Publishing from Your PhD by Johnson Nicola F.;

Author:Johnson, Nicola F.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Things that Slow You Down

There are many thorny bushes and muddy swamps that can slow you down from progressing through the jungle. Being on committees and organising conferences take you away from writing. Marking enormous numbers of assignments is not valued, even though it should be. While teaching well and giving good feedback to students is beneficial and important, the time it takes must be weighed up against the time it takes to get to your destination in the crowded jungle of publishing your research in academia. Some people do not place value on teaching; they favour their research. Some academics place more value on their teaching and administrative responsibilities to the detriment of their research. It is difficult to be good at everything. But in many instances, you will be able to choose what you get involved in, and how much of any particular task you do. These are crucial decisions as they can affect the time you can give to the activities you truly value.

To me, getting involved in administrative tasks can be good for experience, but I really wonder whether it will help to establish your research career? Will it help to bring about publications? If you can spend more time on your research grant applications and your journal articles that you submit for review, will they not pay off better for you in the long run? There are benefits in knowing how universities operate so you can learn how to operate effectively within them. Knowing how budgets, democracy, management and vision (the big picture) work, as well as dealing with conflict and politics, is seen by some people as invigorating and by others as a drag. If contributing to the life and administration of your faculty is important and expected, it has its pros and cons, because if you do not put your research career first, no one else will. No one else in your faculty will put your career as their number one priority. They have their own careers to think about, and they have their own families to think about. Moreover, it is very easy to be distracted from writing a research grant application or a journal article, or a conference paper in favour of attending to administration, emails, marking and your coffee club. While all these things are important, they could also be considered to be thorny bushes or muddy swamps.

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