyang, had been one of the forces behind this (at least at the time) novel approach.

I resurrected one of the projects I had been most proud of, sent off the proposal, and was thrilled when it was accepted. The project, entitled “Tangled Tango: The Challenges of Translating Culture,” is an examination of the translation of Manuel Puig’s Boquitas pintadas done by Suzanne Jill Levine. It is a critique of the choices she made in translating – or transforming or shattering and reforming – the cultural references in her version, Heartbreak Tango. (I have posted the paper in the WSU Research Exchange if you're curious, http://hdl.handle.net/2376/2193).

My paper received a mixed reception at the conference. Several senior scholars in attendance were extremely defensive of Levine, and one in particular was trying to be nice as she spoke to me after the panel concluded, but I could see she was clearly taken aback and became extra-condescending when, after handing me one of her cards, I responded in kind, giving her one of the business cards that showed my faculty status (albeit as a librarian), elevating myself from her assumption that I was merely a misguided graduate student.

To be really honest, my pursuit of the PhD was long dead at that point, and I had moved on in a number of ways, but I was 29 years old and had spent a number years on target to finish the PhD before I turned 30. This conference was kind of a last gasp, one last attempt to convince myself I had made the right choice in turning away from literature. A successful experience might have changed everything for me. But I’m glad things have turned out the way they have. While living and working in Massachusetts, I was involved in the Northeast MLA, delivering a paper on Rosario Ferre in Hartford in 2000 and moderating a panel on the Dogma film movement in Toronto in 2001. Since moving to Washington, I have been able to pursue a few more research projects related to literary studies and fiction while prospering in this career I truly enjoy.

Recently, I found myself revisiting some issues related to translation, and out of curiosity began poking around to see if anyone had done anything related to translation and cultural references since my burnout.

Oh. My. Well. I knew it was a good topic, damnit. I have a lot of reading to do, if I so choose.

Interestingly, I’ve turned up a few recent articles raking Levine over some very hot coals, although different ones than I stoked. Basically, Levine has been attacked in some quarters for not being a feminist, or at least not their kind of feminist, which makes me tired, and makes me glad my life in the academy is not caught up in those sorts of petty battles (emphasis on those, ahem), and which puts me in the odd position of feeling sorry for someone who has seriously bugged me for years.

(I really enjoyed one of the essays that goes beyond the feminist angle, though. Andreea Modrea's article uncovered and critiqued Levine’s overabundance of puns, calculating a pattern of usage way above and beyond the original work by Guillermo Cabrera Infante. If you know GCI, you know that is saying a lot. A lot. A whole lot.)

What got me thinking about all of this enough to bother writing it down is that I just ran across a snarky reference to Levine that had been published in 1993. It was just a throw-away line in an intro to an article on a different topic, but I feel mildly vindicated that I wasn’t totally alone in the wilderness in 1998, and mildly annoyed that I had missed finding it back then. Although given that the source of the comment is Douglas Robinson, whose 1991 work The Translator’s Turn was less-than-glowingly reviewed by two giants in translation studies, Rainer Schulte and Andre Lefevre, it wouldn’t have mattered. Citing him wouldn’t have saved me that day with that crowd.

This experience really upset me at the time, more than I would ever admit, and remained firmly stuck in my craw as a reminder of the reasons I am glad I’m not a literature professor. When I first began re-exploring the topic recently, I was struck by some nostalgia and regret, but I think I’m over it now.

2008: A Slow Year for Personal Reading

Only 33 books read in 2008. I’ve been keeping track of what I read since 1997, and this is but a fraction of some past years. On the other hand, in the past, I read a lot of … how shall we put it … less than memorable mysteries. These days, I’m busier with work, I have other hobbies and interests, and I often have lunch with friends instead of holing up by myself and reading. Those seem to be good things. (OK, OK, I admit that many days I don’t read while I eat lunch because I’m catching up on email, but still….)

I always used to have to spend a good bit of time going through my list of books trying to come up with the top ten. When there are 200 titles, it’s a little different. I think I’ve had years where my first cut for a top ten was around 30 titles!

Given that I spend less time reading now, I do tend to spend my time with things I enjoy. All of these were well worth my time, and picking a top ten from only 33 seems a bit ridiculous, so I won’t do that this year.

I never set formal reading goals in the past, as I was uncomfortable with making recreation seem like work, but I do have one this year: make sure I read at least one book per month. April 2008 was barren, as you’ll see below, but the March and May reads were on the borders, so the drought was fairly lengthy. That didn’t feel good.

Right now, I’m reading the fourth Stephenie Meyer, to wrap up the Bella-Edward-Jacob saga and have started Pierre Bayard’s Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? I also have the latest Margaret Maron and Laura Lippman from the library.

Happy new year to everyone.

---

The 2008 List

January

Kate Ellis, The Skeleton Room

Charlaine Harris, Ice Cold Grave

John Hart, The King of Lies

Carol Goodman, The Sonnet Lover

Joanne Trollope, Friday Nights

John Hart, Down River

February

Steve Hamilton, Night Work

Anita Shreve, Resistance

March

Greg Iles, Third Degree

Louise Perry, The Cruelest Month

April

May

Heather Terrell, The Map Thief

June

Carol Goodman, The Night Villa

July

Peter Robinson, Friend of the Devil

Craig Johnson, Another Man’s Moccasins

Harlan Coben, Hold Tight

Ian Rankin, The Naming of the Dead

August

Deborah Crombie, Where Memories Lie

September

David Handler, Sour Cherry Surprise

Hallie Ephron, Never Tell a Lie

October

Robert Crais, Chasing Darkness

Edward Bloor, Taken

November

Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel (short stories)

Lee Child, Nothing to Lose

Robert B Parker, Rough Water

Edward Bloor, London Calling

Maeve Binchy, Heart and Soul (reviewed for Library Journal, due out in March)

Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (non-fiction)

Colin Meloy, Let It Be (memoir of sorts, part of Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, about the Replacements’ album, not the Beatles)

December

Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

Stephenie Meyer, New Moon

Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse

Myers Briggs Musings

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that Myers Briggs can be useful. And darned interesting. I am now able to admit that one reason I turned down the job at IUPUI in 1999 was because they were so into this (everyone had been tested there as a team building exercise). I do think it can be dangerous to rely solely on one thing like this, as did Isabel Briggs Myers. I mean, yeah, I check my horoscope once in awhile, but I don’t rule my life by it. (Note to self: don’t forget that idea you once had for a chick lit novel about the woman who realizes the best advice she’s getting is from fortune cookies.)

Since first taking the keirsey.com version of the Myers Briggs (MBTI) in the summer of 2000 before I went to the ACRL Immersion program, I occasionally retake it. I am always either an ISTJ or an INTJ, with my S and N close to center, moving to one side or the other depending on how squishy I feel. It must be my inconsistent answer to the question about being honest even if you have to hurt someone’s feelings that tips me back and forth. Seriously, though, having a better understanding of this conundrum of my personality - the battle between logic and emotions that goes on within me, and always has - has been a useful thing for me, particularly as I have progressed in my career and gone deeper and deeper into management and administration.

I am still a librarian at heart, though, and recently did some information gathering on the typology topic. I ran across some interesting studies of librarians, use of typing in the work setting, and discussions of patterns of types in the profession. Bibliography forthcoming (I am on vacation, give me a break).

Of course, this recent foray into the literature was caused by social networking. Back when I first added the “My Type” application to Facebook, I came out strong in the ITJ and slightly N. No surprises. I retook it recently and went ISTJ. Again, no surprise, but had been feeling a bit more steely and so for kicks, took it one more time. And was stunned to come out as ESTP, although all within a percent or two of middle. Weird. I mean, come on: E? Even 1% E? I’m always halfway across to the edge of I. I kept retaking it every few days, and it really seems to think I’m an ISFJ, which just isn’t me. And to compound matters, a colleague had also just added the application and had then checked out the dozen of us librarians who had, and had reported on the trends found in his non-scientific study in his status one day. I couldn’t stand the thought of being incorrectly counted (ahem, am I a J or what?), so I went back to keirsey.com and found other similar sites online, and took several versions over the past few days. I am glad to report I am apparently solidly an ISTJ, regardless of what the Facebook app thinks. Which I have uninstalled.

ISTJ is fine. I am a Pisces after all. Compassion is fine. Until it gets in my way.

But that’s my moon in Scorpio talking.