Exit Interviews and Winding Down Your APE

With the Fall quickly approaching, over the next couple of weeks many rising 2^nd year MPH students will be transitioning from their Summer APE projects back to classes, homework, and thesis or capstone research. Throughout the Summer, we have been highlighting many of those exciting APE projects through our #InsideAPE segment in the Confounder, and couldn’t be more proud of the innovative and impactful work our students have been involved with over the last few months. Furthermore, as those APEs come to an end over the next couple weeks, there will be some opportunities for reflection and relationship building that you would be remiss to let pass. In the professional settings, this often takes place through an Exit Interview – and though you probably won’t be having the classic Exit Interview, it is a good exercise to think about some key takeaways from that process and how you can take advantage of those benefits towards the end of your APE.

Ask for feedback

Last year, alumna Elizabeth Hannapel (EPI MPH, 2012) wrote a spectacular PROspective article on Professional Feedback. She highlighted the fact that feedback in the workplace is very different than feedback in the classroom – it requires being proactive and committing to a growth mindset. The Exit Interview is no exception. If your supervisor hasn’t suggested having an Exit Interview, ask for one yourself! During the interview, maintain an open mind and view feedback as an opportunity to grow instead of as a personal affront. You should want to know where your weaknesses lie so that you can spend the next year working to fill those gaps in your skillset. Typically, Exit Interviews are also an opportunity to give feedback to your employer or supervisor directly – but be careful not to complain or vent – keep it focused on the positive and on items that can actually be improved. For more on exit interviews specifically, take a look at this article from Forbes on common pitfalls. 

Develop those relationships

If your APE was with an organization outside of Rollins, chances are that you met a lot of new co-workers and collaborators… virtually. Regardless, individuals you have been working with throughout the summer, including your direct supervisor and even department directors, represent a HUGE opportunity to develop your network. Not so long from now, you will be back in the job market looking for full-time post-graduate work and these individuals already have a good idea of your strengths, weaknesses, and accomplishments. In Getting to ‘Yes’, Dr. Lash talked about how the professional setting is an environment of reciprocation. Ask your supervisor if they would be willing to write recommendations for you in the future and make connections with your co-workers on LinkedIn – but make sure to offer something in return. Developing strong professional relationships takes time and commitment to reciprocating.

Next steps

Your APE doesn’t always end the day you log your 200^th hour – often there is still a manuscript getting submitted for publication or maybe even an ongoing, uncontrolled global pandemic. Opportunities may still abound if you are willing (and have bandwidth) to continue with your team in a different capacity. Either way, it is a very good idea to discuss any outstanding action items and make a clear plan for the hand-over of your duties to the rest of the team. When your project ends, you want to leave your team with a good impression of you, and helping them take over your work seamlessly is a great, proactive way to do just that.

At the end of the day, your APE should be a learning opportunity. That includes learning how to apply those soft skills – asking for feedback, developing relationships, and managing transitions. A little bit of effort in these areas will definitely pay off down the road.

Zoom Fatigue

Take a Break!

Are you a (social) Epidemiologist?

From Dr. Michael Kramer, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology

Are you a (social) epidemiologist? Should you be?

I am. A social epidemiologist that is. I was actually that long before I even knew what the combination of those words – ‘social’ + ‘epidemiology’ – even meant! Just as the notoriety of ‘epidemiology’ has risen in recent pandemic-tainted months (even my stoner neighbor knows what an epidemiologist is now!), so has the discourse around social epidemiology. It seems that the idea of unjust or preventable differences in health outcomes across the social dimensions that shape so much of our modern life – race, ethnicity, class, gender, geography, sexual identity, etc, etc – is having its ‘five minutes of fame’. Pundits, talking heads, and social influencers are suddenly speaking about, and wondering why, communities of color are bearing a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Following the state-sponsored murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, it also seems that wide swathes of (white) America are opening their eyes to the longstanding existence of institutionalized and structural racial injustice that has direct (e.g. murder) and less direct (e.g. over policing and mass incarceration, segregation, racism in employment, education, healthcare, etc) consequences for the health of Black and brown communities.

So I ask again, are you a Social Epidemiologist? Or should you be?

Don’t worry, I won’t guilt you into being a ‘Social Epidemiologist’ (with a capital ‘S’)! However I will argue that if you do epidemiology you must be a ‘social epidemiologist’ with a little ‘s’, or else risk making (and re-making) mistakes that have littered the history of epidemiology and public health, and have the potential to cause harm rather than help. To distinguish what I mean between capital-S versus lowercase-s social epidemiology, let’s start by defining our collective work as epidemiologists.

I like the definition of epidemiology from Modern Epidemiology (3^rd edition, p 32): “Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of disease frequency in human populations” (emphasis added). This definition aligns nicely with John Snow, Cholera and our beloved Origin Story of epidemiology. Measuring the distribution of disease is about describing the who, where, when, and what of population health outcomes, whether infectious, chronic, behavioral or injury related. Describing the determinants of disease is about answering the questions of how and why disease varies between groups and over time. It is here we try to estimate causal effects of exposures or interventions.

Those of us who self-define as Social Epidemiologists are fundamentally epidemiologists. We work in pediatrics and geriatrics; in infectious and chronic disease; and in government, industry, or academic settings. While the health outcomes and occupational settings are diverse, the organizing principle of Social Epidemiology is exposure-oriented. We tailor the focus of our work to study of the social distribution and social determinants of disease. Describing social distributions of disease means intentionally conceptualizing, measuring and reporting disease occurrence along the social lines described above (e.g. race, ethnicity, class, gender, etc). Understanding the social determinants of health between and within populations also requires a shift in the exposures under consideration. Instead of individual behaviors, individual exposures, and inherited genes we might center our attention on social environments, racism & discrimination, political economy, social policy, and health policy as determinants of health overall and specifically of health inequities. 

While the lessons of John Snow – careful observation, shoe leather detective work, intentional contrasting of competing hypotheses – are just as important for Social Epidemiologists as any others, we might look to additional role models as well. Although formally a sociologist, W.E.B. DuBois is arguably the founding father of social epidemiology.¹ In The Philadelphia Negro, DuBois² used systematic quantitative analysis to characterize health and social outcomes as they varied in 19^th Century Philadelphia by race, employment status, and neighborhood segregation level. The modern Social Epidemiologist builds on this early work by recognizing that socially patterned experiences that occur through interpersonal interactions, in the non-random allocation of opportunity or exposure across one’s life span, and even across generations, are literally embodied as altered biological and psychological function.³  Our bodies express the health that is shaped by their continuous and accumulated interaction with a social world. It’s pretty fascinating and important stuff!

But what if Social Epidemiology (with a capital-S) is not your thing? That’s ok. Public health and epidemiology benefit from the big tent under which we all work. However choosing not to center your interest on social determinants of health does not diminish your responsibility to learn about and understand the use and misuse of socially constructed measures in the conduct of epidemiologic analysis. Let’s take, for example, the use of ‘race’ as a variable in epidemiologic analysis. Its use as a ‘confounder’ or even an ‘exposure’ has been ubiquitous across a wide range of study areas for many decades, yet very often the interpretation and meaning imbued into results from such analyses are poorly communicated at best, and in worse circumstances may represent lazy thinking and biased assumptions of the investigator, ultimately causing harm to population health.

While it is common to acknowledge that race is a ‘social construct’, there is often confusion about the implications of this idea for epidemiology. Does the presence of a ‘racial disparity’ in a health outcome mean some people are just born less healthy? Or if we ‘adjust’ for socioeconomic status should we assume that any residual racial difference is suggestive of a genetic cause? Or perhaps if race is ‘socially constructed’ we shouldn’t even be using these variables. Each of these conclusions has been made frequently in epidemiologic research, but rarely are they justified or well-supported either empirically or theoretically. Most of us align ourselves with multiple identities along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Few of us could honestly say that none of these dimensions have any influence whatsoever on our lives and health. Saying that these dimensions are ‘socially constructed’ does not mean they are not real in each of our lives; it simply means that they are not biologically essential, and therefore we would not inevitably expect differences in health simply because of these identities. So what do we make of a significant ‘effect’ of race from an epidemiologic model? That is a subject of ongoing discussion and debate, but one thing most social epidemiologists would agree with is that the interpretation is not simple or simplistic, as it has often been treated in epidemiologic research.

So even if you are defiantly not a Social Epidemiologist, I hope that you will take the initiative and opportunity to educate yourself on the obvious, and not so obvious, ways that population health and health inequities are generated. Learn about the debates about measurement and methods that concern social variation in health, and seek guidance when designing studies, selecting measures, conducting analyses, and interpreting results to reduce the chance that you unintentionally produce spurious or even harmful interpretations of results. At RSPH you can do this in many ways. There are elective courses explicitly in social epidemiology, but the issues of social drivers of the distribution and determinants of health are increasingly evident even in classes without the moniker of ‘social epi’. Talk with faculty, talk with other students, ask questions, but also listen closely. Perhaps we will not all choose to be Social Epidemiologists, but hopefully we can all agree that ‘social’ is critical to all of our work as epidemiologists.

¹Sharon D. Jones-Eversley, Lorraine T. Dean. After 121 Years, It’s Time to Recognize W.E.B. Du Bois as a Founding Father of Social Epidemiology. The Journal of Negro Education. 2018;87(3):230-245. doi:10.7709/jnegroeducation.87.3.0230

²Du Bois W. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. University of Pennsylvania; 1899.

³Krieger N. Epidemiology and the People’s Health: Theory and Context. Oxford University Press; 2011.

Images Sources:

1. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/3/14/1363295337709/johnsnowillustration.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=2bdd209b3e9da6c484216f5e69c6bf8c
2. https://compote.slate.com/images/272b872f-3f99-4d4a-aa56-6a5b81d9c33e.jpg

Dr. Kramer is a social epidemiologist in the Department of Epidemiology with particular interest in maternal and child health populations and life course processes.  His current research and teaching interests fall into three areas, and often include the intersection of these areas: Social determinants of health, maternal and child health, and spatial analysis.

Active Listening

I have previously written a few PROspective articles on the importance of developing career skills that will help you to be influential. Today I am flipping the script and writing about how to be influenced.

Changing your mind is an important career skill, and possibly one of the most difficult to accomplish. We all have beliefs and values that developed over a lifetime, and changing them requires us to contemplate the possibility we were wrong. This contemplation poses a threat to our identity, and that’s where the difficulty begins.

To be influenced, we must start by realizing that we will have to let go or modify what we had previously believed. For a scientist, this willingness to change beliefs is inherent to our work. It is our job to change our minds in reaction to accumulating evidence. We can borrow this skill, which we develop as part of our scientific training, and apply it outside of the scientific realm.

Now, of course, we are in the midst of a time of social and cultural change when we must all be prepared to modify our beliefs and values. Borrowing our willingness to learn from our scientific selves and applying it in these other realms should accelerate our progress.

It is most important, then, to listen. Active listening is also an important and learnable skill. This week’s PROspective article provides ten concrete suggestions for how to improve your active listening skills. The article explains the importance of active listening in building relationships: “Active listening builds rapport, understanding, and trust.” It also emphasizes the importance of committing your whole self to listening: “Active listening involves fully concentrating on what is being said rather than passively absorbing what someone is saying… This type of listening involves participating in the other person’s world and being connected to what the other person is experiencing.” In these months of remote communication, #6 has become difficult or impossible (#6: Pay attention to their body language and make appropriate eye contact). This shortcoming requires all the more attention to the other aspects of active listening, especially avoiding internal and external distractions (#1), listening to the tone of voice (#4), and sensing the emotions of the speaker (#5).

Building active listening skills will help you to be rightly influenced, and will improve your ability to fully engage in the needed social and cultural changes that are at the forefront of our national conscience. And, if developed in this context, you will be able to loan your active listening skills to enhance your career as well.

Community Partnerships

Building partnerships is a skill set that is critical in public health and yet not commonly taught directly. I do not recall ever taking a class that specifically discussed relationship building in graduate school, but now so much of my work and work in the community is based on partnerships. What I do remember is how people dreaded group projects and how students still are not always thrilled when they are presented in class as the next assignment. So why is that?  Perhaps it is more efficient to do assignments alone. For that reason, solo work can be great, but for me, the most fulfilling work I have done since graduate school has involved collaboration and connections.

For the past two months, I have been fortunate to be part of a team working on the COVID-19 response in Hall County, a community hard hit by the pandemic. The outbreak in Hall County is centered in the Hispanic community, where close community living and tight working space in factories make social distancing hard. The interesting thing about leading the outbreak response from Emory’s side is that before this partnership, I had no connections to Hall County. Nevertheless, I was able to build this partnership based on previous work in similar communities and a shared common goal: We want to change the course of the COVID-19 epidemic in a hard-hit community that already was struggling with generations of disparities and inequities.

From training to impact. Our Outbreak Response Team began work today with a #COVID19 testing event at a poultry plant in Hall County. So proud to work with this group from @EmoryEPI @EmoryRollins. #PublicHealthinAction@lisa_chung @GarlowNellie @zoeschneider112 and gang pic.twitter.com/gesiMRZ7Ue

— Jodie L. Guest (@Jlguest) May 14, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

This partnership began with a phone call from a leader in Hall County asking for help with their outbreak response.  Not all partnerships begin with a specific request but most are built from some level of need, even if it is for a shared greater good. That first contact should promote open dialogue and explore opportunities of engagement. Allow yourself to imagine a collaboration that doesn’t yet exist. For Hall County, the request was wide open; they sought any kind of support and connection. After listening, doing some research, and setting some overarching goals, our partnership took off and has led to a commitment to working together and building a system of support for a community in need that did not exist before. Even with the acceleration of an outbreak, building this kind of community partnership calls for a few essential building blocks: connection, engagement, and communication.

Build relationships

The best partnerships are sustained by committed relationships. While this is always the important first step, pandemics do not allow for a long ramp of getting to know each other. However, a shared vision of making lives better can quickly set your connection. But even with common goals, a strong, lasting relationship won’t form without actively working on the continuous process of connecting.

Show up and listen

Much of our work in Hall County has been about listening to the need rather than expecting we know what it is. While there are some obvious needs we could anticipate, like the need to reinforce prevention messages, provide COVID-19 testing and tracing, and isolation when needed in high-risk communities, there are nuances to those needs we would not have known if we did not get into the community and talk with its members. We would not have guessed that solid prevention messages, appropriately translated, would still not be hitting their mark because of a lack of literacy that requires messages to be less than five written words. We found that concerns about immigration make options for quarantine incredibly complex. Interventions, even those with the best designs, will likely fail without a dedication to the nuances inherent to that community.

Communicate regularly and with intention

Sharing feedback builds trust and helps us learn and become better leaders and partners. This is a way of keeping communication open so that when problems arise, you can approach the solution together. Especially in a time of fast-paced engagement, be open to quick and varying methods of communication but do not move so fast that you are not consistently communicating.

The last critical component for partnerships is the belief that together we can increase our impact. I have no doubt that the best collaborations create something bigger than what could have been done individually. There has been a lot of trauma in our world this Spring, but there have been some amazing moments to celebrate as well. Collective cooperation working towards a common goal and an energy around building partnerships is certainly a win. We are better together.

“Hope is not a strategy”

Do you like rollercoasters? My first five years of life were the epitome of privilege and comfort in Uganda, and then within days my parents and I were on a plane to Montreal as refugees. The ensuing years were tumultuous. I remember living in attics, visiting the Salvation Army for clothes, and drinking the mini half and half singles for breakfast. We eventually settled in a small northern city, and my parents re-invented themselves several times over. During the summers, my parents would pack us up and we would drive across  Canada and the US – always stopping to visit the most extreme theme parks. My dad loved to take us on all the craziest roller coasters. Something my father said has resonated often during these past few months … “just enjoy the ride.”

The past few months have certainly felt like a rollercoaster to me: overwhelmed health care systems, cities and nations on lock-down, collapsing stock markets, unprecedented capriciousness and pandemonium from our political leaders. VUCA. First coined in 1987 by the US Army War College¹ to describe the post-Cold-War world, and based on the leadership theories of Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus,² this acronym is applicable now more than ever.^3,4 

Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.

Volatility: the accelerating rate of change, uncertainty: the lack of predictability, complexity: the interconnectedness, of cause-and-effect forces, and ambiguity: the strong potential for misreads. These four terms are interrelated; it is harder to predict a health outcome, the more volatile, uncertain, vague and complex the event. Case in point: SARS CoV-2.

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes

The antidote to this is…

…VUCA: Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. This week’s PROspective article by Jake Wood, CEO and Co-founder of Team Rubicon, illustrates the two faces of VUCA, specific to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For public health professionals, consider this an opportunity to cultivate a growth mindset which will be translatable across multiple scenarios and situations in your professional and personal life. Take some time to hone (or develop) your personal guideposts which will provide the vision and strategy to ground you when the next VUCA situation takes place.⁵ You would fare exceptionally well by starting with the core tenets of our Epidemiology department: integrity, rigor, ambition, and collegiality. Cultivate how to be responsive and not reactive to the next crisis that you will inevitably be faced with.

“Hope is not a strategy”

– Jake Wood

How will you identify and reduce the impact of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity when faced with challenges?

Here are some suggestions from an article in NEJM Catalyst, on “Responding to Covid-19: Lessons from Management Research”:

1) Put people first

2) Manage operations creatively

3) Attend to teamwork and communication

4) Create outside partnerships

5) Embrace clear and humble leadership

As an aside, these have all been very much in practice at RSPH during the past few months.

So, are you enjoying this ride? You don’t have any choice but to be right where you are, in the middle of a pandemic so you might as well just surrender to the ride. The lows will amplify the highs and the turns will be confusing, but they will all provide opportunities to learn and grow.

References:

1. U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (February 16, 2018). “Who first originated the term VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity)?”. USAHEC Ask Us a Question. The United States Army War College. Retrieved July 10, 2018.
2. Bennis, Warren; Nanus, Burt (1985). Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge.
3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmichels/2020/05/10/for-leaders-the-lessons-of-covid-19-go-beyond-crisis-management/#23050c927e9b
4. https://chiefexecutive.net/understanding-vuca-environment/
5. https://www.ckju.net/en/blog/strategic-management-how-and-why-redefine-organizational-strategy-todays-vuca-world/58699

RETROspective

As the semester comes to a close, we wanted to take a look back at some of our favorite PROspectives over the last few months. As the COVID situation developed from an isolated outbreak to a full-blown pandemic, we have gotten insights from faculty, staff, and alumni on topics both pandemic and non-pandemic related. Here are some of our favorite articles from Spring 2020:

1. In Keep Calm and…, Dr. Timothy Lash started off the semester with a discussion about performing under pressure, be it for school, work, or almost any other context. Given the pressure that many of us are feeling now to turn our skill sets towards the global crisis or maybe just to survive final exams, the strategies laid out in this article have probably never been more applicable. The quote:

“Learning to use stress to your advantage is healthy and will give you a competitive edge. Like many career skills, it requires introspection and a commitment to being intentional about the goal.”

2. Next, we heard from Dr. Jodie Guest about the value of reading outside the classroom in The EPI-Curious Society. The quote:

“Learning from our past and talking about our different perspectives is fundamental to doing good work.”

3. At the beginning of February, Dr. Lauren Christiansen-Lindquist helped us to think about APEs differently in her article, Internships: Not just about fulfilling the APE requirement. The quote:

“You may have heard this from me before, but my motivation for pursuing a career in public health was driven by wanting to make a difference. The reason why I love the APE so much is that it affords our students the opportunity to make their mark on public health even before graduation.”

4. In a 3 part series, we heard from alum Roice Fulton (GLEPI, 2014) on careers in global public health with multinational organizations. In Part 1, Roice shared his path from GLEPI student graduating at the height of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa (more relevant now than ever), to a full-blown career at an unexpected employer. In Part 2, the focus turned toward the nuts and bolts of the global NGO industry and how to navigate your own entry post-graduation. Finally, Part 3 uncovered the role of teamwork and leadership in public health. The quote:

“You may be faced with a call to lead from unexpected places and at unexpected times, especially as we reckon with a pandemic that touches every facet of our work. We’ve got to be ready for the call when it comes.”

5. Epidemiology is not just about the 2×2 tables and the regression coefficients – in our profession, we will also be called to translate science into policy and action. To do that, writes Dr. Lash, we will need to Tell Influential Stories. The quote:

“To be influential, one must change minds. To change minds, those minds must be open to change.”

6. With our schedules packed and mid-semester productivity waning, ADAP Farah Dharamshi introduced the term single-tasking in her article Juggling 101. The quote:

“Our days are filled with a constant barrage of distractions, unexpected challenges and increasing responsibilities. But, the science and experience are clear – by doing less all at once, you will likely be able to accomplish much more.”

7. As Emory, along with nearly every university and employer nationwide, transitioned to remote learning and working, I shared my how-to guide for executing that transition in my article WFH: New Challenges & New Opportunities. The quote:

“This experience is likely to teach you a lot about yourself, your ability to self-manage, your discipline, and your needs as an employee – knowledge that will help you better understand your own strengths and weaknesses going forward.”

8. This Spring, the word ‘epidemiologist’ entered the public domain and left a lot of people outside our profession itching to learn more about what exactly we do. In Dr. Guest’s article The ‘Rockstars’ of 2020, we gained a new way of thinking about our role in society. The quote: 

“In our work, the forgotten past and the unrealized outcomes are our principal indicators of success. Long, healthy lives, not fanfare, signal our victory.”

9. As the need for (and public misunderstanding of) COVID models increased throughout the Spring, Dr. Samuel Jenness provided us with a background on modeling and its application in infectious disease epidemiology in his article Modeling COVID-19. The quote:

“In one sense, models prove their utility in the absence of bad news if they stimulate public action towards prevention, which may have an effect on the shape of the future epidemic curve. In the short-term, public consumers of models may not be able to fully determine the technical quality of that research. But it is important to understand that priorities of newspapers and politicians, and what they find useful in some models, may differ substantially from strong scientific principles.”

10. As the economic impact of COVID became clearer, students wondered what the pandemic meant for their career opportunities. In her article, Job Hunting in the time of COVID, ADAP Noni Bourne gave us some of her insights into the current hiring atmosphere. The quote:

“Human connection is taking on a completely different role in our lives. More than ever, it will be critical to know the person behind the email and to forge relationships that might not have otherwise been so central to success in the workplace.”

11. In Work and Study Efficiency in Difficult Times, Dr. Lash helped us understand that all days are not created equal and, especially today, challenges with motivation and work efficiency are both normal, and acceptable. The quote:

“It might also be helpful to envision what success will look like for you in the long term. We will all one day tell the stories of what happened to us and what we did during the COVID-19 pandemic. You will want to say that you did your part and put your shoulder into it as best you could. Imagine your future self and the story you will want to tell, and then make it so.“

12. In our final PROspective article of the semester, Dr. Christiansen-Lindquist helped trace a path towards identifying APE opportunities during the pandemic in her article APEs: The Best Laid Plans… of 1st-Year Spring. The quote:

“Although your APE might not look like what you had planned, I would encourage you to view this as a speed bump, rather than a roadblock. Our capacity for resiliency is far greater than any of us can comprehend, and these challenging times have the potential to bring out creativity that we didn’t know that we had.”

From all of us on the editorial team, thanks so much for reading PROspective and congratulations for completing another semester! As we transition to our Summer publishing schedule, keep an eye out for more from PROspective going forward.

What was your favorite article this semester? Tell us in the comments!

APEs: The Best Laid Plans… of 1st-Year Spring

MentorRollins

Work and Study Efficiency in Difficult Times

I hope this message finds you and yours well during these difficult times. We have worked hard to keep open channels of communication with students and faculty and, in addition to concerns regarding physical and emotional wellbeing, a recurring theme has been a concern about the efficiency of the time they can allocate to work or study.

There is no single strategy to address this concern; though here are some ideas for how to take it on if you feel your efficiency could be better. It starts with reflection about the source of the self-perceived inefficiency. More than one of the below may be at play, and they may be weighted differently on different days or even over the course of a single day.

If you believe you could be more efficient with the time allocated to work or study, take a moment to think about which of the following may be operating and how to diminish their impact.

Expectations

To start, it’s possible that your expectations of your efficiency are too high. Our schedules have been disrupted, we are grieving the loss or distance of our social networks, and we are all concerned about friends, colleagues or family who are not well and/or experiencing anticipatory grief about the same. It is normal to work less efficiently under these circumstances. Are your expectations of your efficiency calibrated to the reality of the current moment? Is some recalibration necessary? It’s also possible that you need to help your colleagues, instructors, and peers to recalibrate their expectations of you. External pressures that we cannot meet are uniformly demotivating, so do your best to avoid them or resolve them.

Distractions

Second, it’s possible that you are distracted by more than the realities described in the preceding paragraph. When our ability to concentrate is diminished by circumstances, other distractions invade more easily, occupy more time and a higher proportion of mental reserves, and therefore have an ever larger than normal effect on our efficiency. Turn off the email, close the browser, turn off the television and music, keep clear of the kitchen. Duncan’s earlier PROspective article provided some great ideas for creating a productive work-at-home space.

Productivity 101

Third, it’s possible that you could be more productive with the time that you have available. There is a large literature on work productivity, most of which remains relevant even under new circumstances. Make a to-do list for the day that is realistic given the time that you will have available. Delete anything that is not important (aligned with your goals and values). Organize what is left into what is urgent (impending deadlines or helping someone else to keep working) and not urgent (chipping away at larger projects with later deadlines). Take on the urgent and important tasks first, working first on the ones that are least appealing to you. Be sure to save some time each day to work on what is important but not urgent, so that you don’t face unmanageable deadlines later. Work in short bursts without distraction (25 minutes is often recommended), and then reward yourself with a distraction (check email or Twitter or Instagram) for five minutes (no more). You can set a timer to keep the rhythm for you. Be sure, also, to optimize your productivity by eating well, avoiding too much sedentary time, and sleeping well. As advised in Duncan’s earlier PROspective, schedule time to give yourself a break; it’s too easy to sit in front of the work screen all day, even if that time is not productive.

Motivation

Fourth, it’s possible that your motivation has truly waned. Lack of motivation may emanate from a combination of all the above, and is also possibly influenced by feelings of despair and loss of perceived control. To restore some of your missing motivation, start by addressing the first three. Also, find ways to restore a sense of control where you can. We cannot come back to campus for class, but we can organize our closet or write to a high school friend we have been thinking about for a long time. Taking on nonwork items that have been lingering on your personal to-do list will reassert your locus of control, and that will spillover to improve your motivation. Structuring your time will also remind you that you are in control: keeping a daily schedule will help to be sure you have regular sleep, diet, work, and relaxation.

Looking Forward

Feelings of inefficiency during times like these are normal, and some days will be more productive than others. On those days when you aren’t able to tackle as much as you would have hoped, give yourself some grace, and know that you’ll have another chance at it tomorrow. 

It might also be helpful to envision what success will look like for you in the long term. We will all one day tell the stories of what happened to us and what we did during the COVID-19 pandemic. You will want to say that you did your part and put your shoulder into it as best you could. Imagine your future self and the story you will want to tell, and then make it so.

Job Hunting in the time of COVID-19

Living in our new reality is difficult. We all recognize and respect the importance of flattening the curve; but, adjusting to the reality of social distancing is hard. Our daily decision-making process has shrunken to the sizes of our homes and apartments, making going to dinner a question of table or couch.

We need expertly trained epidemiologists tackling today’s public health problems, even while so much is uncertain about today and tomorrow.

Even more difficult is looking towards the future. Yet, we are asking our graduates to do just that. We need expertly trained epidemiologists tackling today’s public health problems, even while so much is uncertain about today and tomorrow.

Still, we know that our rising graduates are looking ahead at how they can leverage their skills during this time of crisis and are eager to put to work their skills at asking and answering important questions. They’re also wondering just how to manage a job search during a global pandemic.

At the end of last month, GLEPI alum Vanessa Da Costa (MPH, 2018) was asked these very questions in an interview with RepoJobs.org – how do you navigate the current job market, what’s different about the hiring process now, and how you should approach networking without leaving the house.

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Let’s think a little more about that last part – networking. Now that we are all doing our part to stay home during the pandemic, human connection is taking on a completely different role in our lives. More than ever, it will be critical to know the person behind the email and to forge relationships that might not have otherwise been so central to success in the workplace. 

What that means is that now is your chance to take advantage of the networking environment. In her interview, Vanessa talked about reaching out to people directly on LinkedIn – simply to learn about their career path. While this might have felt intimidating for some of us in the past, now this sort of interaction is more socially acceptable than ever before. I, myself, am always excited when someone in my network takes the initiative to reach out to me on LinkedIn. To me, this is the first indication that someone would be great employee – resourceful, confident, and motivated.

Vanessa also mentioned the value of attending virtual webinars and events. In particular, I find these places to be great opportunities to identify those people who you might want to reach out to later. An added bonus is that it’s always a little more comfortable to reach out to someone (especially someone with clout) when you can say, “I watched your presentation last week at the conference and I was curious about what you said about ____ .”

“…in the age of remote working and technology, you could be hired to start a position at any time.”

The last part worth mentioning about networking is the element of random chance. Sometimes I like to think about networking more like a chemist. The universe is a container of particles randomly colliding with each other. The laws of chemistry and physics suggest that the randomness or entripy of the universe is constantly increasing, despite our attempts to organize it (at least on our little planet). The more particles you bounce into, the more likely it is that you will encounter the perfect partner particle, and that your electrons will align to form a strong molecular bond. There is a lot about the job search that involves chance, and you’re more likely to create chance opportunities if you maximize the number of encounters you have in the first place. Think of networking like particle collisions, the more collisions that happen (ex. cold calls or emails, introductions, etc), the greater the chance that one of them will result in a real employment opportunity.

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Check out Vanessa’s full interview for more excellent advice about navigating the job market in the days of COVID-19!