u/StormNo34

I (F, 29) am originally from the States, diagnosed there in 2015 with Hashimoto's and was suspected of having a meningioma (small tumor) in my brain. Had MRI in 2018, which confirmed a benign meningioma in my brain, margins stable. I haven't had an MRI since. In the past year, I've had a series of three fainting spells on two separate occasions. I know that none of these episodes have anything to do with the meningioma, but I think 8 years is too long to go without a follow-up MRI, no?

Any advice on how to get a referral for an MRI from the NHS? I have already been to my GP and asked. They were confused as to how I knew in the first place because they were unaware of the MRI I had in the US (though it's in my history now). I just went into A&E yesterday for another spell and asked again about the MRI. They said it's worth asking the GP to have a neurologist have a look, and apparently they can't refuse if I request it? Has anyone got an MRI through NHS? And any idea as to whether it's worth going private or waiting for NHS?

TL;DR: As a baby academic, I suppose I’m wondering if this is a normal experience? Has anyone had something similar happen before?

I’m a second year PhD student in the UK. I applied to the paper track for an interdisciplinary ACM conference back in February. This is my first time writing for ACM and for an HCI audience, so this paper required so. much. effort. Even when I was off during the Christmas holiday, I was doing 2-3 hours of work a day when I should have been resting and spending time with family. I also had been working through every weekend since NOVEMBER. In other words, I’ve put a lot of time into this for a field I may or may not publish in again after my PhD (interdisciplinary topic with multiple different avenues for publication).

In early April, I got my decision and reviews back, and the paper was so borderline that they decided to reject as a paper but accept as a poster, which would also include publication in conference proceedings. This is a highly rated conference, so naturally my supervisors were pretty stoked about this, especially coming at the middle of my second year. We decided to go ahead with the poster (which, I may add, we don’t do in the particular area of the humanities I most definitely will be publishing after the PhD?), and because of the unusual nature of the situation - my primary supervisor says it’s not usual to reject a paper but conditionally accept to another track like a poster/demo - I reached out to the poster chairs to clarify deadlines. I was very particular about clarifying each deadline, as there was some confusing language in the decision email, IMO. Always better safe than sorry with deadlines!

There was a deadline for mid-April for the normal folks applying on the poster track, but since my paper had already been reviewed, I was told by the poster chair that all I needed to do was enter in my paper number in a new submission for the poster track. I asked about the written component (would need to submit a revised, 3,000 word version of the original 8,000 word paper) and the deadline for this. At this point, I was told that was a deadline “later in May,” so not to worry yet and “stay tuned for more details.”

Come early May, I get a notification with a paper-to-poster track update for those people like me who resubmitted to the poster track. It was basically an automated email from the system acknowledging my submission, stating that they would confirm acceptance and next steps shortly. I didn’t hear anything back for a while, and I knew the general camera-ready deadline was 21 May, so I emailed the poster chair again, who clarified that, yes, this deadline does apply for me and sent apologies because he had apparently tried to send a notification to us all through the system but it hadn’t come through yet.

When I went to the system to revisit my poster submission, I saw that it had been “withdrawn,” and there wasn’t an opportunity to submit a revised draft anywhere. I emailed the poster chair about this on the Monday, and they don’t get back to me until the day of the deadline to say that the submission has been withdrawn because “we didn’t receive a revised draft by the deadline specified by the paper chairs.” As I said before, in the decision email where it was rejected as a paper but accepted as a poster, it was unclear exactly what the timeline was, so I reached out to the poster chair to clarify this. It seems he was unaware at the time about some other early May deadline, but either way, no specific deadlines were communicated to me by the poster chair.

I responded to the “withdrawn” email pretty quickly, providing our past email correspondence (all with the same person as poster chair, mind you!) and bcc’ed my supervisors, who were aware there had been something funky about how this was organised, but weren’t too worried given the unusual decision on the paper.

My primary supervisor has responded to the trail and escalated this with the general chairs (which, tbf, I also attempted when I wasn’t hearing back from the poster chair about the “withdrawn” message on the system), and he has asked that they open this back up to me on the system so that I’m able to submit in time for the deadline, and I have been very diligent in terms of my communication and making sure I am meeting all deadlines.

No reply from the general chairs yet, and they only have a few hours now until the deadline passes!

Thanks if you’ve made it this far. As a baby academic, I suppose I’m wondering if this is a normal experience? Has anyone had something similar happen before? Also open to any advice moving forward in terms of general communication pertaining to publication and/or conferences 🙂

P.S. To add a further element of chaos, I registered for the conference almost 2 weeks ago and still haven’t received a receipt, which I need to get reimbursed by my university. I emailed the registration team, saying I had double-checked my inbox, junk, and I had entered in the correct email for confirmation. They simply replied, “It should be confirmed and it should be there now.” Still no confirmation, still waiting to send in my reimbursement for the £380 🫠

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