I just made the mistake of googling several of my classmates from graduate school. With one exception, they all have multiple publications, get interviewed by the national media, and one even did election night coverage in prime time for a national network. And I outperformed all these individuals in graduate school. Me—I’m fortunate when I get a local radio interview. I haven’t published much beyond this blog (and we all see that this isn’t all that impressive).
To be fair to myself, I am at a teaching intensive school. When other academics hear how much time I spend on teaching, grading, and other interactions with students, they are generally stunned. Then I am expected to do a lot more “service” (read: meetings) than would be expected at other institutions.
But, that doesn’t fully excuse the fact that I haven’t published anything. I haven’t even had the courage to submit anything for publication. It isn’t that I don’t have anything. I have several things that are just about ready to go, I just can’t bring myself to pull the trigger and submit them.
Part of the problem is courage. Part of the problem is my own perfectionism. I’m not personally happy with any of my work--but I know I have higher expectations than others do. In graduate school I received an A for every paper, but I wasn’t happy with any of them. I just had to get them in by the due date. Maybe I just need to assign myself some due dates and just submit these things.
