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Small unworthy things - as you were

BigFatCoward

By BigFatCoward,
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DMC Council Member

DMC

Posted
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On 9/29/2019 at 6:50 PM, HelenaExMachina said:

We had a similar situation with my great grandmother, she had one known child, being my granddad, and then she also had a “sister” who we all suspect was actually her daughter.

Yeah I think I've shared all this before on here, but my mother was raised by my great-grandparents, and only found out my grandmother was her mother, rather than her 18-years-older sister, when my mother herself turned 18.  Everybody knew that by the time me, my siblings, and my (half) cousins were growing up. 

However, what was not known among any of our generation, or even any of my grandmother's other four kids, is that after my mother but before my grandma had her four other kids with my "step" grandpa (he may not be blood but he's my grandpa, they've been married for 60 some-odd years), my grandma had another child.  This child eventually tracked down my grandma and my mother.  My grandma refused to talk to her, my mother apparently did but they did not maintain a relationship.  So I got an aunt out there I know nothing about.

Best part of the story is the only reason any of us found out about this is because my mom drunkenly mentioned it to her neighbor when we were all drinking one night during Christmas break 7-8 years ago.  I overheard the conversation and was like, wait, what?!?  Two of my uncles still don't know - their anticipated reaction towards my grandma isn't worth it.  I was there when my mom told the third uncle - he was heartbroken.  Can't recall if my aunt (from my step-grandpa's kids) is aware or not, she's pretty crazy though so I'm guessing no.

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Datepalm Council Member

Datepalm

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Arrrrgghhh why am I still taking classes? I have been taking classes for ten years. Or so. I have actual things to do and I want to be doing them and instead I am running around going to classes, which I find less useful but somehow also more tiring and time-consuming and seriously eating into my ability to focus and work on the actual things than ever. Well, this might be the last semester of that. 

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Datepalm Council Member

Datepalm

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Istanbul's new airport, while very large and eye-blindingly shiny, is in no way chill. I now judge airports by how close to an airplane they will allow - nay, facilitate - you having a beer. Fail, Istanbul.

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Buckwheat Council Member

Buckwheat

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And where is the PhD thread again? Didn't we have one?

All right, I will just post a short rant/ask for advice here: How do you reconcile opinions of two different reviewers of your one paper if these are completely different and give you different recommendations for how to edit your paper? As in, one of the reviewers recommends to add some specific information and to add some more relevant references (I already cut a significant part of the whole paper I had written because it was too long, and left out the quotes I didn't find essential) - and also recommends me to shorten the (theoretical) introduction. That, in itself, is a contradition - shorten the article or add to it? And then the other reviewer recommends that I should shorten not the theoretical part, but the analysis. How can the two be so different? What should I make of this - make the article longer or shorter? Why did I cut so much of it in the first place before I submitted it only to be told it is too long still, but now also lacking information?

:idea: 

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Sophelia Council Member

Sophelia

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19 minutes ago, Buckwheat said:

And where is the PhD thread again? Didn't we have one?

All right, I will just post a short rant/ask for advice here: How do you reconcile opinions of two different reviewers of your one paper if these are completely different and give you different recommendations for how to edit your paper? As in, one of the reviewers recommends to add some specific information and to add some more relevant references (I already cut a significant part of the whole paper I had written because it was too long, and left out the quotes I didn't find essential) - and also recommends me to shorten the (theoretical) introduction. That, in itself, is a contradition - shorten the article or add to it? And then the other reviewer recommends that I should shorten not the theoretical part, but the analysis. How can the two be so different? What should I make of this - make the article longer or shorter? Why did I cut so much of it in the first place before I submitted it only to be told it is too long still, but now also lacking information?

:idea: 

I'd say there is a big difference between content and conciseness*: you spent a lot of time in advance taking out parts which you felt were less relevant, to make your paper more impactful.  That's great.  Indeed I would say it's paid off well as it sounds like the reviewers are only suggesting minor changes: for your first paper this is fantastic.  In my (small) experience of peer reviewing papers, much more drastic requests for changes (or just rejections) are more common e.g. having to redo the analysis. 

It is tricky when you get contradictory advice, but these people will just have had different experiences and prior knowledge themselves and have formed their own opinions based on that.  Ultimately they are giving you their professional judgement in order to help you, so the question to ask is: can you see what they mean, and do you agree that their suggestions might improve your paper? Try to understand what they are saying (ask your supervisor/colleagues if you are not sure).  If you see what they mean and feel you can make the changes, do so.  If not, when you reply to the editor to say what you have done in response to the reviews, write a rationale to explain why you did not make a requested change, then point out that the other reviewer was fine with it.  However, I would advise that you go some way to accommodate them e.g. putting in the information and citations suggested by the first reviewer (in as concise a way as possible), and for the theoretical bit and the analysis, try to find some ways to express the sentences more concisely by chopping out some words, or if there are small parts here and then you feel you could remove without compromising the paper, do that - it shows that you have responded to the reviewers, and you can then mention that you feel the paper is now improved as a result.

 

*I mean they're not commenting on the overall length of the paper (that it should be shorter/longer), they're saying they think there should be a bit more information in one place, and either a bit less information, or the same information but less wordiness, in a couple of other places.

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Buckwheat Council Member

Buckwheat

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@Sophelia, thank you for your response and all the advice!

Yes, actually, the changes they recommend are relatively small, so maybe I should look at that as a success in itself. I don't need to completely change the analysis or anything, the reviewer wrote that the paper is acceptable to be published, it can only be improved by some adjustments. I mean, the paper is actually a slightly changed paper I wrote as part of my teaching program at uni, so it has been previously already checked by a professor. Although I will have you know that this is my second paper, thank you very much. ;) 

I currently don't have anybody to ask, but I will think of these questions when I correct the paper and see what I can add/leave out. They do explicitly say that the paper is long and the journal has a limit on what the maximum strokes-on-a-keyboard count (is that the right expression?) needs to be, so that is what they are referring to, I think.

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Raja Council Member

Raja

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I was scrolling through Instagram and sent a 'crying' emoji reaction to someone I haven't spoken to in about a decade, and it was of her Instagram story of getting a new job. I did it completely by accident whilst scrolling and am now dying of embarrassment.

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Lizard Queen Squire

Lizard Queen

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My only two clients dropped this week -_-. My boss previously said that making the revenue budget is a team effort and that bad months happen for us from time to time, but this worries me a little anyway.

 

I felt bad for one of my clients. He has some pretty significant struggles with mentall illness and anxiety and often called out of his shifts. He's almost 30 and hasn't worked for ten years, I assume because of his mental health problems. He told me he really wanted the vocational experience to work out but said he'd finally admitted he was just kidding himself that he could do it, so he dropped out. I thought that was pretty sad. I hope he can work and lead a more normal life someday.

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Karneol Squire

Karneol

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On 10/9/2019 at 4:55 PM, Raja said:

I was scrolling through Instagram and sent a 'crying' emoji reaction to someone I haven't spoken to in about a decade, and it was of her Instagram story of getting a new job. I did it completely by accident whilst scrolling and am now dying of embarrassment.

It's probably to late now but for anyone who has the same problem there is an delete option (i don't know how it's named in English). Press long enough on the message if doesn't appear the message isn't send. It's really cool if you like to send drunk audios to classmates...

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Lizard Queen Squire

Lizard Queen

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Camped over the weekend, but the weather was miserable lol. It snowed for the first two days, and the temps were in the 30's. We slept in tents and everything. It looks like this weekend will be sunny, snowless, and in the 60's. Heh!

Well, the camping was interesting. I went to my side job afterwards, and I mean about 3 hours later on the last day, and my coworker said it was "freezing!" inside. I just silently thought, "nah, not really". No heated indoors felt cold to me after that weekend. 

 

Also, I accidentally left my winter boots back home. Nice error. I wore goddamned tennis shoes... my toes were so cold. Felt like it took them 2 hours to stop being cold after I bundled up in bed. Thankfully someone happened to have spare winter boots in my size and loaned me them for the last two days.  

 

The trip was fun though, despite the cold C:

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