The usual

Reading reviews of my submitted manuscripts always wipes me out. I get so emotionally charged when I see the email in my inbox, but I always open it right away because I want to know. The paper that I heard about today will ultimately be accepted, I think. The reviewers were reasonable, though they were rather critical. I'll have to study it more carefully, but I don't think anyone is asking for anything I can't provide. But it's going to be a lot of work, and I'm leaving for AEC in a couple of weeks!

Oddly enough, I had chosen today to start writing my new paper. Now, I'm not sure whether I should get out a bigger chunk of the new paper, or get right to work on the revisions. I suppose I'd feel a deep sense of satisfaction if I could finish the revisions before I go (but then sit on them for a couple more weeks, of course, because I fear that people don't believe I take their recommendations seriously if I get the revisions back too quickly. Even though I only finish them quickly because I'm a fast writer, not because I'm blowing them off.)

And because I didn't think I was going to get this review back today (it was only submitted in late December), I emailed the editor of the journal where I have another submission that I sent in September to find out the status of that paper. So I may have 2 at once to work with, which would not be fun.

Next year is my last year before my tenure packet is turned in, so this is the time to crank out as much work as possible. A friend of mine, who's in the same place in his career (you know who you are), mentioned to me that the last year before tenure should be one's Conference World Tour so that you up your name recognition and let potential letter writers know what you're working on. So far I've submitted to a conference this summer, and I will submit to two in November and one possibly in January. And I'm hosting a conference here at the end of September! So if that doesn't increase my visibility next year, well, I'm not sure what else I could do.

I think I'm managing this fairly well, but I have a feeling that someday I'm going to look back on this calendar year and next academic year as a particularly harried time in my life.