phd – Emily Read, PhD, RN

Unsolicited Advice for Writing a Research Article for a Journal

Writing research articles for peer-reviewed journals requires practice, patience, and persistence. I am by no means a prolific scholar but I worked with one who was amazing (the late Dr. Heather K. Spence Laschinger) for six years and learned a thing or two about writing journal articles (and my record isn’t too shabby for an early career scholar either). I am also an award-winning peer-reviewer for several journals so I have seen a lot of excellent and not-so-excellent submissions which has made me a better scholar too.

One of the things I really love about this role is being able to provide helpful feedback to others that can help strengthen their work. Chances are I will never be your peer-reviewer (unless you are a nursing or management scholar) but I wanted to share some tips on how to present your best work and improve your chances of publishing your research. From a reviewer perspective I think this guidance is important too because we are volunteering our time to review papers (yes, that’s right, we do it for free, mostly because we care and are mega-dorks) and trying to review a poorly written and/or disorganized manuscript is frustrating.

So, without further ado, here’s my unsolicited advice for writing a research article.

Select the journal first

But, how do I choose a journal?

First, read the aims and scope of the journal to make sure it is a good fit for your research. For example, if you did a study on job burnout, you might not want to submit it to the Journal of Applied Physiology. Burnout Research would be a better fit for your work. Journal-research fit, if you will, is super important because the editor wants to make sure that the articles are of interest to their readers. You will not make it past the editor’s desk if your article isn’t a good fit for the journal so save everyone some time and do your homework before you submit (and even better, before you begin writing).

Ideally you should select 2-3 journals that are a good fit for your research and then compare them. Look at their impact factors and take a look at a couple of recent articles from each to get a feel for the kinds of studies they publish. Also look at the word length and author guidelines because sometimes that can be more important than impact factor if you need more space. I recommend always going for the best journal first and then keeping the others in mind in case your work gets rejected from the first choice.

Read the author guidelines and follow them EXACTLY.

Don’t waste your time writing a 10,000 word paper with 10 tables and figures for a journal that wants 5,000 words and a max of 4 tables and figures. Author guidelines are not suggestions – they are rules! Your job as an author is to make it as easy as possible for the editor to give your paper the green light to move on to the peer-reviewers. You also want to make it easy for the reviewers to focus on the content of your paper, not the writing, grammar, and formatting, etc. It is also worth repeating that the journal already gave you the guidelines! It’s not rocket science, it’s attention to detail (and it’s important!).

Use a reference management software program.

While it is tempting to just use the copy and paste feature from Google Scholar, in the long run, it will save you a ton of time to save and organize your articles systematically. I use Mendeley (it’s free) so I will speak directly about that program. Mendeley has many cool features that make life easier for researchers and students.

You can upload PDFs using drag and drop and the program will populate all of the reference fields automatically (always check for accuracy though because they are often imperfect).
The program then allows you to highlight and make notes directly on PDFs of your articles so you don’t have to print them out.
It has a cite and write feature for Microsoft Word that allows you to insert citations from your reference library while you write.
It generates a reference list for you in the style of your choice. This will save you about a million years if your paper ends up getting rejected and you need to submit to another journal that uses a different referencing style (trust me, it is painful to switch styles manually if you haven’t experienced this).
You are likely to reuse some of your references in the future for grants or papers so a reference management program keeps you organized (and again, saves you time looking up the same article 20 times).
Your Mendeley library is saved on a cloud so you can access it on any computer. I love this feature because I can access my libarary at home and work and on my laptop so I never have to worry about where my files are.

Write the literature review/ theory section first.

Although not everyone emphasizes theory in their work I think it is really important. I am really not impressed by empirically-driven papers that dump a bunch of variables into a statistics program and tell me that they are significantly related to one another statistically. I want to know if those relationships are meaningful. In other words, why and how are things related and what are the implications? This is where theory and logic come in. Let’s pause here and think about an example: both ice cream sales and drownings increase significantly in the summer. Logically, we know that drownings do not cause increased ice cream sales or vice versa, but rather, both are related to an increase in temperature (when it gets hot people are more likely to want to eat ice cream and to cool off in the water). Another example: Mud and rain are positively correlated but we know that rain causes mud, not the other way around! In both examples, the data could support relationships that are not logical, demonstrating the need for theory-driven research. Don’t start with your data; start with why! (“Start with Why” is also the title of an excellent book by Simon Sinek, FYI). If you are doing a qualitative study then theory is equally important in terms of identifying and explaining the paradigm and method that you are using. Helter skelter coding of interviews or focus groups doesn’t quite cut it.

Write the methods and results sections next.

These should be the easiest parts of your paper to write. In the methods section you simply explain what you did in your study and in the results you describe the findings. Writing these sections makes your paper feel like a “real” article and gives you the content you need for your discussion section and conclusions.

Your methods section should outline your study design, sampling procedures, data collection methods, intervention and control groups (if applicable), and data analysis methods. For quantitative studies, providing accurate information about your measures is really important. Describe each one and provide support for their validity and reliability.

A quick note about tables and figures here – make sure they are formatted the way the journal wants them and that they are easy to read and understand. I suggest using the full names of variables rather than abbreviations (e.g., “job satisfaction” is easier to understand at a glance than “jstotal” or whatever code name you came up with in SPSS or SAS). Never ever copy and paste output from statistics programs! Just don’t. As a reviewer it makes me cringe when people do this. You can easily copy it into a word document and reformat it to meet the journal guidelines. When you don’t it looks like you either didn’t read the journal guidelines or you didn’t care. For bonus points, if you have space to include a diagram that shows your model of how variables are thought to be related in your study, it is super helpful to reviewers and readers (and arguably to yourself).

Tackling the discussion.

The structure of this section is going to depend on your research and the journal guidelines but generally, it is a good idea to have an introductory paragraph that sums up the overall findings and then subheadings to discuss different key findings in further detail (keep it logical and organized). You should interpret the meaning and implications of your results and discuss how they fit with past research. This is one of the toughest sections to write because it requires the synthesis and integration of ideas from multiple sources. You should not just paraphrase or summarize what was found in other studies; you are explaining, linking, comparing, and analyzing your results and those of other studies. You are pulling out the meaningfulness of your study.

Limitations.

Despite common limitations for studies with similar designs, most journals still require that you provide a limitations section. For example, obvious and common limitations include sample size and power, response rate, cross-sectional designs, common method bias, sampling bias, and social desirability bias. Pick two or three of these to address (not all of them!). If there is something particular that you think limits the validity or reliability of your results or their generalizability beyond your study, it is important to include it in this section and explain the potential implications or cautionary interpretation needed. As much as possible, keep this section short and sweet.

Introduction section.

You are almost there! Again, make sure you follow the instructions for authors for the journal because some of them are very particular about what to include in each section. Often the introduction includes a statement about the purpose and/or aim of the study and is the place where you need to introduce the reason why your study was needed. The introduction is an excellent place to use some key statistics that highlight the severity or reach of the problem at hand and grab the reader’s attention. At the end of the introduction it should be obvious what the problem is and how your research is going to address that problem.

Writing the abstract.

Think of your abstract as the profile picture of your article. People will decide whether or not to read your paper based just on this short blurb. Whether we approve of it or not, sometimes people only read the abstract because they don’t have access to the full article or they are pressed for time. Abstracts are also used in the systematic review process and for conference presentations so learning to write excellent abstracts is a valuable skill. The biggest challenge is fitting everything you want to say into 150-300 words (just look at the length of this blog post lol!). Not easy and again, every journal has different guidelines. Some want a descriptive paragraph but most have subheadings (e.g., Introduction, Purpose, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, keywords). Generally you have room for 1-2 sentences for each section so you have to be concise and edit a lot! The best advice I have for this process is to start from scratch instead of cutting and pasting sentences from your paper (always too long and too detailed) and to write only one essential sentence for each section. Then you can add as needed and as room permits.

Consistency.

The last point I want to make is that it is essential that your entire paper is consistent from start to finish. If you are examining the effectiveness of a weight loss intervention on cardiovascular risk factors in overweight men, then the whole entire paper should focus on that. There shouldn’t be new surprise variables like vitamin D consumption or social support introduced in the middle of the paper! Likewise, your discussion and implications should be logical and realistic. One study never proves anything 100%. Recall that with hypothesis-testing research a significant result just means that you are 95% sure (or 99% sure, depending on your p-value) that your results didn’t happen by chance. You are contributing to a body of evidence and an ongoing research conversation. To improve consistency, after your first draft is written take a break and read it from start to finish with fresh eyes. Read it critically and ask yourself if there is anything that doesn’t make sense or flow quite right. Talk about your variables in a logical order and keep the same order throughout your paper and in tables and figures. This creates less work for the reader and makes it easier to follow. Once you are done editing, get someone else to edit it. If you are working in a team and different sections were written by different people, it is especially valuable to have one person edit the whole document and make it flow (everyone has a unique style!). If English is not your first language and you are submitting to an English-language journal definitely try to get it proof-edited by a professional for grammar and spelling before you submit.

Hope you found this helpful and if you are a nurse, please check out my new feature Nursing Research Summaries. I think you’ll find that helpful too!

Happy writing!

The Defense

On Monday morning I had my PhD Defense and it was completely wonderful!

For weeks beforehand I prepared diligently, trying to anticipate difficult questions my examiners might ask. I made an exam binder with my whole dissertation in it, Mplus output, copies of my survey booklet, key references, detailed notes that I made as I re-read my work, etc. What can I say, I like to be prepared.

IMG_20160521_085203 (1) — My super organized exam binder 🙂

I finally chopped my presentation down to 30 minutes on Friday. I rehearsed it twice on Saturday, one last time on Sunday night (after an epic game of water gun capture the flag with my son). I went to bed on time and slept like a rock.

On Monday morning I was just the right amount of nervous and excited. My game plan was to enjoy the day; the day of my once-in-a-lifetime PhD defense. The hard work had already been done – the hours of endless reading and thinking, writing and rewriting…rewriting again…the data collection and many hours of data analysis….it was all done! I was as ready as I could be.

The public presentation went well. I felt comfortable and confident and enjoyed sharing my work with everyone who came. About five minutes in, the computer shut down for updates but it broke the ice a bit and helped me relax. It also helped that the audience was full of friendly faces 🙂 After the presentation was over there were a few questions and some discussion.

Then I went to the exam room with the examiners for the “grilling session”. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when the first examiner opened with praise and compliments about my study, writing, and attention to conceptualizing social capital at different levels of analysis, etc. The whole exam is rather a blur but at that point, I knew I was going to be fine. Of course they asked me some challenging questions but overall it was an enjoyable discussion. I am also very hard on myself so it was really nice to hear such positive feedback about my work.

The defense made me realize that everything my committee had done to guide me and challenge me over the past few years had resulted in a solid dissertation study. More importantly, I have developed the knowledge and skills required to be an independent researcher and hold my own as I move on to my new role as an Assistant Professor.

I passed and had minor revisions to complete but the most difficult part was finalizing my acknowledgements section. How do you adequately say thank you to every single amazing person who’s been part of your journey? The whole reason I became interested in workplace social capital (the topic of my dissertation) in the first place was because I found myself surrounded by caring, supportive colleagues, friends, and family as a single parent working on my PhD. Initially I wanted to look at something completely different – the link between leadership and the work environment and nurses’ physiological health outcomes (something I may do in the future).

My biggest lesson over the last few years, both first-hand, and through my research, is that social capital is tremendously valuable. Not confined to the workplace, I know I could not have accomplished all that I have without the awesome people in my life. More importantly, social relationships make life meaningful and way more fun! I am ever thankful for the special people who have been part of my life adventure thus far. Now that my PhD is complete, it feels like 10 million billion elephants are off my back and I am super excited for the new adventures ahead!

Academic Conferences and Children

I’m excited and slightly overwhelmed by all of the planning currently going on in my life. I have been invited to present at two awesome conferences this summer and am preparing to move to a new city to start my first tenure-track job. Very exciting, but also extremely stressful because I am in charge of organizing everything and I am also getting ready to defend my dissertation at the end of the month (also amazing but stressful).

Regarding conference planning, the biggest stressor for me is figuring out the best plan for my child while I’m away. Sometimes it makes sense to bring him along but that requires an additional responsible adult to come with me so that I can actually present and attend some of the conference. It’s obviously more expensive to do that but it can also be more fun in the end, even if it requires more coordination to plan.

When it doesn’t make sense for him to come, I have the glorious fun time of organizing child care for him. I am fortunate to have lots of social support – in London. Now that I am moving to a new city it’s going to be a little trickier to navigate all this. I am closer to family but they are busy with their own lives and I feel guilty asking for help. I feel ALL the mom guilt – guilt for spending time alone/with other grown-ups. Guilt for having a career that is important to me. Guilt for not making my child the centre of my universe at all times. Guilt for not having a significant other. Guilt for not enjoying my time away as much as I could because I feel guilty about all these other things. Enough with the guilt already, right!

For better or worse, research dissemination and staying current is part of my job. It’s not like you finish your PhD and that’s the end of learning and scholarly work. I feel very fortunate that travel is part of my job but it’s not like it’s an all-expenses paid free-for-all! Unless you are a well-funded researcher (which is the exception rather than the rule), there is little funding to assist with the expenses of conferences. It also takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to prepare an abstract and a good presentation, a fact that often goes unacknowledged.

Sure, you could go to one conference a year but that might be a career-limiting move because fewer people will see your work. It also limits your exposure to interesting research across disciplines which may provide valuable insights and generate new ideas. I value the professional memberships that I have in nursing and management and conferences are an important part of these organizations. Increasingly, there are more and more conferences to go to as well! For example, APA puts on an excellent Work and Stress conference where every presentation is something I am interested in. Obviously you can’t go to everything, but it is not easy to choose or to say no.

So I’m left asking myself the question: “what’s a sane number of conferences to attend each year?”

Not sure that I have an answer yet but I will figure it out 🙂

Sitting is the New Smoking…

sitting-is-killing-you

So apparently, sitting is the new smoking…and therefore, I am probably going to die. Not really (I hope), but there has been a whole lot of attention to the “sitting epidemic” recently, highlighting how much time most of us spend sitting during a regular work day. (Clearly, they have not spent any time with a staff nurse lately!). The solution? A standing desk, of course. Or a treadmill desk. Or taking frequent breaks. Making sure that you have an ergonomically designed work station….

On perhaps, we need to start asking different questions about how our work is designed. For example, in academe, we do spend a lot of time sitting at our computer working on all kinds of things from research grants to articles, powerpoints, data analysis, etc. Some of this work is unavoidable I think but I also wonder if some of this time could be used more effectively. For example, do we really need to write 20 research articles using one dataset? Do we really need another book chapter on such and such that a handful of people will read? What if we publish one really strong paper and then talk to people about our ideas instead? How much more fun (and time effective) is it to interview people, record a podcast, or share a conference presentation on YouTube? Obviously, none of these things completely eliminates computer time but I am guessing that the impact of one really great Ted Talk is much broader and valuable than a research article buried in an academic journal that mostly only other researchers are going to read. Unless of course, more research articles = more tenure points.

Sometimes collecting tenure points feels a bit like being Mario trying to get all the gold coins within reach (and apparently research activities that require copious sitting are as likely to kill you as sitting on your butt playing too many video games).

mario coins.jpg

So let’s assume that you just have to accept that your job requires some sitting. What can you do to make it less bad?

Take care of your body. Exercise. Eat nutrition food. Go easy-ish on the coffee (mostly). Get enough sleep.
Plan ahead for the ebbs and flows of the school year. Midterms? Exam period? Research grant deadlines? These are busy times, but they are not unexpected! Get a calendar and plan ahead. I like to make extra healthy meals and stick them in the freezer to reduce cooking time. Having some exercise equipment in the basement is also really awesome for saving time when I am busy. There have also been times when I have had to hire my babysitter to give me an extra morning or afternoon to do work on the weekend. (Fingers crossed that being a professor is more awesome than being a grad student working full time!). Do I always get to do a full workout? No. But sometimes 10 minutes of exercise is better than nothing 😉
Be super organized. You can waste a lot of time trying to simply locate documents, references, and sort through different versions of things. Having a logical way to organize files and name documents will save you a ton of time. I even get my students to name their documents in specific ways so that I don’t end up with 25 versions of “Assignment 1”. Using a reference management software program is also a really great way to save time with citing and reference lists, especially when you need to use different referencing styles for different journals. No more wasted time seeking and downloading the same reference articles over and over! Lastly, using tags and folders in your email inbox is another strategy that saves oodles of time. If you can use the same main categories as your main files on your computer, that is even better! I like to use gmail and get all of my other emails forwarded to that one account.
Be reasonable. Sometimes I struggle with this. (e.g. “Of course I can have a baby and do my PhD and publish and compete in powerlifting and work at the hospital and teach, etc. at the same time…). I like to set big goals and have a tendency to say yes to everything but I have learned that this usually leads to burnout. A better strategy is to take on a few things that you can really focus on. Reading (and re-reading) the Power of Less is a helpful place to start. Academia seems to reward people who work hard and do a lot but I think another point to consider is that learning and teaching is exciting! Research and teaching are (should be) both about learning new things and understanding more about the world around us, as well as sharing that knowledge and excitement about learning. It is hard to say no when you are excited about learning and sharing ideas! Is it reasonable to spend 20 hours a week preparing for a class you are teaching for the first time? Maybe not if you are teaching 3 courses and have other things on your plate.
Aim for excellence, rather than perfection. I don’t think there is such a thing as “perfect”. The pareto principle, or 80:20 rule comes in handy here too. It states that 80% of your outcomes/effects will come from 20% of your work. Do you really need to make 50 slides for a 10 minute presentation? Or, would 10-12 slides, well-designed, be more captivating and effective in getting your point across? How much time are you spending sitting, working on things that have little to no impact? After all, sitting is the new smoking….

I want an academic career. When’s the BEST time to have a baby?

The short answer is that there is no best time and that really, anytime is the best time. Nothing can ever prepare you for the challenges and joys of parenting – regardless of whether or not you are a grad student, a practising nurse, or a stay-at-home mom.

That being said, it helps if you have a committed partner and some sort of plan. Personally, I did not have that experience. Let’s just say that the pill is not 100% effective. I stuck with my life plan (sort of) and worked at the hospital as an RN until September and started my PhD 9 months pregnant (against all good sense I think) and took one week off from classes (because my supervisor made me). The “birth plan” involved my wonderful friend driving me and my roommate to the hospital where we streamed episodes of New Girl while I waited for my son to decide to make his grand entrance. My sister and her boyfriend flew in and met us there (he stayed outside).

Lucky for me, in Canada we get a year of paid maternity leave and you can be in school during that time – I didn’t plan this out at all but it definitely made life a lot less stressful. For the first semester we didn’t have a car so we got up early to catch the bus so I could take him to the wonderful home daycare we found, then back on the bus to school. After school I would go back on the bus to get him, and again on the bus to go home or sometimes to the Y and then home. It was exhausting! On the plus side, it really made me appreciate the amount of time and energy it takes to coordinate life when you don’t have a car. Before my son was born I rode my bike a lot and it was hard to not be able to do that anymore.

One of the best things about being a single parent and a nurse was how much support I received from others. The nurses at work threw me a baby shower, offered support and advice, and even offered me lifts to and from work when they could. My former roommate lived with us for a year until she finished her nursing degree (God bless her) and friends have helped take care of my son so that I could go to work, school, and conferences (one even road-tripped with us to Indianapolis!). Their love and support made me realize how important relationships are in life and sparked my interest in workplace social capital (my dissertation topic). In many ways, our lives have been richer because it was obvious to others that we needed them. I’m not sure that it is always the same when people are married and it is assumed that they have all the support and help they need (I’m sure that it is different for everyone).

I think you can balance a demanding PhD program with being a parent but it requires focus, discipline, and support. The balance is always changing too! The time you get to do homework when you have a baby who sleeps a lot is different from the time you get when you have a busy 3 year old who wants to play all the time. You have to learn to be more flexible and adapt to what your child (or children) need as they grow up. My son has helped me slow down and reminds me daily to play and enjoy life. Not that I didn’t before but children have such an awesome way of looking at the world.

At times I have had to make tough choices about work because of being the only parent – for example, this past fall I chose a day job as a research coordinator (which I find rather stressful) because it had regular hours – but because of that I had to give up my part-time staff nurse position at the hospital (which I love) and go casual. It’s straight-up difficult to find daycare for shift work – especially when you are part-time and don’t have a consistent schedule. I miss seeing my co-workers and my patients. Research is rewarding and I have learned a lot this year but it’s different.

Ultimately, I think being a parent has made me a better person and has made me more efficient with my time. When I am home, I don’t want to be thinking about work so I work hard at work to be organized and focus on things that are important. I have one dedicated day a week to work on my thesis and try to keep it contained in that time frame. I think one of the big problems with academic culture is this idea that working longer hours makes you a better, more productive member of the academy. Numerous studies show that overworking people actually makes people less effective, less happy, and has very damaging effects on their health. That, however, is a topic for another post I think…

Grant Writing Success

In late November I was offered my dream job as an Assistant Professor at the University of New Brunswick in the Faculty of Nursing (I enthusiastically accepted!). I am getting ready to board the train on the tenure track and plunged right into writing my first CIHR grant as a PI. Not for the reasons you might think either. While I do understand that obtaining funding is valued as a performance outcome for faculty members, having money to do your research allows you to – wait for it – do your research 🙂 That being said, being awarded the money which allows you to accomplish valuable work is not the only reason to write a grant proposal and it is not the only measure of success (although, again, it is super helpful and makes it easier to do what you are trying to do).

So what else defines a successful grant application? For me, success includes learning more about the research problems that I am interested in examining, learning more about what other researchers have done, and thinking about what we need to know and/or do to solve these problems (ultimately contributing to a healthier health care system and society I hope!). Building connections with other researchers, health care providers, and policy makers can also be a lot of fun! Over the last few months I have been able to connect with others who share common interests and also have unique expertise and experience to bring to the project that I initiated. Regardless of whether or not we get funded for the project, we now have developed a plan, a budget, and have a good handle on what we want to accomplish through our research.

As a new kid on the block in New Brunswick it has also been really helpful for me to start meeting people and getting a better understanding of my new province. I grew up in Nova Scotia but each province has a different approach to health care delivery and my training and experience in nursing has been in Ontario in an urban centre which is quite different than Fredericton. Making connections now will make it easier to fit in when I get there and I feel like it is a very welcoming place.

I do think our project is important and worth funding but I also recognize that there are limited funds and lots of great ideas worth funding. It also depends on who ends up reviewing our application and the other projects that are being submitted. At this point I’m not sure if you get “tenure points” for submitting applications that don’t get funded but it’s not like a straight-forward sport like track and field where there is a clear winner. Train hard, eat right, be the best, win, right? Research grant competitions are more like artistic sports like figure skating and gymnastics where judges (reviewers) assess the relative value of competitors/applications and assess whether or not you will be able to successfully do the proposed research. Comparing research projects and teams that are qualitatively diverse makes it harder to decide which projects should be funded. approved

For these reasons, I think it is important to define success not just in terms of getting funded or not. As a novice PI, I am uncertain whether that will go in my favour or not. After 4 degrees, 3 theses, and being able to balance all the demands of school, work, residence life, teaching, research, and being a single parent while also staying fit, I am 110% confident that I will be a good team leader and that we will be able to carry out the project as a team. Of course, when you submit a research grant application you can’t put “single mom/time management ninja” or “worked 10 part-time jobs including running a residence hall while completing my undergrad” as part of your accomplishments/skills (and if you did, it would probably count against you). Again, another reason why I think it is important to always do your best and see the process and the development of the proposal as an accomplishment and an opportunity to learn and grow as a writer and researcher.

Of course, if we do get the grant, it will be icing on the cake and I will be literally jumping for joy because we can start putting our research plan into action. There is absolutely no denying that actually getting the grant is a successful outcome too! And a very sweet one at that! However, if it is the only outcome that you focus on, I think that you miss out on a lot of other great things about writing research grants.

Lessons from my First Year of University Teaching

Last term I taught the 3rd year data analysis course for nursing students at Western. Boy, was it a ton of work! Overall, I really enjoyed the experience and learned a lot about how teaching and learning has changed since I first began university back in 2001. Currently I am teaching a graduate-level course in post-positivist (quantitative) research methodology and that is a super fun! I really enjoy in-depth intellectual discussions about research with a small group (18 students) rather than talking at 120 undergrads who don’t care about statistics at all and want the “right answer” (which isn’t always possible).

Here are the top lessons I learned about teaching so far (I am sure there are many more to come!)

1. I am a dinosaur. I grew up going to the library, reading hard copy books, writing out essays on paper with a pencil, etc. Students these days have always had the internet at their fingertips and they will sit there and Google everything that you say like fact-checkers at a political debate. Take home message: I need to learn how to use technology to my advantage and not waste valuable time in class lecturing off of PowerPoint slides when I could be using more engaging activities during face-to-face time.

2. Students need structure more than I realized. One of the assignments last term was to do a content analysis of transcripts from interviews or online forum discussions by patients with different conditions. Rather than embrace the freedom of interpreting the data for themselves, many students were frustrated because there was no certain correct answer (like so many things in real life). We gave them a reference for an article that told them step-by-step how to conduct a content analysis and about 1/3 of the class did not read it, resulting in them doing the assignment in a way that did not make sense. Somehow the fact that they did not read the article that they were explicitly told to read was my fault. Interesting. Take home message: Repeat key instructions in class, post them on slides, etc. Give them explicit instructions.

3. TAs are like a box of chocolates. Seriously though, you never know what your TA will be like and they may not know the course material or mark assignments the way that you would like them to be marked. They are also graduate students with their own coursework, lives, etc. so be realistic about expectations. Despite having good rubrics, the assignments that we had in the course were lengthy and complex which also made it challenging for the TAs. Also, students will blame you for delays in marking and mistakes on their rubrics, even if you make sure they know their TA does the marking. Take home message: Design assignments that are staged so that they are easier to evaluate by someone with little content knowledge of your course.

4. PhDs do not prepare people to be awesome teachers. I really thought that my experience teaching lifeguarding and first aid, personal training, and coaching basketball would make teaching easier but university teaching is very different. It is kind of sad that students pay so much money for school and the quality of teaching is so varied. I really like that tenure-track teaching positions are becoming more prevalent and that most schools are providing support for teaching. I feel lucky to be able to gain some teaching experience and attend workshops and courses at Western’s Teaching Support Centre during my doctoral program. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to pop into a tenure-track job and try teaching for the first time while trying to apply for grants, publish articles, and commit to service. This job is crazy. Don’t get me wrong, it is what I want to do (and as an RN I know that I have lots of other options), but I am also not naive to the demands of the career path I am pursuing. Take home message: I need to devote more time to learning to be an effective teacher so I can have a successful transition into a tenure-track position.

Now to get back to working on that dissertation proposal! (It is almost done and I am planning to defend in the Spring so that I can get started on data collection!).

Why Tenure isn’t Everything

Many doctoral students think that getting published in a top journal and getting tenure are the only things that matter in their career. While I think those things are valuable achievements, I believe that this task-focused approach to doctoral education is dead wrong. Here’s why.

1. Relationship-building is more important than you think. Are outcome-focused type A overachievers who leave little time for “unproductive” things like spending time with other people or having fun really more likely to be successful in life? Admittedly, the academic pursuit of tenure and endless productivity can make you feel guilty for spending time doing something unrelated to your work. Relationships are inherently inefficient but they certainly aren’t useless, even if they don’t have an immediate outcome or “accomplish” anything. Co-students and supervisors, other faculty members, and colleagues you meet at conferences make your career more rewarding and more fun. They also provide you with support, constructive feedback, a sounding board for new ideas (which often sound better in your head than they do out loud), and occasionally, a shoulder to cry on. On the flip side, you will also be able to contribute to others’ projects and provide feedback to help others. My experience as a nurse has made it pretty obvious that relationships are one of the most valuable aspects of our lives and that we need to value them more. Building positive relationships takes time and energy but at the end of your life, are you really going to regret the time you spent with other people? Not likely.

2. Burnout prevention

Sometimes we are overambitious and take on too much. I have done this more times than I would like to admit. During my first undergraduate degree I refused to take a student loan so I worked 10 part-time jobs while taking a full course load and having an active social life. My schedule was crazy! After final exam period I slept for almost a week straight to recover from the burnout. Don’t do this to yourself! I have learned that a much more sustainable method is to limit the number of projects and commitments you take on and do them well. If you take on too many things at once you are probably going to do a mediocre job and end up exhausted. I also don’t advise doing things just because they look good on your CV. If you invest your time and energy into things that help you learn and grow and that you are interested in, you are going to excel at them and have a lot more fun. I truly believe that if you are engaged in the learning process and doing work that gets you excited the publications and tenure-track position will follow. Enjoy the process and pace yourself – this is a marathon, not a sprint.

3. Today is the only day.

As much as we plan and dream, the only day we ever have is this one. Take advantage of it. Sure, there may be times when you have to stay inside on a sunny day to meet an urgent deadline and you will spend many many many hours sitting in front of a computer screen working with data, writing, and picking at powerpoint slides. Take breaks. Spend time outside. Take care of yourself physically and mentally. Most importantly, make time for the people you care about. You really never know when your time will be up.

Tenure is a good goal for many of us and it is something that I am working towards but right now being a doctoral student is pretty darn amazing. Every day is a learning adventure and I am building my research toolkit. I get to work with smart people who have a lot of knowledge and ideas to share and who are passionate about nursing and health care. I get to ask questions and think about ideas. I am also working with the best supervisor, committee, and research team I could ask for. Tenure will be nice but it can wait.