One of those days

It has been one of those days.

I woke up early this morning in order to drag my sorry self across town to Virginia in order to attend a conference at the US Patent Office. I did not want to attend this conference, but my boss is the sponsor so I was making the trip in order to show solidarity. I did not adequately shake the cobwebs from my brain, and I walked out the door of my apartment with my bike but not my backpack. The door to my apartment automatically locks behind me, and my keys were in my backpack. My phone was also in my backpack. This becomes important later.

It is early enough in the morning that no one was working in the apartment management office, so I just say, "ah fuck it," and figure I would collect my stuff later in the day. Not having my keys means I cannot not lock up my bike. I had originally planned to ride my bike to the subway station. However, now I have to execute a time-consuming maneuver in order to drop off my bike at my cubicle and walk to the bus that would take me to the metro. I am now running behind schedule, and my anxiety was marginally increased because I do not have a phone and therefore had no idea what time it is.

Anyway, I get on the subway knowing that I needed to switch trains once in order to get to Alexandria, VA where the conference is being held. This is approximately a 40 minute trip if nothing goes awry. Unfortunately, I get crossed-up with regard to train switching, and I try to switch trains at the wrong stop. This costs me about 20 minutes of waiting for another train. At least I think its 20 minutes, because I have no clock.

I finally get to Alexandria, get off the subway, and walk to the US Patent and Trademark Office. Though the directions to where I was going were inside of my backpack which is now inside of my apartment, I am fortunately able to locate the building. Or, I should say, buildings. The USPTO is an enormous place. I was sort of counting on being able to walk in and ask someone where I needed to go to find the conference. But there is no centralized desk. There are only security desks manned by dead-eyed bureaucrats who have not heard of my conference and would rather stare into the middle distance than give me any information. And I don't have a phone with which to contact any of my coworkers who might know what's going on.

After about 30 minutes of rigamarole, I find a nice person who lets me use her computer in order to find out where the conference is located. Turns out I am in the right place. But at the wrong time. The conference is tomorrow. I want to unzip my skin, run into a wall, and explode my bones into a pile of dust. I locked my keys in my apartment about two hours ago. It has been a long journey, one which I did not want to make, with no reward.

But my day was just beginning.

I take the subway back to campus. The only reason I go back to my office instead of going straight to my apartment to get my bag is that my bike is in my cubicle, and I can ride it back to my apartment. As I am walking to my cube, one of my fellow students says, "Seth, are you ready for the meeting?"

"What meeting?"

Turns out today was the day that PhD students were supposed to "pitch" their research to a venture capitalist in order to make sure that we can make sure that we can explain why what we are working on is useful to people in the real world. This is a very worthwhile exercise. I have trouble extemporaneously describing my research, and this will be good practice. But I am completely unprepared. It is 11:21 and the meeting starts at 11:30. I am just lucky that I came back to campus to get my bike, or I would have missed the meeting entirely.

My research "pitch" is not humorously disastrous, but it does not go well. I stumble over my words more than usual, and I have difficulty answering the man's questions. So by the end, I am feeling more dumb than I usually do.

After this, I have a meeting with a professor about a project that I am not convinced is going anywhere but is taking up a lot of my time. The meeting is long and frustrating, but again, not humorous. It just sort of adds to my frustration level.

Then I check my email. It contains the editor's decision letter for the only paper that I have under review at an academic journal. This paper has been rejected at one journal, and has now been under review at this second journal for about 5 months, which is a pretty long time. I was been pretty sure that this journal was also going to reject my paper, and I just wanted to get it over with. The editor's decision letter will tell me whether the paper has been rejected or invited to be revised and resubmitted to the journal.

The corporate analog to the decision letter is the performance review. Now, I said that I was pretty sure that the paper was going to be rejected, but publication, like performance appraisal, is a random process that heavily depends on who is evaluating your work. So, like an employee who knows that he is a bum but is still holding out hope for a 10% raise, before I open the decision letter, I think to myself, "Maybe I am lucky."

The first lines of the letter suggest that perhaps, yes, I am lucky. They read, and I quote:

"I like the topic of this paper. Here [sic] is a growing realization that the intersection of organizations, careers and entrepreneurship is an important and fertile field for research. We need ambitious theories and careful empirical documentation of the key patterns and processes at work."

Yes! I think to myself. This is exactly what me and my coauthors want this paper to be about--the reviewer gets it! The random element has worked in our favor!

Then, uh, I read the next sentence.

"This paper does not deliver on that, unfortunately, both in terms of the theory and the empirics."

Then the reviewers go on to cut the paper open from groin to sternum, highlighting all of the flaws that me and my coauthors already know existed as well as pointing out some new ones. It's like telling a fat person that he is fat and then saying, "oh by the way, your breath smells horrible." Needless to say, the paper was rejected.

I go home, and the first thing I do is console myself with a Sports Illustrated and a bowel movement. It's my first of the day and, as the reviewers of my paper alluded to, I am full of shit. And I clog the toilet. And I don't own a plunger. Luckily, I have a slotted spoon and a cooking pot.

Nowhere to go but up. But first, I must go back to Alexandria, VA in the morning . . .