I am currently waiting for peer reviews of two books I've worked on: one sole-authored, one co-authored. We don't talk much about the experience of waiting for reviews, and it's not something that appears to have been researched. Yet it's something everyone doing academic work has to go through and it may be bad for our mental health. I'm finding it particularly difficult at the moment because a lot rides on these reviews. The sole-authored book, which is on a contentious topic, has already had one set of reviews. Reviewer 1 was utterly damning, saying "I couldn't find anything to praise". Luckily, Reviewers 2 and 3 were more measured, offering both praise and constructive criticism, and their input helped me to revise and strengthen the typescript. However, in the process, my editor and I realised that we needed further reviews from people with a particular kind of specialist knowledge. My editor approached around ten potential reviewers, but only one agreed to do the job. So I'm gibbering what if that person agrees with Reviewer 1? The co-authored book is in a contentious format. My co-authors and I decided that I would be the person to liaise with publishers, as I have form in this process. The last time I liaised with academic publishers for a co-authored book was in the early 2000s, and I'd forgotten how heavily responsible it makes me feel. Fortunately, I've found a publisher that is interested and has sent the book out for reviews, to two professional academics and two students. This is great and terrifying but at least there are four reviewers. Even so, what if they all think it's rubbish? In many ways I love the peer review system. I welcome feedback on my writing, and I'm not at all averse to constructive criticism. I am by no means arrogant enough to think I can write a good book without input from others. Yet peer review, as a process, is fraught with uncertainty. Comments may not be constructive, or may not come at all. They may be positive, or negative, or in between, or a mixture. Question: How long has it been since the author liaised with academic publishers? Options: - it was five years ago - not enough information - almost 20 years - it was a year ago === The correct answer is
almost 20 years

What is creativity? How de we define creativity? Where does creativity come from? How philosophical is the notion of creativity? Is everyone's 'creativity' different? Or is it an ill conceived, simplified term that is used to describe a very specific series of neuronal & bodily reactions to certain stimuli? These are all the questions I've been thinking (and googling, and youtubing) since beginning this Capturing Creativity studio* and I have found some answers or maybe I've just found more questions: Creativity is generally defined as the ability to make new things, or come up with new ideas, it's an ability to think outside the box, to see unique solutions and employ them in inventive ways. In this sense creativity is not always utilised when being 'creative', as to be creative is simply defined as the ability to make or produce something. However I guess that depends on your definition of creative, how different, unique, special, once off, un-influenced does something have to be, to be classified as creative? This is where creativity get's tricky. It's all well and good to be like oh this is what creativity is, so it's easy to investigate it, but what if you don't define that as being creative, maybe that was just following a formula, a somewhat inspired formula, but maybe it is just a formula. Creativity to most people seems to be a random mix of once off genius combined with solid skill and hard work and for us humans these percentages are unique to us. Maybe creativity to you is 90% unique idea, 5% skill and 5% hard work. Maybe creativity to you is 40% unique idea, 50% skill and 10% hard work. Maybe for you creativity doesn't have to involve any hard work at all. For me when it comes to creativity I'm most interested in that unique idea portion; where does that unique idea come from? Is it simply random? Is it a gift from the gods? Is our unique idea just a product of a lot of subconscious effort, only made aware to us in the sense of a 'random' idea? Have we been influenced by something, processed it... Question: What is a gift from the gods? Options: - Destruction - Trickiness - not enough information - Creativity === The correct answer is
Creativity

I was 14 at the time. My family and I took a family vacation to Tybee Island, Georgia. It is a beautiful place that I would highly recommend. I told my family that I was going to go find a port-a-pot. So I head off by myself. I'm in the port-a-pot, i'm in there for roughly 10 minutes. (you can assume what I was doing) I wash my hands and get ready to leave the port-a-pot, and I tried to open the door and it was locked. I'm claustrophobic, so I start to FREAK OUT. I started banging on the door, running into the door with all of my weight. Nothing was helping. I then start crying, I thought for sure that I was going to die. I knew it was the end, at the age of 14, locked in a port-a-pot, in 95 degree weather in the middle of a beach in Georgia. Looking back, i'm curious as to why my family never came to look for me, I was gone for like 30 minutes. So I'm banging on the door continuously, bawling my eyes out. Then a man opened the door for me, from the outside. He was about 6'3 with dreads about 12 inches long and weighed about 280 pounds. I ran out of the port-a-pot and jumped on the guy and gave him a hug and told him that I loved him and that he saved my life. I don't know how he managed to open the door for me, but I definitely know that my 14 year old self owes that man my life. I'm not sure where he is in life, or what he's doing, but I hope God is blessing him abundantly. It is definitely a funny story to tell my friends. Question: Why did the author panic when she couldn't open the door? Options: - not enough information - She was worried about her family - She was claustrophobic - She had to get back to the beach === The correct answer is
She was claustrophobic