A Time for Pause and Celebration: 2012 in Review

At the end of each annual year, I like to step back and take stock of what I have accomplished during the year. This permits me to acknowledge all I am doing, to take pride in what I have accomplished, and to relieve some of the anxiety of the never-ending pressure to do more. When I review all I have accomplished it becomes apparent that I do not need to work any faster or harder, as I have accomplished so much during the year. It also becomes clear that my end of the year break is well-deserved.



This past year has been very fast-paced. I gave fourteen public lectures or presentations at universities around the country. I spent two months of the summer traveling and researching in Peru. I moved to a new university and a new town. And, I took over as chair of the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the American Sociological Association.

I was usually able to maintain my pace of writing for two hours a day when I was not on the road, and about 30 minutes a day when I was. Let’s look at what I was able to accomplish over the past year.

Rewards in academia are rare, and are often long in the making. I will begin with the most tangible outcomes, even though these are largely the product of previous years’ work.

Books!

I have two new books in print, and my first book was released in paperback. This, of course, is the result of effort in prior years, but it is important to take note of the final products.

2012. Due Process Denied: Detentions and Deportations in United States. Routledge: New York.

2012. Immigration Nation: Raids, Detentions and Deportations in Post-911 America. Paradigm Publishers: Boulder, CO.

My book that originally appeared in 2011 – Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru – came out in paperback and received positive reviews in two major journals.

Articles, Book Chapters and Shorter Pieces

I also had an article, a book chapter and two short pieces appear in print this year. I wrote the book chapter over a year ago. I started the article in 2011, but had to revise it for resubmission this year. Finally, I have two short pieces that I wrote and submitted this year, and that also came out this year. Here is what I have in print in 2012:

2012. “Causes and Consequences of International Migration: Sociological Evidence for the Right to Mobility” (Cecilia Menjívar, second author) International Journal of Human Rights.

2012. “International Migration” Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights, edited by David L. Brunsma, Keri E. Iyall Smith, and Brian K. Gran. Paradigm Publishers.

2012. “Ethnopoetics: A Jamaican Deportee Tells His Story” Societies without Borders 7:3.

2012. “What does a Sociology without Borders Look Like?” Societies without Borders 7:4.

Forthcoming

I also have six pieces that are forthcoming in 2013: two articles, two book chapters, and two short essays. I began writing all of them in 2011. I did some work on them in 2012, and received confirmation that they would be forthcoming this year.

Forthcoming. “Forced Transnationalism: Transnational Coping Strategies and Gendered Stigma among Jamaican Deportees” Global Networks.

Forthcoming. “‘It Was Only a Joke’: How Racial Humor Fuels Race-blind Ideologies in Mexico and Peru” Sue, Christina and Tanya Golash-Boza. Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Forthcoming. “Fourteen Months, Four Countries, and Three Kids: Tales from the Field” In: Artificial Divide: Family and Work in Everyday Ethnography. Editors: Tamara Mose Brown and Joanna Dreby. Temple University Press.

Forthcoming. “From Legal to “Illegal”: The Deportation of Legal Permanent Residents from the United States” In Immigrant Illegality: Constructions, Critiques, and Resistance. Edited by: Cecilia Menjívar and Daniel Kanstroom. Cambridge University Press.

Forthcoming. “More Than ‘A Hidden Race’: The Complexities of Blackness in Mexico and Peru” Review Essay of Black in Latin America Film by Henry Louis Gates. (Christina A. Sue, first author). Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies.

Forthcoming. “Does Racial Formation Theory Lack the Conceptual Tools to Understand Racism?” Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Under Review

I have one article that I submitted in 2012 that is still under review. This is an article that my co-author and I were able to write, submit, and resubmit all in this calendar year.

Under Review. “Latino Immigrant Men and the Deportation Crisis: A Gendered Racial Removal Program?” Golash-Boza, Tanya and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. Revise and Resubmit from Latino Studies.

In-Progress

Finally, I have two books that I continue to work on. These are a bit hard to quantify as I seem to always be writing, revising, cutting, and sending things to my editors. However, I suppose I can say that I wrote five chapters of the race book this year and have moved four chapters of the deportee book into final version.

2014. Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach Oxford University Press: New York. (Under contract – 9 of 15 chapters completed).

In progress: Deported: Controlling Global Flows of Labor and Capital (Introduction plus 3 of 7 chapters completed).

Wow. That’s a lot. I wonder if I can quantify what I have done this year. I think there are two main categories of writing – drafting and revising.

I drafted 41,000 new words.
- 4 chapters of Race: 4*8000 = 32000 words.
- 3 short pieces = 5000 words
- ½ of a co-authored article: 4000 words

I revised substantially 40,000 words.
- 4 chapters of the Deported book = 32000 words
- ½ of a co-authored article = 4000 words
- ½ of another co-authored article = 4000 words

I also wrote about 30 blog entries for an additional 24,000 words. Whew. That’s a lot of words. As always, however, I almost never write for more than two hours a day. And, I took several writing-free breaks while traveling.

If I can write 40,000 words in a year and revise another 40,000 that means it would probably take me about 2 and a half years to write a book that is 100,000 words if that were the only writing project I focused on. Or, I could write and revise four articles or book chapters a year. The catch is, of course, that these things also come back for revision again and again. So, I might write and submit an article in three months. But, it will come back and I will have to spend another 2-4 weeks revising it for resubmission.

At any rate, I continue to be impressed with all one can do by writing two hours a day!

What about you? Have you taken stock of your accomplishments for 2012? Why or why not?

Either way, I wish you a great rest of 2012 and a happy holiday season.

As for me, I am winding things down and in terms of work and gearing up for my two-week vacation from work! I hope to return rested, renewed, and ready for 2013.

Give yourself a break - a real one!

How do you plan to spend the upcoming holidays?

No matter how busy your Fall semester was nor how busy your Spring semester will be, one of the most important things you can do during this winter break is to take a real break.

It’s the end of the year. Heck, it may well be the end of the world after December 21, 2012. So, take a break.

If you haven’t taken a break in a while, and have forgotten how to do so, don’t worry: I can explain to you how to do it.

Taking a break - in four simple steps.

Step 1: Choose a date to start your break.

When will you begin your break? This Friday? December 24? Before then? Or, perhaps you’ve already started? Whenever it is, choose a date and plan to stop working on that date. At a very minimum, you should plan to take 4 days off. I hope you will at least take off the week between December 25 and January 2. If you are taking off more days, please let me know in the comments section, as I am always pleased to hear about people taking long vacations.

Step 2: Figure out what will and will not get done in the remainder of this semester (Use the 4 D's)

What tasks will and will not get done this semester? Which tasks will never get done? Which ones can be deferred or delegated? Anyone who has read David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity will know that there are four options for any task: do, defer, delete, or delegate.

To be able to take a break over the winter holiday, you will have to look at your remaining tasks and decide if you will do them this Fall, defer them to a later date, decide they are not important and delete them, or delegate them. These decisions can be hard, but it is ideal to decide now what will and will not get done to avoid feeling guilty later.

All of your pending tasks for the remainder of 2012 should fall into these four categories:

1. DO:  Prioritize all of the tasks and projects you actually can and will do before you take a break.
2. DEFER: If the project is something you really would like to do, but can wait until the Spring, defer it.
3. DELETE: If you take a good look at your to-do list, I am sure you can find at least one task - perhaps more - that you can delete. (If you are deleting more than two, let me know in the comments section!)
4. DELEGATE: Delegation is often particularly hard for academics, but there are things that can be delegated, such as organizing your office, transcribing your interviews, cleaning your data, and formatting your endnotes.

Go easy on yourself and only choose “do” for those items that must be done by you and must be done by the end of the year. Those items might include: grading, ordering books for next semester, finishing an overdue review or paper. Everything that is non-essential can either be deleted or at least deferred to next year.

Step 3: Finish what’s left on your list by your chosen end date.

Once you have a manageable lists of tasks on your plate, it will be easier to focus on those and get those done. Once you finish them, you will be ready for your guilt-free break.

Step 4: Take a real break

A real break means no work. It means taking care of yourself, relaxing, and allowing yourself luxuries that you don't normally take. A real break feels good and is good for your health.

During your break, I encourage you to:

• Avoid email: Email will just remind you of work, which is not the point of taking a break.
• Exercise daily: You don't have to run six miles a day. You can walk around the block, go ice skating, or take a bike ride. Exercise makes you feel good and is good for you. Win-win!
• Read a novel.
• Watch a film or television show you enjoy.
• Cook healthy meals for yourself.
• Eat lots of fruits and veggies.
• Talk to your friends and family – in person and over the phone.
• Dance, sing, play the guitar, write poetry: get in touch with your creative side.

Once you’ve finished your break, you will be rejuvenated and ready to start work again. Make sure you take enough time off to be refreshed when you return.

And, make sure that when you take a break, you really take a break. Doing so can actually do wonders for your productivity and creativity. Scientists have found that four days in nature enhances creativity. Spending time in nature, completely unplugged can enhance your emotional and physical health. Try it!

How Can an Academic Publish an Op/Ed?

Do you want to publish an Op/Ed? I do! I have a deep yearning to open up the New York Times and find my name next to a provocative headline in the Op/Ed section of their paper. In fact, it is my goal to have one published by the time I am 40. That gives me about thirteen months to achieve this goal.



I want to publish an Op/Ed because I am aware of lots of things that never make it into the mainstream media. I have an analysis and a viewpoint that I almost never see in mainstream media. As an academic, I want a role in the public discourse. I want people to at least contemplate my point of view and the facts and analysis that I can offer.

Publishing an Op/Ed in the New York Times is a lofty goal – if you think rejection rates are high for journals, consider that the New York Times gets hundreds of Op/Ed submissions daily and can only publish a handful. The acceptance rates are well below 1 percent.

So, how am I going to work towards this goal of publishing an Op/Ed?

Let’s start with what I have already done. I haven’t just sat around and wished for this to happen. I have been working on it.

I submitted my first Op/Ed to the New York Times on March 23, 2009. I have submitted three more to the New York Times since, each of which was rejected. Simply submitting Op/Eds to the New York Times was not paying off. So, I decided to get some help.

I did some online research. I found this amazing website: http://www.theopedproject.org. The Op/Ed Project is dedicated to getting more voices into mainstream media and has lots of information about how to write Op/Eds and where to submit them.

They have a formula on their website for how to write an Op/Ed. Of course everything has a formula, so no surprise Op/Eds do as well. I followed their instructions on how to write an Op/Ed, quoted below:

Lede (Around a news hook) 

Thesis (Statement of argument – either explicit or implied) 

Argument: Based on evidence (such as stats, news, reports from credible organizations, expert quotes, scholarship, history, first-hand experience)

• 1st Point:
◦ evidence
◦ evidence
◦ conclusion

• 2nd Point
◦ evidence
◦ evidence
◦ conclusion 

• 3rd Point
◦ evidence
◦ evidence
◦ conclusion

“To Be Sure” paragraph (in which you pre-empt your potential critics by acknowledging any flaws in your argument, and address any obvious counter-arguments.)

Conclusion (often circling back to your lede)

Once I wrote my Op/Ed according to their formula (more or less), I submitted it to the New York Times. No luck.

I decided to get some training. I participated in a teleworkshop put on by the Council on Contemporary Families. After the workshop, the workshop leader, Stephanie Coontz – who has published many pieces in the New York Times – was kind enough to help edit the piece for me. I took my edited piece and submitted it to the New York Times again. No luck.

I decided to try and submit to other places. The Op/Ed Project has a list of places to submit Op/Eds. I used their list of places to submit and slowly made my way down this list: I tried the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times, and the Washington Post. Then, I tried the Kansas City Star – my local paper. With no luck in the mainstream outlets, I sent the piece to Counterpunch and they published it!

I am very proud to be a contributor to Counterpunch, but I still would like to have a larger audience. So, I signed up for an Op/Ed core seminar.

In the intensive all-day workshop, I learned that I am an expert on criminal deportations to Jamaica, what makes a convincing argument, the importance of ledes, how to marshal convincing evidence, and many other things. I left the workshop confident that I have many, many Op/Eds that I could write. The trick would be to decide which one I would start with, and how I could write one that is timely and relevant.

I am currently drafting an Op/Ed. Once I am finished, I will send it to a Mentor/Editor, courtesy of the Op/Ed Project. Then, I will send it to the New York Times. If they don’t want to publish it, I will send it to other mainstream outlets. If they don’t want it, I will just keep going down my list until I find a place willing to publish it. Then, I will start again, with a new Op/Ed.

What about you? Do you want to get your voice into the mainstream media? Have you been successful? How?

You Got Tenure …. Now What? Five Strategies to Keep Moving Forward

After spending years – sometimes nearly a decade – in the quest for tenure, it can be hard to figure out what to do once you receive that golden letter ensuring you lifetime employment.



I officially received tenure in the spring of 2012. When I received the tenure letter, I was in the middle of a busy semester, so I briefly celebrated and then kept on doing what I needed to do to keep everything afloat. I had a research trip to Peru planned over the summer, so I went to Peru and worked on that project. Then, the fall semester started, and I got back into my teaching and research routines. In sum, after getting tenure, life seemed to go on as usual.

However, now that I have had a few months to reflect, I can share some post-tenure strategies that I have found useful thus far. I provide these strategies with the caveat that these strategies have worked for me because of the path I have chosen. As Kerry Ann Rockquemore points out in this column there are multiple paths you can choose once you achieve tenure.

Here are the post-tenure strategies that I have found useful.

Strategy One: Keep on writing

It is crucial to work to maintain a daily writing practice so that you don’t lose the great habits you cultivated while on the tenure track. Now that you have tenure, you have more flexibility in terms of the kind of writing you do. The important thing is that you continue to cultivate your writing skills and habits.

Over the summer, I wanted to take somewhat of a break from writing, so I maintained my daily writing practice by posting on my family travel blog. Once the semester began again, it was fairly seamless to transition back into daily writing for research.

Strategy Two: Keep on reading

I know I always advise people to write daily, but I have recently learned that many people, in the quest for tenure, find less and less time to read. Now that you have tenure, you have the luxury to also set aside time for reading in and around your field.

This semester, I have been reading a new book about every two weeks. It feels great to read the books I have been meaning to read, and to keep up with the field. I usually try and incorporate something I learn from the books into my writing, but sometimes it can be useful just to absorb the information.

Strategy Three: Experiment with teaching

Now that you have tenure, you can worry less about student evaluations. There is some debate about how useful student evaluations are for assessing your teaching, so, for now, you can worry less about them and focus on trying strategies that you think will work.

I don’t mean that you should totally revamp your classes, but try something new. This semester, I decided to introduce blogging into my classes. I could have done that while on the tenure track, but it was easier to do it once I had tenure and did not have to worry as much about my evaluations taking a dive.

Strategy Four: Be proactive with service

While on the tenure track, you should have been protected from service and hopefully chose the service opportunities that took the least time. Now that you have tenure, it is time for you to take a good look at your service profile and think about what opportunities you would like to pursue. What kind of service are you good at? What kind of service do you enjoy? It is important to keep doing service so that you can feel part of the campus community. So, why not seek out the opportunities that allow you to use your skills and feel valuable?

Since arriving at the University of California, Merced this semester, colleagues have asked me to participate in a wide variety of service activities. I have made a couple of commitments, but mostly have asked for time to consider my options. Looking at my skill set and my passions, it is clear to me that there are some service areas where I would excel – and others that I would find draining. I decided that I would like to do something on campus related to faculty development and retention. Thus, I asked around and found the people who are in charge of that and let them know of my interests.

Strategy Five: Take care of yourself!

Now that you have lifetime employment security, you need to make sure you live a long, healthy life and enjoy it! I am sure you are aware that high stress, lack of physical activity, and an unhealthy diet are linked to health problems and a shortened life expectancy. Thus, if you haven’t been taking care of yourself thus far, now is the time to make your health your number one priority. Find the time to exercise by putting it into your schedule, use meditation or yoga to reduce stress, figure out ways to eat healthier, and find time to spend with people you enjoy.

Here in Merced, I am fortunate to live in a warm, dry climate. Thus, I have been able to ride my bike to my office – which is five miles from my home. I don’t have to go to campus every day, and thus am able to eat at home most days. That makes it easier to eat healthy meals. I have not been making time to meditate or do yoga, but may incorporate that into my life.

In sum, having tenure gives you a renewed freedom to make decisions about how you want to spend your time. Of course, there are consequences to any decision you make. However, you also have the flexibility to decide where you want to focus your energies, and I encourage you to do that.

What post-tenure strategies have worked for you?

How to Take Control of Your Email in a Few Simple Steps

Do you spend too much time on email? Are you looking for a system that academics can use to manage email? In this blog post, I describe a system that will allow you to take control of your email.

Email is an amazing way to communicate with people around the world. But, it also can be a time-sink. Academics usually have to spend a lot of time on email. This amount of time tends to increase over the course of your career as you accumulate more students, colleagues, publications, and service.

A couple of years ago, I searched around for a system that would allow me to manage my email more effectively. I had thousands of emails in my inbox, and felt that my email was getting out of control. I found this post by Leo Babauta immensely helpful. The steps I describe below are based on this approach, but tailored for academics.

First, I describe what you can do right now to relieve an overflowing inbox. Then, I explain how to develop a system that keeps your inbox under control.

If your email inbox is overflowing, here are three steps you can take to gain control of it.

Three Steps to an Empty Inbox

1. Create three folders: 1) Temporary; 2) Archive; and 3) Action.
2. Take all of the emails that are more than 30 days old and place them in the “Temporary” folder. You will deal with these later, at your leisure.
3. Start at the top of your inbox and make a decision about each email in your inbox. If you need to do something in response to the email, place it in the “Action” folder. If not, it goes into “Archive.”

If you ever find yourself with spare time, you can return to the “Temporary” folder and attend to any important emails in there. However, if a month has already passed, you probably do not need to respond to them. And, if you do need to respond, you likely will get a reminder about whatever it is you need to do.

If you are using your university’s email system and are running out of space, one idea is to create a gmail account and have a copy of every email sent to you sent to your gmail account. That way, you have a record of every email you receive in an easily-searchable database. If you do this, you can delete emails from your university account instead of archiving them, as they can be automatically archived at your gmail address.

Only place items in your “Action” folder that actually require you to do something. Let’s say you receive an email reminding you about an event. If that event is not yet on your calendar, you can put it in “Action” until it’s on your calendar. Once you have it on your calendar, it is no longer an “Action” item. Now, it is on your calendar – which is a much better reminder system than your “Action” folder.

Once you have a nice, clean, empty, zen inbox, it’s time for you to implement a system to deal with email on a daily basis.

How to Manage Your Email on a Daily Basis

1. Don’t check email first thing in the morning. One of the best ways to avoid email turning into a time sink is to do other important things first.
2. When you first check email for the day, process each item in your inbox. Emails should fall into one of these categories:
1. Respond immediately: Emails that require a quick response “Yes, I can review that article.” Or “No, I can’t make that committee meeting.” If it takes less than a minute to respond, answer the email. Then, archive the email.
2. Action items: These are items that require a bit more effort. Perhaps you have to check your schedule to see when you can deliver a talk next semester. That might take a bit of planning and though. Place these emails into your action folder.
3. Archive: These are emails with information that may or may not be important. If it’s interesting or relevant, read the email. If not, archive it.
4. Other folders: Ideally, I would have just those three categories. However, I also have two other folders that are more or less useful. I am the chair of a major committee, and find it easier to place all emails related to that committee into one folder named “Committee.” I also frequently receive news articles and updates related to immigration that I want to read. I place these in a folder called “To read.” I have yet to actually read any of them, but it makes me feel better to have that folder.
3. Quit your email. Once you have processed all the emails that came in over the night, and responded to the most pressing ones, quit your email program and focus on something else you need to do, like prep class or write that grant proposal. It is not a good idea to have your email on all the time as it is distracting.
4. Check your email periodically during the day (fewer times is better). Set aside at least one of those times as the time you attend to your Action items. You see, the action folder will work a lot better if you know for sure that you are going to do your action items at some point during the day.
5. At the end of the week, make sure that your inbox and action box are empty. Your inbox definitely should be empty. Ideally, your action box will be empty too. However, I often let emails sit in their for a while because I am making a decision about something or have yet to write that letter of recommendation.

I recognize this system is not perfect, but it is better than no system! What about you? How do you organize your email?

How a professional editor can help your writing

When I was in graduate school, I met with one of my mentors – a new Assistant Professor – and asked her if she planned to submit an article based on a recent talk she had given. She told me that the paper was too long and she was considering hiring a professional editor to get it from 10,000 to 8,000 words. I was astonished.

I had no idea that academics used professional editors, and something about it did not seem right. The idea that an intellectual would pay someone to do their intellectual labor did not sit well with me.

It was not until many years later after I finished graduate school and had a job of my own, that I came to see the benefits of using a professional editor. I realized that editors do not do intellectual labor for you. Instead, they polish your prose and allow your intellectual contributions to become clearer. Moreover, I began to use an editor myself. I realized that, whereas I may have great (even publishable) ideas, I had not learned how to present them in the best possible form, and a professional editor could help me with that.

In this post, I will discuss three of the benefits to using a professional editor. 1) Many academics do not have the skills to edit their own work. Using a professional editor is one way to teach you those skills. 2) Professional editors are just that, professionals. This means that they can edit your work quickly and professionally and save you time. 3) Using a professional editor can help you get more work under review, and, ultimately, published.



Using a professional editor will improve your writing.
Most graduate programs do not include any writing training. As a consequence, many academics are not very good writers. We split verbs, dangle modifiers, use too many adjectives, use long and convoluted sentences, misuse words, and misplace punctuation marks. Using a professional editor will help you to see which errors you most frequently commit, and to correct them. The first time I used an editor, I learned grammar and style rules I never had known before and realized that I repeated the same errors over and over again. The best way to find out which errors you commit most frequently is to have a professional edit your text and tell you.

Using a professional editor will save you time
For those of you on the tenure clock, time is of the essence. The less time you spend poring over every detail of your article, the quicker you can get it under review and accepted. Paying a professional editor  to turn your almost-finished article into a well-polished piece of work can be a fantastic investment. It is no secret that many academics are perfectionists. Paying someone to do the final editing can take off some of that pressure to be perfect and save you a lot of time.

Using a professional editor will help you get more articles accepted
A well-written paper gives you an edge in the peer review process. When reviewers receive papers that have grammatical errors, it turns them off. Many think that your grammatical carelessness could be indicative of carelessness in other areas. If you write “loose” instead of “lose,” or if you code a variable incorrectly or did not transcribe your interview quotes or archival documents with precision, reviewers may look down on this. On the other hand, having an article free of grammatical and stylistic errors allows reviewers to focus exclusively on the quality of your work, and not on your minor errors. Even if your article is not accepted, the feedback you receive will be more useful as the reviewers’ critiques will not be influenced by their negative opinions of your writing.

Have a nearly finished article on your desk that you are nervous about sending out? Consider sending it to a professional editor to help you get to that last hurdle of finishing and submitting it.

How to find a professional editor
I often receive emails requesting recommendations for professional editors. There are five editors that I can recommend, and I have listed their information below.

There are at least three levels of editing: (1) developmental editing; (2) editing for style and content; and (3) proofreading. Developmental editing is the most time-consuming and costly and requires the highest level of expertise. Proofreading involves fixing errors and editing is somewhere int he middle.

Like writers, editors have different styles, and it can be hard to find one whose style matches your own.

Each of these professional editors are people that scholars have recommended to me. Here's a brief description of their services, as well as their contact information:

KATE EPSTEIN
Kate Epstein has helped many writers bring their books into the world. She'll point out the weaknesses in your arguments, show you how to use structure to make your writing easier to read, and all the while cheerlead for your work. Assistant Professor of Sociology Joan Maya Mazelis at Rutgers University wrote, "Whether early or late in your writing process, whether you need help hashing out ideas and figuring out what you want to say or you need line-by-line editing services to make your arguments clearer and stronger, Kate is an excellent developmental editor!" You can find her at www.epsteinwords.com or email her at kate@epsteinwords.com.

KRISTY JOHNSON
I've really enjoyed working with Kristy Johnson: she's fast, knows her stuff, has an eagle eye, and brings what I have found to be very useful insights to my writing (in other words, she's not afraid to tell me when I make no sense). So the next time you find yourself in the final stages of writing a manuscript you've read one too many times, let Kristy give it a fresh look, clean up your mess, and get you one step closer to publication! I no longer send out an article without passing it by Kristy first, and my nerves are the better for it. You can email her at poet300@msn.com.

Kristy S. Johnson –MFA in creative writing, Freelance Editor for 12 years.
Focuses: Dissertations/Thesis, Academic Articles/Book Chapters, Book Proposals, Job Applications, CVs/Resumes, Fiction and Non-Fiction Books, etc. Field focuses: Humanities, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology and other Social Sciences, Linguistics, and Education. Services & Fees (non-book length): Proofreading/Copy Editing, $4/page, Content Editing, $5/page, Content/Copy Editing, $7/p; Book length quotes negotiable. Dissertation Flat Rate (150-250 pages): $800, 1st pass only, 2nd pass review $100 chapter.

SCRIBBR.COM

SCRIBBR is a proofreading service designed for theses and dissertations that can also be used for articles. SCRIBBR is a great service especially if you are on a tight timeline, as they work with a pool of editors and can turn your work around very quickly. The service is high quality and very professional. 

I sent SCRIBBR a 6,000-word article I have been working on for some time.  The editor, Elaine, found many errors that I had overlooked and suggested several places where I should insert citations. I am much more confident about sending the piece out for review. The proofreading price was also very reasonable at 114 euros for a 72-hour turnaround.

MORELIA RIVAS
Morelia is an English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English translator who specializes in producing thorough, high-quality media and academic translations. She also offers editing and proofreading services and takes great care to provide quality work for your media and academic needs.

Contact info:
mprtranslation@gmail.com
miprivas@gmail.com
mprtranslation.com

--------------------------------- If a professional editor is not within your budget, I can recommend Grammarly - a Chrome extension and tool that automatically checks your grammar. You can get either the free or premium version. Grammarly finds most typographical and even stylistic mistakes. I have been using the premium version as a Chrome extension and it has found mistakes in my blog posts, email, and social media posts. It is kind of like the Word grammar checker, but a much better version of that.

How Ending your Work Day Right Can Boost Your Productivity: Take Stock and Stop Working

I have been known to go on and on about starting my day right – with two hours of writing. And, I still believe that two hours of daily writing is one of the “open secrets” to my success.

It is also important for productivity to end your day in the right way, and to be sure that you do end your work day.

The first step is to decide when to stop your day

We are not machines, and we cannot work 24 hours a day. At some point, we have to end our days. It is much less exhausting to consciously end your day and decide ahead of time to stop working than to try to keep working, but find your mind, eyes, and fingers diverting you to other tasks.

Personally, I end my day in steps. I stop writing before lunch. I stop answering work emails and doing administrative tasks after 6pm. I stop all Internet activity at 8pm. And, I stop reading when I get sleepy.

It might sound counterintuitive, but deciding when to stop working (and to actually stop working) can make you more productive.

Stop working so you can be more productive?

Yes! I stop writing before lunch because my ability to write clearly and quickly after lunch is extremely reduced. If I try and write after lunch, I am only half (or perhaps even less) productive than I am in the morning. Since I have lots of other tasks I need to attend to, it is much more productive for me to do those tasks and get back to my writing the next morning.

I stop answering work emails and doing administrative work after 6pm for two reasons. The first reason is that, by that time, I am tired. This means I am prone to making mistakes. Making a mistake over email usually means I have to either rewrite the email later or, even worse, spend two or three times the amount of time cleaning up the mess I made. So, it is not productive for me to respond to work-related emails in the evening. The second reason is that I need to consciously end my day so that I can take stock of what’s done and what is not done so that I can plan and prepare for the next day.

Each day, at (or around) 6pm, I look over my to-do list for the day. I cross off what I have done. Then, I make a new list for the next day that includes the items from my weekly plan for the following day as well as anything that either didn’t get completed that day or that came up during the day. That way, even if I didn’t complete all I intended to complete in a day, I don’t have to let my unfinished tasks take up mental space. Instead, my tasks are written down on a piece of paper and I know I will attend to them the next day.

David Allen writes about the importance of getting things out of your head and onto paper to clear up mental space, and I find this to be true. Once I write down what I need to do the next day, I don’t need to worry about forgetting to do it or making a plan for when I will do it. I know I will attend to the task the following day. And, if not, it will just get bumped to the next day. And, so, life goes on.

I also try to enforce an “all screens off” policy in my house at 8pm. Since I start writing early in the morning, most days, I am on the computer nearly all day, and I need plenty of time to recuperate. Thus, even though I might think I find it entertaining to read the news or the blogosphere, shop on Amazon, or mess around on Facebook or Twitter, the truth is that these activities are not actually relaxing. Instead, turning off all of the screens is beneficial both for me and for my kids.

After the screens are off, my kids and I can talk, finish up homework, make art, or read. The only work I will do in the evenings is reading – there is always more to be read. I try to treat myself to a novel when I can, but academic work is so much better at putting me to sleep!