The Illusion of Prestige

So I was asked to write a book chapter.

If you are a non-academic, a yet unseasoned academic, or my mom, you are likely thinking:

"Wow Dr. Rini!  That's very exciting, you must be well-respected in your field to have been bestowed such a great honor. Way to go!"

A couple of years ago, I would have thought the same thing.  I would have been honored and given myself a little pat on the back and gladly agreed to the extra work in my already full schedule.  I then would have agonized over what to write, spent oodles of time perfecting it, struggled through some major periods of self-doubt and impostor syndrome.  Eventually, I would somehow have managed to meet the deadline, likely by pulling some very late nights and ignoring my husband and friends for days on end, and felt a little pride in what I produced.  I then would have prominently placed this accomplishment on my CV.   At least what I think would have happened, I was never bestowed such an honor at that phase of my career.

Now, a little more seasoned, I think:

"Great, how am I going to get out of this one?"

Now you are saying: "Dr. Rini, what are you thinking?! Surely it's a bad idea to turn down such a great honor? Yes, it's some extra work, but imagine the glory and fame it will bring you."

Um. No.  While is some situations that may be true.  In reality many of these chapters are for compendiums of review papers.  Every once in while they turn into well referenced tomes in the field and the glory and the fame is yours.  In my situation this was not the case.

During my time at FU, I was asked to write two such chapters.  In both cases I it is more accurate to say I was bullied into writing two book chapters.

The first time, a member of my mentoring committee had agreed to edit one volume of a large encyclopedia set.  In total the  the exchange went something like this:

Mentor: Dr. Rini I'm editing a volume of a super large encyclopedia.  I'd like you to write the chapter on apple harvesting.

Me: Well, my expertise are really in orange growing, so I think you'd be better off finding an apple harvesting expert, there are many I know of.

Mentor: But everyone else in the department is doing it.

Me: I'm really not sure I'm the right person

Mentor: I vote on your tenure.  (Ok, maybe it was a bit more subtle than that, but this was clearly the message)

Repeat a variation of this for two or three more rounds of email and I finally relented and agreed to do the article if my husband the social scientist could co-author with me.  We'll loosely define "co" here and I'll be honest: my unemployed hub did 90% of the work and I listed him as first author.  I'll spare you the suspense and tell you right away: Our masterpiece will be available for purchase, in 2012, as part of a $10K encyclopedia set that I'm sure will be on every apple harvester's desk or at least at some location they can access through interlibrary loan shortly after it's publication.

When the second offer came around I was  determined to be stronger in my refusal.  This time is was more like, since you are an expert in picking oranges, we'd like you talk about how to pick oranges in Antartica. It is at least of technical interest to me, but still not a big help to my career. Turns out I'm not as strong as I thought and since we had not yet decided to leave FU the threat of a no vote on my tenure was to much for me to risk.

So hear I sit, dying to dig into some of my own fabulous orange tree data and make a contribution to the field, but learning all about  how it's done in Antartica.

At least my mom be proud :)