Courage

I don't often praise myself. But today, I want to say that I am very courageous.

It's the third day since I have received that rejection. The day I got rejected, I spoke to some friends and gained encouragement to continue on. Yesterday, I spent the time retrieving the relevant working copy from my computer, and converted all the citations back to Endnote format to aid the change of style for the new journal and I sent an email to a publisher to ask for permission to reproduce some data in that article. I felt that what I am trying to say would be clearer with the help of some figures I had previously deleted as I did not want to ask for permission. So... I am also learning something new about asking permissions and copyrights.

Today, I have re-read my article once. And I have seriously considered the reviewers comments. I understand how they have misunderstood my article, because of the poor way I have positioned my findings in the existing literature and how I had made simplistic links between nationality and attitudes of patriotism. I also did not explain why I did what I did, which caused one of my reviewers to be confused about what I did. So, yes, I find the reviewers comments very helpful. Also, I will work on strengthening my methodology section, to make it more rigorous. Again, because reviewer 1 doubted that I could make conclusions on just 4 teachers in 1 school.

The major parts I need to work on is the introduction, literature review and the conclusion.

I think I am courageous, because if I were Shuyi 1 year ago, I would not have been able to do this exercise so quickly. I would still be wallowing in self-doubt and pain.