Congratulations, I Guess
Apr. 2nd, 2020 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingMy first monograph was officially released yesterday, on April 1, 2020.
This doesn't mean much, unfortunately. Amazon currently has the book listed as "out of stock," and at the moment you can only get the digital version from the publisher's website.
Last weekend I was supposed to have been giving a high-profile panel, promoting my book, and talking to presses about my second book project at the big conference for my field. I was also scheduled to give a handful of talks at universities up and down the East Coast during April. I've been working for the past four years to make this happen, and now it's all just... gone.
This sounds like an inane thing to say during a global pandemic, but I can't help but be upset.
I keep thinking about Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, which is about why certain groups of people seem to be magically successful while other equally worthy people can never seem to catch their big break. Gladwell's conclusion is basically this: Sometimes, you're just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes, entire generations are at the wrong place at the wrong time. And there's nothing that you or any one individual can do about it.
I'm feeling frustrated and useless right now, and I'm also haunted by a strong sense of being "the wrong type of doctor." I wish there were something I could do. Not about my stupid book about comics, but about the general state of the world. Given that my personal experience with the American university system has been so broken, I'm starting to think seriously about alternative routes to achieving broader and more accessible public education.
If nothing else, I guess I have time.
This doesn't mean much, unfortunately. Amazon currently has the book listed as "out of stock," and at the moment you can only get the digital version from the publisher's website.
Last weekend I was supposed to have been giving a high-profile panel, promoting my book, and talking to presses about my second book project at the big conference for my field. I was also scheduled to give a handful of talks at universities up and down the East Coast during April. I've been working for the past four years to make this happen, and now it's all just... gone.
This sounds like an inane thing to say during a global pandemic, but I can't help but be upset.
I keep thinking about Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, which is about why certain groups of people seem to be magically successful while other equally worthy people can never seem to catch their big break. Gladwell's conclusion is basically this: Sometimes, you're just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes, entire generations are at the wrong place at the wrong time. And there's nothing that you or any one individual can do about it.
I'm feeling frustrated and useless right now, and I'm also haunted by a strong sense of being "the wrong type of doctor." I wish there were something I could do. Not about my stupid book about comics, but about the general state of the world. Given that my personal experience with the American university system has been so broken, I'm starting to think seriously about alternative routes to achieving broader and more accessible public education.
If nothing else, I guess I have time.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 05:04 pm (UTC)You're doing things. You mentioned donating before, right? We all help in our own way. You can help your students. You can think about ways to achieve better education outcomes later. You can do what you can, in your corner of the world. We can't all be Dolly Parton or Dr. Fauci, but we can all help in our own ways.