A month ago I was encouraged by one of my professors to send in a paper I wrote to another professor in the department. This is a paper that I put in my heart and soul and countless of hours of work over the course of 6-7 months (of course this was on and off as there were excavations and exams and such in-between). I was nervous about contacting this professor because though he's praised some of the school projects I've handed in in the past, he, how shall I say...has a certain mannerism and approach to academia and research. I was not sure he'd be impressed by the paper.
But he told me he'd read it ASAP and would contact me after. A month passed and I didn't hear from him, and I began to realize that something was up. School started this week (finally...) and I met him outside of class yesterday (well, actually, I ambushed him outside of his classroom, but whatever...) and instead of just saying something like "good work", he just asked that we set up a time to meet and discuss things. So we met today during a break period, and things were as I feared. He said what I desperately did not want to hear.
The gist was that though my schoolwork is praiseworthy, my essay was not academically up to par. I'm not dissing the compliment, I know that he meant it. But that's not what I was looking to hear. In his opinion, a paper has to deliver a metaphorical KO on its particular field of research. A paper should grab someone's attention from the start, and should be impressive from the onset. Theoretically, it may have been enough to just rearrange the paper. But it wouldn't have been enough, according to him, because, as the paper deals with a certain manuscript, I never answered the supposedly big question: Why was the text within the manuscript authored?
I have no answer to that. I have thought about this text for months now, but I don't know why it was authored. That aspect remains a mystery. But the paper presents a lot of other ideas tied to the manuscript, as well as a more solid (in my opinion) dating system. But that, in his opinion, is not a KO. It's not reason enough to try to publish this as an essay. It might be useful as a school project, but it's not on the level of a paper. He told me to come back to him (regarding this) once I had an answer to the question. Essentially, he told me to put it on a backburner indefinitely. That was very frustrating to hear. I wasn't insulted, but I am deeply frustrated.
Now, I'm obviously new in the field. I don't feel I have enough knowledge and the right tools to gauge whether what he said is true, or reflective of the majority of papers. I have come across a great number of papers who haven't delivered much of a KO, not really saying anything particularly surprising or new, but for various reasons, they were still published, often in top-tier journals. Obviously he thinks paper should be held to a high standard. But given that there are various types of papers, and not all deliver KOs as he would put it, particularly his definition of what a KO would be regarding this type of text, I wonder whether his criteria is correct.
I would like to get more opinions on the matter. I'm waiting to hear from the first professor on the matter, and maybe I'll reach out to another professor. I'm not prepared to give up so easily. I'm not planning on the moment on holding my ideas back indefinitely. If I hear all-around comments that the paper is not up to grade, I'll probably set it aside. But not just yet.
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