Now, as a soft and slow rule, i do not intend to spend much time on this blog speaking about academia/my job, but seeing as i just got my 2nd publication, and my 1st first-author publication of a study i designed and conducted accepted (Titled: "Liar Liar, Hard-Drive on Fire: How Media Context Affects Lying Behavior"), i decided to give you guys a glimpse (just a glimpse mind you) of the brokenness which is the academic system (at least in Psychology).

First. Publications are our crack. Our currency. All jobs, teaching or research based, are gotten primarily on the number and strength of your publication. That means, if you are the world's most inspiring and inspired teacher, you will still not get a tenured position at any major university without multiple publications. For the record, this is why post-docs exist, for people with PhD's to have more time to publish studies so that they can get the job they want.

Second. So all you need is publications. No problemo. I'll publication the crap out of them (you think to yourself). WRONG. The publication that just got accepted was submitted approximately two years ago. Jigga-what. Yah, two years.

Here's the timeline. Submission. 6 months go by--nothing. My adviser writes a letter asking for the status of the paper. They reply one reviewer has looked at it and they are waiting on the 2nd. 3 months later I get the POSITIVE news that they would like me to revise and resubmit my article. Two reviewers have combed the paper and left me with 3 pages of revisions. They would like it revised in a month "to expedite the review process" (can you hear my eyes roll?). That is an optimistic time frame. I ask for 2 months. Granted.

Revision goes in. White noise. My adviser writes again. Waiting on the 2nd reviewer again. Then they forgo the 2nd reviewer and today they accepted it.

Some notes. This is a best case scenario from start to finish. No one gets their paper accepted the first time around. You always have to revise. 80ish% of the time the journal says that the article either isn't well suited for their particular journal or they have concerns about the procedure, statistics, theory, etc. and they are going to pass. Then this whole process starts over with a new journal. It is unacceptable to submit the same paper to multiple journals. It is against the rules.

Also, this is not a complaint about the specific journal that accepted the paper. This is the way it goes for all of them, and i am more pointing out the craziness that is the academic process more than i am blaming any one journal (or journals in general--as they are run by academics in the field).

But, for today, the day I got my paper published, we celebrate. Hurrah.