Scary Arial

I started a post yesterday and was unable to finish it. It was kind of cute, so I was confused as to why I kept minimizing it whenever I’d get distracted – I put the document away multiple times without meaning to do so. I pulled it up again this morning – thinking I might finish and publish it since I was reading blogs anyway – and automatically minimized it again. So I thought I had some subconscious problem, didn’t feel like figuring it out, and left it alone.

I realized when I just opened it again that I’d used Arial font. Word defaults to Times New Roman, which I tend not to use, so I usually pick a new one. Right now I’m using Tahoma. I can’t use Georgia because that’s what’s on the actual blog. Mail uses Helvetica, so sometimes I try that. Optima is kind of nice. But Arial is reserved for work documents – I write everything professional – papers, proposals, abstracts, CV – in Arial. So what I think happened was that I glanced at it, got the impression of Arial, and automatically made it go away.

My problem, I think, isn’t that I dislike my job. I’m rather enamored with the actual work. Going through data, developing methods, troubleshooting even. It’s interesting – moments of intense challenge followed by relatively mindless progression through datasets. I’m at the point where I’m getting good at it. Have a strong idea of where to start, can spot problems more efficiently, can reach a steady point from which to ask questions rather than beg for advice. I like it – feel that I’m at the appropriate point in my academic career.

But the writing? Apparently anything in Arial font? That can go to hell. I’m not so good at it, honestly. And after spending a year doing little else, it seems like I’d enjoy it more. Or at least feel more confident at the results of my work. Instead I seem to have developed this instant, subconscious aversion to the Arial font. So, since this blog has turned into my version of therapy for now, I thought I’d try to figure out what my deal is.

I hint at problems around the end of grad school a great deal. The whole story is depressing – I still get sick when I talk about it – and I, of course, would make myself out to be the blameless party when I obviously wasn’t. The end of the story is, basically, that I left graduate school without defending under the condition that my defense would be scheduled when I had another first author paper accepted. I find this to be a bit stupid, frankly, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was that I was incredibly hurt, surprised and helpless in this particular situation.

I’d battled publications for years. Ideally, people in my group would publish a first paper near the end of the second year. Then another around the time of the preliminary exam, which left time for a couple more as we wrote a thesis and did serious research. Except that it rarely worked out that way. Some people left with a single paper. Others – well, one person – left with five or six. While I had three under review, and after reading each of the manuscripts it was agreed that it was publishable material, it was decided that an official acceptance letter from a journal was my ticket out of school.

When the fate of four years of work rested upon 2-3 reviewers rather than 5 faculty members who are intimately acquainted with my work, I started to fear reviewers. Kind of like when I see a large spider and recoil without thinking. Chances are that the spider won’t hurt me at all, but I’m instinctively fearful. So whether I’m writing an Institutional Review Board protocol, an internal grant proposal or NIH grant application, or a dreaded manuscript for peer review, I’m scared. I hold it for too long, writing a draft then putting it away so I can look at it again later. Then I repeat that – put away, look again, put away, look again – for as long as possible, then tense all my muscles and wince while submitting the sad little paper that will almost certainly get kicked around. Poor thing.

(I don’t mind abstracts though. I’ve had excellent luck with abstracts for the most part. It’s a good academic community for that, and I’m grateful.)

It’s not that I’ve never had good experiences. I had an NIH fellowship in grad school – funded after one round of revisions. I’ve had papers accepted – some fairly recently – so should feel encouraged that I can see some progress. But I’m not sure if – for me – it’s worth the work. All the time and energy and careful planning. Changing some text to address comments from outright rejections, then carefully selecting a journal to try again. Grant reviews that seem contradictory among readers. Protocols that sit in review for months when they seem to require only a quick glance.

It’s what I do. And my feeling is that as I progress in an academic career, I'll spend increasingly large amounts of time writing and less time playing with data. And while I’m happy pushing buttons and looking at graphs, I immediately minimize anything written in Arial font. Recoiling in fear before convincing myself to deal with whatever document I left open as a reminder to look again – it’s not a good realization to make.

I think that it’s important for me to have several projects going. It’s not the end of the world if something gets rejected, because there are three other projects, papers or protocols in various stages of readiness. Retaining hope while recovering from disappointment.

In the meantime, I’m learning. I’ve had a couple papers rejected many times and finally figured out - with extensive help from my current advisor - what I was doing wrong. They’ve both found conditional acceptance at journal homes, and I feel pretty confident I can make them a bit prettier and get them published. It’s scary though – I’m rather fond of being “pretty confident” and hate to see that turn to “failed again.” I have hope that I can fix sections of my grant and resubmit it – I didn’t think the comments were all that bad. But avoiding the revisions means retaining the belief that I can do them. Once the document is open and I’m trying to alter lines of text, I inevitably come across something I can’t properly address. It’s difficult for me.

I think… I don’t know, actually. I’m not making much progress here. I do hate to switch from Arial font for work though. What if I become afraid of all text and can’t read or write at all? So maybe it’s just a spider for a little while. And I realize I need to handle it. Capture the spider and throw it outside. Or spray it with half a can of bug spray. Whatever works, right?