ABSTRACT
I am deeply grateful to the people who helped me construct this chapter even when they had so little time and energy to do so. This chapter is about, and for, them.
Being asked to contribute to this volume took me back to my own doctoral studies and made me reflect on the expectations that I had for myself then and that faculty had for me, about writing for publication before I had completed my degree. My situation was very different from that of the students I describe later in this chapter: I had no full-time job, only a teaching fellowship on campus; I had no family or children living with me; I had few health problems; I had, in other words, the luxury of studying just about full time (three-plus years of course work, three years of dissertation work, typical for an American university). However, unlike some of my colleagues from other US universities, I do not recall the faculty urging me to publish my work, even though I managed to get started on my own. Others have reported being urged to turn good course papers into articles to submit for publication or being self-motivated to do so (see, for example, Hedgcock, 2008; Lee and Norton, 2003; Matsuda, 2003).
