Chip Taylor

My first experience at full-contact academia

I hardly even got bruised.

I had mentioned earlier that I was going to the APPAM Conference. That's the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Early in the year when the call for papers went out, I had what I thought was a pretty good paper that fit the theme of the conference and could be revised into something I wouldn't be embarrassed for others to read. (Based on what I observed at the conference, I've decided that in the future I'll worry less about whether the paper fits the theme of the conference.) So, I submitted a proposal figuring I'd get to do a poster session and it would be a chance to attend and learn. Much to my surprise, I was put on a panel. That was back in June; the conference was still far enough off that I was excited and not nervous. By October I was nervous and not excited.

I took a little comfort from the fact that the guidelines for discussants said they were "encouraged to make integrative comments rather than paper-by-paper critiques." I thought that was good; it sounded like they were discouraging ripping you up in public. Then it occurred to me that the discussants were college professors -- like they follow instructions. Oh well, I'm pretty thick skinned.

My panel was scheduled for the next to last session on the last day of the conference. I figured that was good, attendance probably gets pretty thin by the end; a smaller audience would be less nerve wracking. Of course, once the conference started I realized that meant I got to be nervous throughout the whole conference. But it also meant that I got to see whether discussant comments were integrative or paper-by-paper critiques.

The first session I attended was really good. Not only were the papers interesting, but the discussant did an amazing job drawing out the common threads among the three papers. She was helped by the fact that the three papers looked at different aspects of the same issue and so were pretty cohesive, but still her talk added a lot of value. I thought that was cool; if all the discussants were like that I had nothing to worry about.

I only saw one other discussant try to do that; he was one of the presenters from the first session I attended. The norm was pretty much a paper-by-paper critique ranging from picking each paper apart rather pettily and mercilessly to providing useful constructive criticism. I kept telling myself not to worry, but I did anyway.

Woody Allen said that eighty percent of success is showing up. I think there is some truth to that. There were four papers in our panel. Or four presenters rather. It never occurred to me that someone could promise a paper, not write one, and not be embarrassed. But then I have dreams about showing up to meetings naked, so what do you expect.

The first presenter hadn't written his paper, he showed us some survey data and some crosstabs and talked about what he thought it all meant. The second presenter had a paper, he'd emailed it to the rest of us. I'd read it; it had a policy recommendation, but no data or analysis backing it up. I went third. The last presenter hadn't finished his paper because he'd had data problems. So he talked about what he did have.

When the discussant got up to the podium, he said people might not like what he had to say. He pointed out that he couldn't make integrative comments about the papers if he didn't get papers to comment on. He said he'd gotten 1.9 papers -- one complete paper and two a little less than half done. He made comments along the lines of how we can't learn from each other's research if we don't make an effort to do it and write it up before the conference. He urged everyone to try harder next time. I couldn't see why anyone would take offense.

Anyway, he thanked me for submitting a completed paper and said I had made a good first cut at trying to answer my research question, but he had several suggestions for how I might improve my model. It was good, constructive criticism. One of the audience members had some useful comments also. I figure I couldn't have expected any better than that.

So, the main lesson learned: There's no point in worrying about things I have no control over. It seems like I spend my life relearning that lesson over and over.

It was fun, I'm looking worward to doing it again.