Co-author! 🙂

This morning, I received this lovely monograph in my office mail. It’s not just any ol’ book, though … it contains my very first peer-reviewed, scholarly article! 😀

We’ve been working on the article since last summer, and I found out a few months ago that it would be published, but I didn’t realize that I would receive my own copy of the journal. I’m just a co-author, but it is still very, very exciting to me. When I used to write for newspapers, it never failed to amaze me to see my name in print. It could have been a dull report about a City Council meeting; it didn’t matter. There’s just something immensely gratifying about seeing something you wrote become published.

Someday (hopefully sooner than later), I would like to be the lead author on a scholarly article. I think I’ll get there; it just takes time.

Speaking of writing, I submitted a rough draft of Ch. 1 of my dissertation (the intro, basically), and I’m waiting for the green light from my committee chair to move on to Ch. 2. I doubt I’ll hear anything before mid-August, since the fall term doesn’t begin until then. (I jumped the gun and wanted to start early, but now I’m playing hurry-up-and-wait.)

The boys asked me the other day how long a dissertation is, and I told them that they vary, but typically at least 100 pages. They got wide-eyed and asked how many more pages I need to write. I laughed and said, “About 95.” It’s a long process, but I’m still hoping to finish next spring!