The Simpsons - Comments about PhDs and Grad Students. [HQ]

Deadlines

Finals and my much-needed winter break are fast approaching. I am proud to say that today I finished all of the drafts for my final papers.

I even fanned them out in a cheesy display for you.

I wouldn't turn them in yet, but at least they are now actual words on paper and not just random thoughts circling in my brain. All of my papers are due by the end of next week, so wish me luck.

Some people in the family seem fairly unconcerned about the impending deadlines....

Holiday Reading!

One of the things that is motivating me to write my final papers is that after I finish, I get to have a break! And what a break really means is reading for fun again. I have actually enjoyed most of the readings for my classes, and I have read non-assigned stuff during school as well (because I'd go nutso if I didn't) but a whole month to read whatever I want sounds wonderful right now.

But I found something very strange when I started making my winter holiday reading list - half of the books on the list came directly from school lectures or discussions! So here's the list; it isn't complete and may change....

1. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
2. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
3. Cloudsplitter by Russel Banks
4.The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn
5. I and Thou by Martin Buber
6. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception by Foucault
7. Being and Nothingness by Sarte
8.  The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir
9. The Theory of Justice by John Rawls
10. Notes on Nursing by Flo
11. Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell


I was keeping notes on books that came up in class on post-its and shoving the post-its in one pocket of my backpack. Now that I've put them all together, I see two things. First, that the list is longer than I thought, and I'm not going to get through them by the end of winter break. And secondly, this list is heavily influenced by one of my philosophy professors, who also happened to be my favorite prof. of the quarter.

Immediately after my last class, I'm going straight to the library and starting with whichever book is available. Yay! School breaks are the best!

Holiday Happiness

I am a huuuuugggee holiday fan, so I would like to wish everyone (who is reading this blog, and from the states) a Happy Thanksgiving!!

If I weren't in school, I'd be putting up my Solstice tree this weekend too. But, I want to wait until I've turned in my final papers. I think that I'll be able to enjoy it more then. 

Happy start of the holiday season!

Entropy

Entropy is defined by the Free Online Dictionary (accessed 11/22/10) as "a measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system."

Or, for a visual representation: My desk.

What was the road to hell paved with again?

Choosing to be a nurse puts one in good, but lonely, company. There a lot of us, but people seem to in the dark about what it means to be a nurse. I have seen polls that indicate that nurses are some of the most trusted people in western society. In one poll, we were rated more trustworthy than clergy (though that may not be saying much lately). But at the same time, being a nurse doesn't garner the same type of respect that I believe it should. People trust us, but I'm not sure they really believe that we're that bright. (Did anyone else see the "naughty nurse" Halloween costumes this year? Yuck.) I'm not someone who wants to place nursing on a pedestal either. We aren't angels; we aren't there to be pretty and "brighten up" a patient's room; we aren't anyone's handmaiden anymore. That certainly hasn't been our role for years.

Being a nurse-scientist is in some ways even worse. It just seems to just confuse the hell out of people. In our philosophy class this quarter, we have asked some hard questions about nursing. We have asked if it is a profession, if it is a real science, if we are scientists and what all of that means. These are questions that seem to put some of my wonderful classmates on the defensive. I feel that these are questions that we, as nurses, must be willing to ask and consider. They are important.

My readers (if I actually have any!) may be wondering what brought this contemplation on tonight. As I was sitting tonight with another student in my cohort, I realized that even though she and I are very different people, we had immediate common ground. We are nurses. But I couldn't actually define why that binds us. We work in different specialties, we are different ages, and we want to do very different research. So what does it mean to be a nurse and why does it bind us? Does it mean that we're more touchy-feely? Does it mean that all of our research must be qualitative, that we only want to talk about feelings? Does it mean that we're less competitive among ourselves and more able to be real friends?

Within the last two weeks I have had three troubling experiences. During my brief visit home, my father asked me what I was "majoring in." I was stunned by the question. My father has a master's degree. And he is aware that I have a BSN and my MS. How does my father not understand what a nursing PhD is? Also, a close family friend, asked me how medical school was going. I was also taken aback by this as I've talked with him about the PhD prior to applying! Both times I tried to quickly do some education and well, explanation, but I'm not sure that either my friend or my father understood.

Perhaps the most upsetting incident occurred at my fellowship meeting. At the meeting, another student, while pointing (manners, people, manners), asked "I want to be a scientist, what is that you want to be?" I was so startled that I hesitated, and the director dragged the conversation in another direction before I could respond.

So I want to answer the question now. I want to be a scientist too. I'm reading philosophy of science, journal articles, taking methods courses, writing, writing, writing and hoping to be published. But will that make me a scientist when nursing is, and will always be, only a human science?

I think so. But I also know that nursing science is still earning respect. Nursing science is still young. It is a science that is made up almost entirely of women. It is a science that addresses amorphous things like quality of life and un-glamorous things like pain relief and medication adherence. It is a science that asks the un-fun questions, things like are our patients actually satisfied with their care? It is not a well-paid science. We are not the superstars of the biological sciences. But when I read our journals (Do doctors read them? Do they know how important some of the things we write are?) I know that we "do" science. And that it is interesting, important science.

What binds nurses is that sometimes we alone actually know what we do. I can sit across the table from another nurse and "know" something about her without knowing much about her at all. What makes us different, perhaps, from doctors or judges or astrophysicists, isn't that we weren't smart enough to get into those programs (and yes, I've had someone say, "you seem smart enough to have gotten into medical school, what happened?"), but instead that we are willing to do the unrecognized, dirty, sometimes disheartening work because we think it is important. And that we are able to create meaning from it. Maybe that is our science.

I am not advocating that we  become defensive and I really want to STOP having the nurses-as-angels phenomenon. That pedestal was only a gilded cage. I am advocating instead that we continue answering, describing, and demonstrating what we do. Even when we are sick of talking about it. If you are a nurse, tell someone what you do all day, not only the good or bad things, but the real things. Make friends with a doctor. They need to see us as people and they need to know what we do and what our science says too!

What I really ask of any nurse reading this is that you stop and think. Think about why you do what you do. If what you do is science and why. Think about how you know what you know. Think about why you didn't go to medical school. Don't be caught off guard the next time someone asks you an important question about nursing. Instead, please take the opportunity to define nursing, for yourself, and for someone else.

Do this for me. So that nobody asks me how medical school is going ever again....

M.I.A.

I know that it's been a loooong time since I last posted. I apologize. I would like to list my many excuses. First, holy god is there a lot of work, reading and time to this PhD stuff! Secondly, I had to travel home to Chicago briefly and also had a lovely visit here from close friends. Finally, I recently caught something that I am calling "flu-plague," because that is exactly how it feels. As I currently have no voice, but have recovered from the recurrent fever that was symptomatic of my "flu-plague," it seemed like a good time to write.

I have some new advice for anybody who reads this blog for doctoral info. or tips. First, I've now learned that this is not a sprint, it is a marathon. I am beginning to understand the real definition of persistence. You might think that you are a persistent person (I did), you might think that you know what the word means (Oh, just wait until they teach you about concept analysis), you might have completed some previous tasks that required persistence (they were good preparation), but this process requires a lot more persistence than you ever imagined.

Be aware that your endurance will build, but also actively try to build it by keeping up with the readings and thinking ahead. Nothing in the program is ever done; papers, projects, classes are only the blocks that you will use to write the next paper, do the next project or take the next class. There is no filler. It is all important. And that is overwhelming. So let go of the idea that you are going to finish something and move on to other things.  I have files, on top of files, on top of stacks of articles that I know will be useful....for something later.

There has been very little coasting so far. The work is concussive. I have papers due in three weeks that are worth half of my grade for a class. I still have to write them even though I just got back all of my mid-quarter papers with grades that seem less than reflective of the extreme effort that went into them. Which leads me to another tip. Get a thick skin BEFORE you start a PhD program. The gloves are off. There isn't time for anyone to write "nice effort." It isn't that the grading is harsh, or unfair, it isn't. It's just that we are going to be the colleagues of the professors that are grading these papers. And they are not planning on raising any fools. They're using each paper we write as a place to give constructive criticism. It has all been constructive, it has almost all been criticism also. I have learned to live for the "nicely done" comment or the "interesting thought" scribbled in a margin. They are manna to me.

These papers are also, for the first time in my educational career, all applicable. Because the assignments are tailored so that each student can write them on the phenomenon of interest relevant to that student, they are all a chance to increase knowledge. What I have found to be very, very helpful is that I had some articles and basic knowledge on my topic before entering the program. This leads me to my last tip for this post. Before entering a PhD program, it is important to have accumulated and read at least some articles in the area that you would like to research. For one of the applications to schools, I had to write a scholarly paper. The articles that I found for that paper have served as references, places to look for other references, and idea-generators for all of the papers I've written this quarter. The amount of time it would have taken to find them during the quarter might have been crippling.

So that's it. I'm still loving it, but the honeymoon is over. I'm off to take NyQuil and go to bed. I have to get up and start working early. :)