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Writing Productivity: Tips for Making the Most of Your Summer

From everything we read about writing productivity, protecting a 30-minute writing practice – daily – is what helps build momentum and make progress.  It can also help to remember why you are writing and publishing – there can be a variety of reasons.  What’s yours? My faculty advisor had encouraged me to think about contributing to the peer reviewed literature as joining a conversation. Thinking about writing as participating in key gatherings in the field helped motivate me, more so than simply thinking, “I have to publish so I get a job or get promoted,” though of course that is real too!  Think for yourself: What impact do you want for your work? What goal do you want to reach?

Here’s a blog post that can give you some tips for getting started with that writing practice and making the most of the next 6-8 weeks of summer.  It starts with “forgive yourself” for what you have or haven’t yet been able to do with your summer weeks until now.

The Academic Coaching and Writing site has summarized author Robert Boice’s work on Procrastination and Blocking. Boice is a psychologist and has studied junior faculty on their productivity (or lack thereof) and has developed a framework for the kinds of barriers you can encounter (or create for yourself) and strategies for overcoming them.  His work is aimed at junior faculty – so you know these challenges of getting major writing projects done in the midst of a busy life don’t magically disappear once you get that first faculty position.  It is lifelong learning – I know I love finding these resources for you because I continue to need them and rely on them myself.

Any of this sounds familiar? Boice describes procrastination as “opting for short-term relief through acts that are easy and immediately rewarding, while generally avoiding the thought (and the anxiety) of doing more difficult, delayable, important things” (p. xix). Blocking is “getting stuck at a difficult transition point . . . usually because of paralyzing anxiety and uncertainty, often because the task will be evaluated publicly or because the taskmaster is distasteful” (p. xix).

He goes on to give a number of strategies for overcoming, such as:

  • engage in free writing;
  • find an appropriate location, free from interruptions;
  • schedule writing time every day, not to exceed 90 minutes at a time, with regular breaks and a definite stopping point;
  • stick to a schedule with a system of contingency management, a reward contingent on meeting the day’s goals;
  • turn self-defeating statements into positive statements to reduce anxiety; and
  • learn to use feedback productively.

Find any of this useful? Check out the links for more.  And happy writing! We are writing with you.

Additional Resources:

Originally posted on August 4, 2016.

Funding Opportunities for Postdocs

We understand it can feel daunting to find funding sources for postdocs, and that NIH or NSF mechanisms can be highly competitive and slow to respond.  The Office of Postdoc Affairs worked with our UW Graduate Funding Information Service (GFIS) to identify additional mechanisms for postdocs or early career researchers.  We found these mechanisms can include non-profits, corporations, professional and academic associations, foundations, and government agencies. These tips and links below will be archived in a blogpost on our OPA website for future reference – we highly recommend checking some of these out!

Search in specialized funding databases. More strategic and specific than a Google search, these resources can surface new-to-you funding opportunities. Be sure to look in more than one place (in addition to consulting your network!), as there is no single, comprehensive postdoctoral funding database.

SciVal Funding This powerful funding database is geared toward upper-level doctoral students, postdocs, and faculty researchers. Covering many disciplines, SciVal Funding allows you to search across funding opportunities from government, non-profit, corporate, and other sources. This database indexes the abstracts of successfully-awarded grants, and UW users can create a profile, allowing them to export results and set up search alerts. Requires UW NetID login.

UCLA GRAPES The UCLA Graduate and Postdoctoral Extramural Support (GRAPES) Database is an open resource aggregating a variety of external funding opportunities, not only opportunities available for UCLA students. This is a growing and up-to-date funding database, and postdoctoral funding is easily targeted through the “Academic Level” filter on the left-hand side of the page.

Grant Forward More easily searchable than SciVal Funding, Grant Forward offers UW users an additional funding resource, with features including results exporting and search alerts. Grant Forward (formerly called IRIS) offers broad disciplinary coverage. Postdoctoral opportunities are best found by applying the “Early Career Investigator” applicant type filter or by using postdoc* as a search term. Requires UW NetID login.

Harvard Guide Harvard’s GSAS Postdoctoral Fellowships database enables searching by academic area, citizenship, career stage, geographic location, fellowship duration, application deadline, and more. Tips for searching the database help ensure you get the results you’re looking for.

Select External Funding Opportunities

All Postdocs Regardless of Citizenship Amazon Catalyst Grants Amazon Catalyst at the University of Washington provides students, faculty, and staff of all trades, fields, and disciplines with funding (from $10,000 to $100,000) and mentorship to help them grow early-stage ideas into successful endeavors.

Christine Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program Provides early career individuals with the opportunity to spend 12 weeks at the Academies in DC learning about science and technology policy and the role that scientists and engineers play in advising the nation.

Dan David Prize Scholarships to registered doctoral and post-doctoral researchers studying at recognized universities throughout the world and doing research in one of the selected fields for the year in which the application is made.

DataONE Summer Internship Program DataONE offers summer research internships for undergraduates, graduate students and recent postgraduates. DataONE is a virtual organization dedicated to providing open, persistent, robust, and secure access to biodiversity and environmental data.

Google Travel & Conference Grants These grants are available to traditionally underrepresented groups in technology (including, but not limited to, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, persons with disabilities, women, and veterans) for selected conferences in Computer Science and related technical fields.

Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Research Fellowships 3-year fellowship to support early postdoctoral research training in all basic biomedical sciences. Annual $50,000+ stipend and $1,500 research allowance.

Kluge Fellowships at the Library of Congress 4-11 months of research support to enable use of the Library of Congress collections, with a stipend of $4,200 per month. Recipients of terminal advanced degree within the past several years in the humanities, social sciences, or in a professional field such as architecture or law are eligible.

U.S. Citizens & Permanent Residents Only

CAORC Multi-Country Research Fellowship Supports advanced regional or trans-regional research in the humanities, social sciences, or allied natural sciences for U.S. doctoral candidates and scholars. Awards of up to $10,500. Other fellowships also available.

Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Fellowships including a $45,000 stipend for individuals committed to a career in teaching and research.

Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar Awards Open to U.S. scholars who have recently completed their doctoral degree, typically within the 5 previous years. Awards are available in STEM fields, the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Reed Foundation Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund $10,000 to $60,000 per year for research, including field studies and related expenses. Areas of supported research include, but are not limited to, aging, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, immigrant and minority populations, culture and education, language and identity, and religion.

Acknowledgement to Rachel Wishkoski, former Graduate Funding Information Services (GFIS) Manager who contributed greatly to the above list.

Originally posted on July 21, 2016.

Navigating Authorship Conflicts

There are clear guidelines outlining what “counts” as authorship. While all disciplines have their own nuances in culture, the International Committee of Journal Medical Editors (ICJME) provides a reasonable set of authorship criteria:

  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Note the “and” in those statements. Other contributions can warrant acknowledgments but not rise to the level of authorship. So much can be at stake with authorship – it is our currency in academia and how we establish our contributions in many sectors. The NIH Collaboration Guide recommends negotiating authorship well in advance of writing, and documenting decisions (e.g. who will be first author, who will be a contributing author) in email at least.

However, we know that things may not always go as planned. People move, experiments don’t work out, reviewers ask for additional work, projects stall out, contributions shift.

When these challenges arise, we heard suggestions from a panel of senior faculty and Chuck Sloane and Emma Williams from the UW Office of the Ombuds. These tips include:

  • Speak up. If something feels unfair or not right, get curious. Call a meeting with your PI (or whomever is making the authorship decisions) and ask about what change or decision has occurred. Seek to understand first.
  • If you have a different understanding of fair contributions in a given paper, request a meeting with all the relevant people involved. Using the authorship guidelines or your prior publication agreement as a starting point, ask about changes that have occurred and propose an alternative solution. Justify your position by referencing guidelines, journal practices, potential negative outcomes (if you think there are some) of certain choices. It can help to have an open conversation with everyone regarding what’s at stake with a given publication and authorship choice.
  • Prepare for these conversations by seeking a safe conversation partner first. You can talk through your position with a trusted peer or senior colleague (or the Ombuds or UW Office of Postdoctoral Affairs) first. It will help you let out some frustration and gain a calmer perspective before you approach your co-authors. This preparation can also help you map out the best approach to the discussion, including time, place, who is involved, and what rationale makes the most sense for your position.

Recommended Resource: Who’s on first? Nature (2012)

 

Originally posted on July 7, 2016.

Is “Work/Life” Balance Attainable in Research Careers?

Research has shown that happy people work more effectively, creatively, and collaboratively. It is worth fueling yourself outside work to keep yourself going in work.  Especially as we head into the summer months, think about what choices you can make about your time that will allow you to make the most out of the summer.  Can you go out for a hike or kayak after work (it is light until 9pm or later!)?  Can you take your family for a picnic or camping trip? Is there free outdoor music you want to hear?

There are ebbs and flows to any working life.  Times when a grant is due, for example, when you have to give up weekends (and maybe even sleep).  But these big pushes aren’t sustainable and a research career is a marathon.  You need to rebuild and sustain your energy, and recover your sleep.  Postdoc Elisa Lazzari (UCSD) wrote a blog on this topic: “Start asking yourself what would make your life better. What are the deal-breakers and what can you compromise on? …. Make a list of what things are the most important and honestly work out what you can go without. Chances are that to have an academic position you’ll have to compromise on your personal time, just like other high-profile professionals.” For the full blog post, see Can scientists really have work/life balance?

One other consideration: if you are doing what you love, you can fuel your passion and creative energy within work too.  There are many who resist using the idea of work/life “balance” as it implies those are two separate things.  If you can structure your working life such that it feeds your energy, then you have less need to get away.  It still is healthy to maintain perspective and give yourself distance from your work at times, no matter how immersive it is.  It will help you do better work in the long run – insights gained from a play you saw, or a conversation with a friend can help you move forward in unexpected ways in your research.  And it will help you be a better human too.

Additional resources

Originally posted on June 16, 2016.

Exploring Career Paths: Strategic Steps Postdocs Can Take

In late May 2016, we have had the opportunity to hear from some exceptional speakers on campus who offered their perspective and insights to postdocs regarding exploration and preparation for careers that will be the best fit for YOU.  We excerpted out the following top tips shared during these workshops from guests Kelly Sullivan of the Pacific Northwest National Labs, Linette Demers from Life Science Washington, Matt O’Donnell, Professor and Dean Emeritus in Engineering, Sumit Basu and Hrvoje Benko from Microsoft Research.

  1. Prepare: “Career planning isn’t so much about planning.  But it is about preparing.” Having a clear roadmap won’t always help you, as it may limit you to opportunities or serendipity when something unexpected arises. Instead, invest in preparing for a range of possibilities – diversify your skill sets, cultivate curiosity, and build your networks.
  2. Assess your skills: What is academic research training you for? In part, academic research training is about asking important research questions, developing and pursuing methods to answer those questions, and using results to define outcomes and your next questions.  You are also learning how to work in teams, how to deliver results, and a full range of transferable skills. Learn to talk about your skills and interests in broader more generalizable terms than perhaps your specific, immediate research project may suggest.
  3. Assess your strengths, passion, work style: Talk with your mentor team, or those who have worked with you and know you, and ask: “what do you think I am uniquely good at?” “What do you see as my top contribution(s) to a team or project?” Use free assessments like those offered by Doug’s Guides to get a better sense of what kind of work environment will be the best fit for you.
  4. Explore what is out there: Your research training alone is not career preparation, even for academic positions.  You have to do something more proactive. Develop your “story” about who you are, what your passions are, and how you want to contribute. What opportunities exist? Ask people: I think your job sounds really interesting. How did you get here? Cultivate an opening question “I’m new to this industry/sector, can you tell me what you do?” Get involved with more than just building technical skills in your laboratory.
  5. Understand impact: Learn what is valued and expected in each kind of organization and work setting. Ask: “what does success or impact look like here in this sector, in this organization”? And then ask yourself – is that metric of success and impact meaningful for me.  Is this how I want to contribute, and where my strengths lie.
  6. Gain experience: All the guests discussed the importance of getting out “there” and developing experience and exposure in other sectors, even for a short stint: giving a talk, participating in seminars/sessions that are open to others outside the organization, doing a short 4-12 week internship. These conversations and experiences will both help you decide what sector feels like a good fit for you, and will help distinguish you if you apply for a job in that sector.

Closing tips from speakers:

  • Do something you care about.
  • Summarize who you are without using your technical expertise as a crutch.
  • Let go of worrying about what you are going to “be” – focus more on problems you are passionate about. Follow your curiosity and passion.
  • Spend 5% of your time looking for a new job, even while happy in your current one.
  • Develop relationships. They will take you places and open doors, and make your career worthwhile.
  • Be kind, and humble.  Be realistic about your limitations and acknowledge the contributions of others.

Power Skill of the Month: Pivot. Popularized in the start-up culture, “pivot” describes the ability to drop an unproductive direction or assess signs that suggest that the direction you are pursuing is not going to bear fruit.  Having the ability to pivot to a new direction, release a direction that isn’t panning out, and move on with greater energy and opportunity is key regardless of what field or sector you may work in.

Originally posted on June 2, 2016.

Bad Teacher

Hello, 

Older graduate student who has had a career already so have a little life experience. I took a class with a teacher who was incredibly condescending both to the undergraduates and the graduate students — I pushed back a bit on this but got nowhere. Unorganized, due dates and test dates were “fluid” (as in they kept changing) and homework did not get graded in time for tests. We did learn a lot about this person’s history and background though… I feel like I owe future students some sort of action or at least a heads-up.  — What can I do?

Yikes, sounds horrible. I appreciate that you gave nothing away about the class or instructor. I trust that you filled out the class evaluation. This is probably the easiest yet most impactful  thing you can do. Future students can look up class ratings in the Course Evaluation Catalog. And in addition to the instructor, department coordinators and administrators also see the evaluations. 

You can also try a online rating site like Rate My Professor. Just be aware of the many biases of sites like this. I would also try taking your concerns to the GPA/GPC of your department. It’s important to create a written record of some type.

I reached out to the Office of Educational Assessment, which replied, “Students do have other places to turn; which is most effective probably depends on the type and severity of the unprofessionalism. Speaking with the department chair can get a note in the faculty personnel file, while talking with the UW Ombudsperson can address more significant breaches. The Ombud is also a great starting point to learn about other appropriate avenues of appeal.”

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Ask the Grad School Guru is an advice column for all y’all graduate and professional students. Real questions from real students, answered by real people. If the guru doesn’t know the answer, the guru will seek out experts all across campus to address the issue. (Please note: The guru is not a medical doctor, therapist, lawyer or academic advisor, and all advice offered here is for informational purposes only.) Submit a question for the column →

Ground Yourself These Last Few Weeks of the Quarter

We see how hard you’re working.  You’re running here and there, juggling multiple responsibilities related to all aspects of who you are as a graduate or professional student.  In the midst of this spring quarter chaos, we want to offer you some tips to help ground you in these last few weeks of the quarter.

Connect with your body.  Feeling accumulated tension in your muscles?  Are you having trouble keeping your energy up?  Maybe you’ve been agitated the last few days.  These are all signs that your body is stressed.  We know this is common knowledge, but isn’t it interesting how we can easily ignore bodily feedback and try to plough through the day or week anyway?  Try taking 10-15 minutes out of your day to connect with your body (this is very possible as we can easily spend 10 minutes on social media).  Go for a brief afternoon walk on campus or outside of your home.  Sit in a quiet place such as the library, close your eyes, and take several deep breaths.  Match your caffeine intake with hydrating water (we won’t tell you to cut back on coffee, not now!) .  Keep healthy snacks on hand to make it easy to stay fueled with vitamin rich food. Connecting with your body allows you to be more mindful of your stress level and to actively respond to decrease it.

Shift from distraction to purpose.  It’s easy to get caught in a negative feedback loop of feeling bogged down, frustrated, or depressed about all the things you have to do to close out the year or complete your graduate degree.  And your feelings are totally valid and real.  Yet you are also a whole person and not just the sum of stressful experiences.  In those moments, it’s helpful to remind yourself of your purpose for earning that graduate degree.  You want to contribute to innovation in your field.  You are seeking to impact change in collaboration with your community.  You want to better support yourself and your family.  You want to make a unique contribution to knowledge and research.

Good enough is good enough.  Academia has the capacity to make us feel that we aren’t doing or achieving enough.  Yet in reality, we in Core Programs know that this is just not true.  We have the privilege of collaborating, and engaging in conversations, with a range of graduate and professional students throughout the year.  We get to hear about all the amazing things (no matter how big or small) you are involved in, projects and interests that go above and beyond your degree programs.  We also know that you have families you’re taking care of, working at one or two jobs to make ends meet, or that you are not always validated or seen on campus.  We too have projects that are not yet done, and a long list of things we want to get to.  Your work is never done–this is why the world (and your loved ones) needs you!  We’re telling you right now, you are enough.  And we see you.

Anchor yourself in community.  Make the time in your schedule to hang out with friends, colleagues, or family who care about your well-being and success.  Spend time with people whose well-being you care about.  Reach out to people who share your hobbies and interests.  Go hiking with your best friend.  Plan pizza and a movie night with peers in your cohort.  Make plans for connecting after your last deadline this quarter.  If you’re new to Seattle, consider joining a meetup group based on your interests.  Anchoring yourself in community reminds you that you are a whole person!

Warmly,

Jaye Sablan, Kelly Edwards, and Ziyan Bai
Core Programs Team