Double Helix

I have finally turned the corner from exhausted to motivated where the manuscript revisions are concerned. On Monday, I sorted the two reviewers comments and those of the editor into categories that I think make sense and will streamline the revisions/rewriting-process (these are something along the lines of "a quick and easy fix," "requires more reading, reworking, citations, etc." "finesse the language to retain what reviewer #1 really liked, but made reviewer #2 defensive," "delete, rethink, rewrite" and so forth). Yesterday afternoon and most of today was spent chipping away at the long list of references reviewer #1 thought was critical to further proving one of my better/finer points, nevermind that the editor didn't like the point AT ALL and would be happy to see me toss it out altogether...hmmm. So far, the reading is intellectually stimulating, at least. This is really good since I've still got at least 7 more books/articles to take a look at, so that's what I'll be doing tomorrow.

This photo (emailed to me over the weekend) was taken by one of the students in my Spring seminar to memorialize the fact that I finally got this particular 'lineage' fully (and properly) charted out during the discussion of one of our readings. If I ever teach this book again (not likely, given that this was the second time around for me), I'll know where to come for a quick review of the double helix.