Flashback Three: To Publish or Not to Publish?
Well into my thirties, I was often mistaken for a teenager on campus. Around the year 2000, during a Student Representative Council voting event, a student asked me whether I was a sophomore when I was merely passing by on the way to my office in Fisk Hall. Similarly, a year later, while queuing for an event outside the Assembly Hall, the then-Head of Public Relations at AUB pushed me forward in a manner that a military officer might use with an impudent teenager. I don’t know if anyone noticed or reprimanded him, but when he passed by me at the next such event, his expression was one of someone whose head had just been struck with a hammer. It was clear to me that something was amiss, and that I’d have to work doubly hard to prove myself in the workplace.
One way of proving oneself in an academic setting is through publishing. At the very beginning, no one ever told me to conduct research or publish, and the idea of academic publishing did not cross my mind. Being young and relatively naive, engrossed in teaching and marking, and from a non-academic family background (though academically inclined since early childhood), the closest I got to publishing was flirting for a while with the idea of writing a novel about AUB – something akin to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, except revolving around aliens from another planet landing at AUB and reporting about it.
In the mid-to-late nineties an opportunity finally presented itself. Along with a number of other AUB faculty members, I was selected to work on a national curriculum English language textbook committee. Over the next three years most of my energy was focused on this project, and by the end, I had emerged as the published co-author of a number of English language textbooks, each with its workbook and teacher’s manual. At an early stage in our work though we were advised to withdraw from the project or remain only as individuals rather than as representatives of AUB; tensions had developed between the university and the National Center for Educational Research and Development, and although the nature of the tensions was not disclosed to us, it later dawned on me that foreign publishers had opposed the project as they wanted their books on the Lebanese market instead. When we finished the first book, a couple of outside “readers” were hired to edit it before it was released. Luckily, I got a chance to see their work just before the book went to the printers. Those “readers” had clearly left certain things unread: they had modified the student book without making the necessary parallel adjustments to the workbook or teacher’s manual, leaving a trail of discrepancies behind. “They’ve messed up their book!” exclaimed an NCERD employee when I brought this to their attention. A compulsive perfectionist by nature, I volunteered to repair those discrepancies after everyone else on the committee had disappeared for the summer holiday, the co-authors and the so-called “coordinator” of the textbook.
The episode with the government textbooks was a great learning experience though I’m not sure I’d want to go through that kind of tunnel again. Since then, I have published only teaching-related articles, many of which were initially presented at English teachers’ conferences. The course material one posts on course web sites is also a form of publication, albeit much less formal, and I’ve been involved in that for years, initiating and contributing to various English Department metacourses - sites available to multiple sections.
It is easy to begin slacking after such accomplishments, deluding oneself that there is nothing more to be done, but complacency is the enemy of progress. For the motivated, new vistas are always on the horizon.
Posted by May Mikati on Friday, 03 June 2011, 1:06 PM
Well into my thirties, I was often mistaken for a teenager on campus. Around the year 2000, during a Student Representative Council voting event, a student asked me whether I was a sophomore when I was merely passing by on the way to my office in Fisk Hall. Similarly, a year later, while queuing for an event outside the Assembly Hall, the then-Head of Public Relations at AUB pushed me forward in a manner that a military officer might use with an impudent teenager. I don’t know if anyone noticed or reprimanded him, but when he passed by me at the next such event, his expression was one of someone whose head had just been struck with a hammer. It was clear to me that something was amiss, and that I’d have to work doubly hard to prove myself in the workplace.
One way of proving oneself in an academic setting is through publishing. At the very beginning, no one ever told me to conduct research or publish, and the idea of academic publishing did not cross my mind. Being young and relatively naive, engrossed in teaching and marking, and from a non-academic family background (though academically inclined since early childhood), the closest I got to publishing was flirting for a while with the idea of writing a novel about AUB – something akin to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, except revolving around aliens from another planet landing at AUB and reporting about it.
In the mid-to-late nineties an opportunity finally presented itself. Along with a number of other AUB faculty members, I was selected to work on a national curriculum English language textbook committee. Over the next three years most of my energy was focused on this project, and by the end, I had emerged as the published co-author of a number of English language textbooks, each with its workbook and teacher’s manual. At an early stage in our work though we were advised to withdraw from the project or remain only as individuals rather than as representatives of AUB; tensions had developed between the university and the National Center for Educational Research and Development, and although the nature of the tensions was not disclosed to us, it later dawned on me that foreign publishers had opposed the project as they wanted their books on the Lebanese market instead. When we finished the first book, a couple of outside “readers” were hired to edit it before it was released. Luckily, I got a chance to see their work just before the book went to the printers. Those “readers” had clearly left certain things unread: they had modified the student book without making the necessary parallel adjustments to the workbook or teacher’s manual, leaving a trail of discrepancies behind. “They’ve messed up their book!” exclaimed an NCERD employee when I brought this to their attention. A compulsive perfectionist by nature, I volunteered to repair those discrepancies after everyone else on the committee had disappeared for the summer holiday, the co-authors and the so-called “coordinator” of the textbook.
The episode with the government textbooks was a great learning experience though I’m not sure I’d want to go through that kind of tunnel again. Since then, I have published only teaching-related articles, many of which were initially presented at English teachers’ conferences. The course material one posts on course web sites is also a form of publication, albeit much less formal, and I’ve been involved in that for years, initiating and contributing to various English Department metacourses - sites available to multiple sections.
It is easy to begin slacking after such accomplishments, deluding oneself that there is nothing more to be done, but complacency is the enemy of progress. For the motivated, new vistas are always on the horizon.
Posted by May Mikati on Friday, 03 June 2011, 1:06 PM
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