Can't believe it's the last week of term already

Can't believe it's the last week of term already.  Still lots to try to get finished. Some recent highlights:

Been marking student assignments on the module I run on our MSc Health Psychology programme. Students have to write a case study of a hypothetical person who has a chronic health condition, describe the psychosocial issues they face, then choose and justify a self management intervention that will help them with these issues. Students can choose any condition they wish. Diabetes, HIV and arthritis proved the most popular choices this year.

I've also been writing new modules for the degree restructuring that's currently taking place for next academic year, including: clinical and counselling psychology, applied social psychology and professional skills for psychology graduates. I'm particularly keen on the last of these but finding an assessment strategy that will work for such a large group of students (its a mandatory module) will be a bit of a challenge.

In the last week I've drafted ethics submissions for projects with external collaborators, on the experience of volunteering and of monitoring one's fertility. I'm hoping that dissertation students and/or placement students will work on these in the next six months to a year.

I've also just submitted a research paper on PCOS to a journal - please please PLEASE don't let it be rejected... and have decided to write a blog entry as an excuse to digress from the very long NHS form I have been struggling with...

Bumpass Hell

Ok so the bubble has been burst.

I opened the editor's decision email referred to in yesterday's post. It was a rejection...

Editor's comment:

Thank you for allowing us to consider this work for (name of journal). At this point your paper has been reviewed by one expert reviewer only, who has presented us with a quite brief review. In order to avoid a delay I decided not to invite more reviewers. However, we have subjected your paper to a thorough editorial evaluation.

Reviewer #1: I enjoyed reading the paper which makes a worthy contribution to an under-researched area. Although the paper is well-structured, I have a number of minor suggestions to improve it...

Editor's comment:
Because of an increase in submissions, we can only publish a minority of the manuscripts we receive. Space constraints dictate that that to an increasing extent we may publish only those manuscripts providing significantly novel insights or new perspectives.

Sadly, this means that we are unable to publish many manuscripts of significant quality. I must regretfully inform you that based on the review and our editorial evaluation your paper did not reach a high enough priority to be further considered for publication.

Sob

Preparing for clinical - and is my bubble about to burst?

Teaching students on MSc Health Psychology today - looking specifically at pain management programmes and the guidelines offered by the British Pain Society and the International Association for the Study of Pain.

Also preparing some teaching materials for tomorrow morning's session teaching narrative analysis to year two clinical psychology trainees.

Meanwhile, an email has arrived with an editorial decision from a journal we submitted to in the autumn.  Am postponing looking at it in case it's bad news. If I look tomorrow and it turns out to be bad news at least I will have the weekend to lick my wounds...

Got the carrots thanks

University closes this evening until 4th January, so I thought I'd sign off with my top picks from this year's festive journal articles:

An unexpected christmas present - Failure of a 48-inch waterline

Look what Santa Pharma brought for Christmas: A urological drug to treat the whole patient

and

Optimizing a basal bark spray of dinotefuran to manage armored scales (Hemiptera: Diaspididae) in Christmas tree plantations

I think I've had enough of the academic life for now so I might start on the cocktail sausages.

Valiant efforts and fingers crossed

Despite the earlier IT difficulties, and with the valiant support of my co-author, I have now been able to submit our paper to the chosen journal.  Here's hoping that the editor thinks it's worth sending out for anonymous peer review.

Now to have lunch. Rumble rumble...