Dealing with emotions and academic publishing

I'm entering my last year of PhD now. It is scary. I've shared this feeling with my friends who are in the same situation and I've learned from some of them that they also feel like this, which is a bit of consolation. But despite the butterflies in our stomachs, we have to keep on putting words down on the page, and putting them out there for people to read.

That is the hardest part, of course. That part where people actually read what we write. Once they read, they can think whatever they want about it and there is nothing we can do. We have no control anymore. And that is friggin' scary!

I've been worrying about publishing lately. I say worrying because that is often my modus operandi regarding academic stuff. I don't always plan, I don't always wonder, I don't always think about it. I worry about it. It is deeply emotional. And my favorite way to sooth this worry is reading (which is also, as we all know, a wonderful procrastination technique). Though I absolutely know I'm procrastinating right now by writing this post instead of the book review I'm supposed to be working on, I decided to make it at least a positive procrastinating activity and share with you a very down-to-earth and realistic comment from @ThomsonPat (btw, her blog is full of good advice for people who, like me, are swimming in the PhD sea). In this post, when talking about what is involved in publishing (or trying to do so) in a high-ranked academic journal, she acknowledges the emotional danger of having your submission rejected:

"... dealing with the affective domain of scholarly work is not a plea for therapy for researchers. Rather it is an argument that, in failing to include discussions of the dark side of publishing, we perpetuate a situation where scholarship is seen as predominantly about thinking. The only emotional work that counts is the courage to have a go. Most of us reject the mind/emotion binary at an intellectual level and also the elevation of a boys-own-daring-do above all other affect. It is therefore somewhat bizarre that our conversations about publication rarely acknowledge the full range of cognitive and emotional labour that is involved. We do ourselves and those we intend to support a disservice by not doing so."

Though I'm still not sure how to deal with these emotions, I found it very encouraging and refreshing that someone out there, with way more experience than I have, acknowledges and validates all these feelings that I'm experiencing when I think about publishing my research.

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