Writing Papers to Publish

This week, I have been working on finishing papers to submit for publication.  It is a rite of passage and a way of life for those in academia.  A year ago, I would have stated that being an academia was my one goal. Now, I have a job I love, pays well, in a great area albeit an expensive one, and I am not sure I want to give this up to be in academia.  But I still want to publish to have that option open to me.  Unfortunately, part of my rationale is to prove a professor wrong. He spent an awful amount of time reiterating to us students that working in academia at a research institution was stressful and difficult.  That if he had to start over now, he would not do so. It's a tremendous amount of work.

Considering that the people he was talking to worked full-time jobs, high-stress ones, and attended a PhD program part-time...I'm thinking that not even a tenure-track professorship at a research university could be more demanding than an average of 60-70 hours on the job, plus school, kids, home, animals, chronic disabilities, volunteer work, mentoring, and well - whatever else I had going on at the same time. So I'd like to show him that he should not judge how un-busy we are not. Good googli moo.

But back to the topic.  The two papers are vastly different and wonderfully interesting.  One is on electronic communications in the workplace that the professor volunteered to help me prep for submission for publication as long as he could be co-listed.  Sure - he had good feedback and hopefully, connections.

The other is related to my desired dissertation topic, jury decision-making and reform. I asked a friend of mine from law school to join with me on this paper - cause I like the way she thinks and writes.  She has two published papers already, so apparently, she knows the formula.  I want to know the formula. So together, we are writing a paper on how civic education can improve jury decision making as part of the jury reform movement.  It's turning out to be a heck of a paper.

Arizona Jury Reform

I missed a day blogging and for that I apologize my dear readers, but I finished the infamous paper that I had so procrastinated on. Submission time was about 5 am. Good googli moo.

It is a fascinating paper about Arizona's jury reform in terms of change management. Back in 1993, Arizona started a jury innovation project designed to increase juror decision-making. Here is a small excerpt:


Although Arizona is one of the states that guarantees the right to a jury trial for both criminal and civil cases (Arizona Constitution, art. 2, s. 23), there was dissatisfaction with the overall system of jury trials. Dissatisfaction with jury trials is not new, but the right elements came together at the opportune time in the appropriate state. While jury reform has been under siege for a long time, the battle advanced significantly when the Honorable B. Michael Dann, then presiding judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona wrote a thesis paper for his Master of Judicial Studies degree about how to create educated and democratic juries. He discussed four main topics pertinent to jury reform:
1) the decline from an active juror role to one of passivity,
2) how established psychological and educational principles apply to juror decision making,
3) commonly suggested techniques to improve juror participation, and
4) two obscure techniques.
He also sent this paper to a friend and colleague back in Arizona, who happened to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona.

And that is how jury reform started, because Arizona is recognized as the leader in this area.