I know there’s value in slowness, whether in thinking, eating, or spicy Czech-French novels. There’s more, of course, but I’m impatient.

I know good work takes time, and I don’t want to rush it. And I love being part of this academic world and having the privilege and luxury of spending my days like this, refining ideas and aspiring in my way to improve conditions in the corner of the world I work with.

But I do have some complaints about the way things are done overall in the academy. And the issue of pace is one of them. Maybe it’s because February seems to have about nine thousand days in it, but I’m feeling the pain of academic slowness quite a lot at the moment.

To wit: I’ve been haranguing scholars the length and breadth of this beautiful country to contribute to my upcoming special issue of GeoAgenda – and they’ve responded beautifully. Everyone pushed hard and I think the issue is going to be beautiful! It’s been taxing, sure, but I’m particularly proud of getting an eight month project out the door in about five weeks. And I don’t think the project suffers for it! On the contrary, we banged it out and it’s going to be in the world soon, and we can improve upon it in a later edition as necesary.

Anyway, the point is that people performed under pressure, and it was awesome.

At the same time, I was asked to do two peer reviews for articles this month. I got them both done before deadline and they’re good, in-depth reviews. I feel happy about this anonymous work and I put a lot of care into them. Crucially, I turned them around fast because I know what it’s like to wait for reviews.

And overall, that’s where I am now. Despite the good work we’ve all been doing, I’m stuck here waiting. Last fall I submitted an article and a book chapter for consideration. They were accepted – hooray! – but now, ages later, I’m still waiting to hear from the reviewers. It’s soon going to be half a year of silence.

I understand that good work takes time, I know that the academy is suffering from a crisis of overproduction, and I certainly don’t want to come off as impatient, but cmonnnnnnnnnn!

And I can guess how this will go in the end: I’ll say get busy with some other projects and then my reviews will come in at the worst possible time. And so I find myself thinking how I could improve this situation, but other than trying to be considerate of others by sticking to deadlines, I’m not entirely sure. I’d love to hear thoughts and suggestions though! Perhaps we could collaborate on it?

I promise to get back to you on that sooner rather than later.