Feeling disillusioned with publishing and research in general
Honestly, I'm getting pretty disillusioned with publishing, and I'm feeling like giving up.
I've had multiple rejections recently, with little to no feedback, and I'm starting to question what the long-term payoff is supposed to be. You can spend days or weeks working on a paper, submit it, get rejected, rework it for another journal, and then potentially go through the whole thing again.
I enjoy research, but I'm finding it hard to justify the amount of time and effort that goes into publishing when there's no guarantee it'll actually lead anywhere. Also, reading posts about how journals can be biased, focused on profit margins, or even political doesn't really help. Anyway.
Being a woman in engineering is another part of this. I often get really awful looks in my workplace and feel deeply unwelcome. I know this isn't always the case, and things are changing, but it's still a very hard thing to deal with day to day.
I don't know. I'm just getting tired of putting so much into this without being able to see where it's going.
Has anyone else been at this point? Particularly women in engineering or related fields, or people who've taken a less conventional path through research. Did things eventually start to make more sense?