Submitted a below-average paper

[tragicomix]

I'd done quite a bit of work for my master's degree which resulted in the publication of two papers. At the time I was submitting my thesis, I thought it would be cool if I could combine the ideas in these two papers and add these results to the thesis. This combination had nothing new conceptually but it did lead to some interesting new results.

However, a few months ago, my advisor suggested that we should submit this bit of work to a conference. I wasn't too keen on the idea, because as I've already said, there was really nothing new here. But my boss managed to convince me that it was worth a shot, so I pulled out the LaTex editor and put something together for the deadline. I'll be the first to admit that I did a sloppy job of it. By this time I was thoroughly sick of my thesis, not to mention the fact that I was working 40 hours a week, and so I didn't bother to review the paper carefully for typos.

Fast-forward two months and the conference rebuttal is now open and I can see the reviews. Unsurprisingly, the reviewers have noticed that (1) this work is a fairly simple modification of my previously published work and (2) I've not done a good job of reviewing the submission for typos.

As I've already said, I didn't really expect to get this published, so I don't really care about the paper's fate. Unfortunately for me, half the profs from my PhD applications are sitting on this conference's program committee. This is a problem because my name is on the submission and now they are going to think (1) I'm a sloppy student. (I'm really not - I didn't want to submit this at all) and (2) I'm trying to get milk another paper out of my existing work by packaging some old wine in a new bottle (I didn't want to do this, it was not my idea).

How much is this going to affect my applications? What can I do now? Any advice for me?

Thanks!

Edited February 14, 2011 by tragicomix