Reviewing a Paper

I still intend to write the second half of, "Ingredients of Change." It wont happen today, though. It's crazy for me to think that I could write meaningfully about the social inequalities in America. For this reason, I'd like to embark on such an effort after more reflection than I have time for now.

In the meantime I'm going to complain about reviewing a paper: Reviewing a paper is a lot of work. This is especially true if you happen to be a grad student and the subject of the paper is outside your area of expertise.   The ideas presented seem very clever, but several assumptions are made, and I don't have a good way of determining if these assumptions are valid.  Maybe this is part of the culture of this area of study, maybe the authors are sweeping something under a rug.  I can't tell. 

I felt honored to be asked, "Me judge if someone else's research is fit for publication?"  I don't feel quite so honored now.  I feel like I signed up for a ton of work.  One thing's for sure, I don't intend to review any more papers while I'm a student and I'm definitely maintaining some bound on the ratio of number of papers I review to the number of papers I get published.