In this presentation I converse on trends shaping academic writing and the academic career. I offer tips on how to not only write better but also manage career aspect that comes with academic writing.
Okay okay um good morning good morning everyone and thank you Dr to for organizing the the workshop it’s uh it’s it’s great to see big names like I said uh and and a lot of us when we started off we started off with those journals ACTA um Journal of contemporary
Management and it was a good space to actually get feedback with your with your work and they’re still good journals as such I think uh inton you’ve got some stuff there in aai is it brall one of you yeah it’s brall yeah and um it’s great to see that
Um we we we’ve got stuff going on and people are getting all the the attention to come and work with us so we’re going to talk this morning about Trends um and really things that you should be aware of as you embark on an academic career um you know it’s it’s actually phrased
Like a like for early career but it’s all for all career stages yeah you need all these tips and issues that we’re going to discuss we’re going to discuss about seven trends that are affecting academic writing and the career as an academic um and there are
Two ways I want to do this the first way is to just go through some basic things things that are happening internationally and then we go into the most crucial part which are the trends themselves seven of them um who knows next year there’ll be 14 15 you never
Know they they keep coming up maybe some will be demoted maybe we’ll get to a part where we don’t need certain Trends we we we we say this one is not relevant anymore okay so let’s start um academic writing is not easy uh it’s probably the most isolating experience ever I’ve gone through
Because you you get to work on this thing called a manuscript for days and days and days and days on end and um like yesterday we we submitted something to journal of management development about four months ago so we were waiting waiting and then so they notify you at each stage of the
Process so they notifi that uh first reviewer has submitted reviews the second reviewer all your reviews are in I said okay anytime soon and then yesterday they wrote back to us and they rejected the paper so yeah that’s four months waiting and it could be longer
For some so what then happens is that the waiting period creates this despondency I mean imagine you are waiting for that Christmas is what in in a few weeks time he and somebody has sent a a Christmas card and it never arrives and then it only arrives the following year yeah
So so so the first thing I I just want to also reiterate to colleagues is that it’s not easy it’s it’s the most isolating experience ever and it’s also made worse by the fact that academics we are not patient people yeah we are not patient people I
Did a workshop last week and um we were talking about a practice which has become very prevalent where people submit the same article to five journals at the same time and I’m like so why are you doing that he says no it’s simple whoever responds first with a positive feedback gets the
Article and uh yeah it’s not ethical by the way yeah you’re not allowed to do that then somebody then stood up in the in the in the workshop and said well it’s like uh you’ve got five uh people who are interested in you you just throw your CV out to all five
Whoever that’s is yeah is the one but but but we go through all of that and and and I want to say that one of the things we should talk about Dr towns a little bit later on maybe is how do you create a
Pipeline now a lot of a lot of you were talking about anxiety around what next year holds and I want to write and so so creating the pipeline is possibly the best way you can manage that anxiety uh you could wait for one article send it
And then you wait or you could work on three articles to say 20124 is about these three pieces of work I’m going to look at and then I’m going to Target the following journals and then you work on timelines to say by this particular time
All the work should have gone out and um that could work I I think what what what we must be very honest about as academics we need to be also clever about how we do this and and somebody called it a game and and and I’m beginning to believe it’s a
Game and with a game you must be alert you must know the rules you must know to bring Jeff Goldman to say Jeff please tell us how do we get into actor you bring Nat mayor Nat please tell us how do we get into General contemporary management not that they’re going to
Make it easy for us but bringing them to this platform creates opportunity that we want to have so that’s one so so so let’s start by some some interesting um quote that I’ve come across here Stephen King to be a great writer you must do
Two things you must read a lot and write a lot unfortunately this is not the case we are writing a lot but we are not reading so I will ask you when have you ever done Lazy Sunday Afternoon casual reading I’m going to read my favorite Journal Journal of strategic management
Journal I’m going to read what are the latest articles in the journal we only come across material when it suits our writing and I think there’s a there’s a merit there now I brought a little companion with me this little booklet Pick and Pay 30 Rand 40 Rand what I do
In this booklet and by the end of the year I think I about four five of them I I wherever I go I write I find a word that I oh this is a nice word you know instead of saying um on the other hand conversely I’m like
Wow that’s that’s easy one word covers and encapsulates what I want to say so write keep a little book like this sometimes inspiration comes even when you’re listening to the radio in the morning they were talking about different types of things Dr L Dr
L Dr L is going to appear in the in the magistrates court today when V you’ve done stuff on impression management the guy wore a stethoscope right and convince you lot that he’s a doctor and people were hey talk to us doctor tell us you know and and that’s that’s a like
Like level of fake it till you make it I like yes you get to a stage where you’re so good at and you believe your own lies as well you know but anyway he will have his day in court we we’ll find out what the outcome is importantly I want to
Also say to colleagues that we must read yeah we are not reading and I know we’re not reading because uh a portion of you are have come through through me as PhD students you know people are not reading zner looks down and sorry for flagging you out Z I’m not I’m
Not trying to but we must read great writers are great readers when was the last time you went to your favorite book shop and just picked up a book to read about your topic of Interest we we are we are assuming experts status in whatever domain that you’re in
Darlington we want you to be within the technology and Innovation space but if you’re not reading with what’s happening in the space it becomes very sad and now reading becomes crucial because on Saturday I discovered Darlington had a piece in the Daily Dispatch and and we can talk about
Academics not making enough noise about what they are doing and that’s that’s you but he had a whole spread in the Saturday dispatch and I thought that was nice because how I came about it I was reading the newspaper and I said oh this name sounds familiar this is Darlington
So so so let’s get into the habit of reading when we read we actually allow ourselves to be able to understand what is going on in the topic areas that we’re interested in but we also get to have this privilege and this opportunity to also be able to then make a
Contribution to the work that we want to do so that’s one let’s read now I want to paint a picture which is a very difficult picture um one of the things that we all need to develop particularly I’m talking to academics now you are not going to get promoted uh as an
Academic uh Angela for having um I don’t know intentions of be of writing the best paper you’re going to get promoted when that becomes reality so strong academic writing skills become very crucial but those skills are not like the skills you develop in the gym where you lift up
Weights and and all of that those skills are skills that come with every experience you go through you get knocked down you need to get up you get reviewers who write comments that are very very bad very very blow below the belt they will tell you that we wonder
What the authors were thinking when they were writing this paper so you can either do two things pack your bags and say uhuh this is not for me uh I don’t need this I don’t want um people to stand in Judgment of me as a
Person I’m moving on I’m out of here or you can just stomach it in and fight and also learn the art of the game okay responding also developing those writing skills and that becomes important but here’s the beauty about writing and something I’ve learned in the last couple of years writing also
Chang es us as people let me say that again writing does not only change the communities we are writing about blah blah but there’s also a change that happens to us there’s a change that happens to us when you see the the work that we’ve done receiving
Prominent when you get mentioned to say this person is doing and and now I’m no longer scared of mentioning because oh we’re too low key you know we’re for no great work is happening at Forte Forte is producing some amazing amazing research that is being mentioned locally on the African continent and
Internationally so I want to say one of the beauty about writing is that it changes us and and and that is something that we will never get promoted on Dr town we don’t get promoted because uh unless we’re doing Personal Mastery reflection and we can say but we don’t it’s it’s a
Beautiful thing to notice how you have evolved as a writer to develop some of the skills that you’ve got writing also assists in our intellectual development if you compare how you were writing when you were a first year student okay and and I’m glad I’m talking to some of you who are teaching
First Years you can also laugh at their mistakes because they also reflect where you were at certain stages you know um and uh it’s amazing because uh that change is what is also crucial but one of the other things about writing writing is also done within the parameter of rules and that’s
Why some people just hate academic writing the referencing uh the plagiarism the big debate right now is if AI writes your paper should AI not get authorship to the paper and and you know amazing things coming out of you know the AI space but writing also needs to allow
You to also conform to whatever rules and that’s important one of the reasons papers get rejected um is that um you you not conformed to the rules it’s the worst form of rejection when the editor says it’s a desktop rejection a desktop means we’re not even going to bother our
Reviewers we are just going to say uhoh we don’t think you’ve taken enough time to think about your paper and as a result we’re not going to take it any further we’re going to come back to to some of that so grad V is a UK based um
Um uh organization that came out with three points that they talk about what writing does and I want to focus on those three points um they talk about writing as consisting of those four things your content your selection your organization and your presentation now if you look at it the last two are
Talking about layout so your student comes to you Prof I can’t make it to your test I couldn’t make it to your test here is my sick note and the name on the student is not even clear on the sick note what’s that name there’s a popular doctor in
Alice everybody came with a sick note and you could have so you you see how organization and presentation are crucial take effort in actually how you present and organize your information the first two really talk about your expertise which we hope now you are developing as as as people who have master’s degrees
Phds post doogs lecturers senior lecturers associate profs and full profs and and and I can make those available to you through this great viter so we also write because of four reasons uh I’ll tell you the one which is not the last one writing for the fun of it
No one wakes up at 3:00 a.m. and says I just feel like writing at 3:00 a.m. I’m going to write we write because we want something out of it we write it for a career advancement U honors Master’s PhD studies we write because of promotion and tenure we want to know how many
Papers have you published nowadays we’re now talking about where are those journals classified uh we’re talking about impact factor so we also write for funding okay we just got funding uh with Dr towns zon and Angela uh from cestria 15,000 something US dollars to do a systematic literature review on a
Particular project we’re doing and and and and the winning element of that project was how we wrote it it wasn’t about uh the diversity of the team the beautiful faces the Colgate smiles and no it was about putting words together ideas together to say to the funer we
Deserve this and this is how we’re going to do it we also write because of uh conveying a message to parties that matter so let me ask a question who are the parties that matter can I tell you who they are not they are not our own academics me and
You because uh one once you’ve written you’re writing the next paper we never stop we just okay what’s next and I’m sorry Angela because we we are right there we’ve done okay we’ve made this one let’s go to the next one but the parties that matter are communities
Around us for me that’s crucial so think of the study that you’re working on there are people who probably would not have voice who probably would not have audience into offices that your work would arrive during the inaugural I shared the story of Mario one of the entrepreneurs I met
Yeah who probably would never meet the mayor you know but brilliant young man who’s got these ideas and it takes that type of writing so writing also is about advocacy it’s about social justice if you like it’s about giving voices to people who probably would not have that
Voice it’s also speaking to matter if is that matter now I I say this cautiously because I think we must stop writing about things that don’t matter and start writing about issues that matter so things that don’t matter could be issues that have you’re you’re trying to tell us
About things that we already know there’s a high crime rate in South Africa yeah we we know that we’ve all been victims of crime and not to to lessen the the the impact of crime on victims okay because we also been ictim but to say how how do we take that topic
A little bit further to say what do we need to do to address the issues that are crucial with regard to that particular topic and so I want to share with you some challenges that have been noted no let’s let’s leave the challenges let’s go to the trends I
Think the trends are crucial so what I came up up with which is going to be part of the presentation are seven trends that we need to be aware of unfortunately uh like we said maybe next month the trends will be 12 15 we could demote some I don’t know
Which ones we will demote but uh yeah we’re going to talk about each of those Trends and I’m going to give you my own personal opinion about those Trends and I’m going to tell you how those Trends have affected my career and are affecting the career of others and what
You probably need to do to to manage the game better do you get what I’m saying if if myself and Prof on have gotten burnt by this you don’t have to get burnt by this yeah and and I think that’s the crucial part of of learning from others so let’s
Go to the first one and I um I’m I’m also mocking these Trends some of them because the little commentary in the comment there is my stuff the first one you’ll hear a lot in the academic world with academic writing is publish or perish and then I ask a question have we
Believed a lie is it a lie that if you if you don’t publish you’re going to perish or is it just one of those things that is just used to push us uh and and and and and here’s my opinion about the publish Parish uh Mantra one of the most crucial things
That is key is the one who’s publishing the person you as an individual so let us try and separate the work and the worker yeah yeah you are the worker the work is what you are producing anytime the work becomes more important than the worker you’re going to have
Problems so what do we mean by that um life happens you wake up one morning you are diagnosed with a disease you wake up one morning your child is sick you wake up one morning all sorts of things are happening okay and anytime you then you keep on thinking ah I must
Publish or else I’m going to perish you’re already perishing anyway politely of course politely no I mean that but but but but but the publish or perish thing uh needs to be also guided how we approach it okay you are more than just Publications darling bro was talking about
Citations you’ll see even when they get in those citations you won’t be happy you want more and more yeah I want more citations okay but if citations are coming at the Peril of your you as a worker as a person how do we know it comes as the Peril if you finding
Yourself disengaged from society and reality around you you prefer to be alone and isolated spending three 4 days alone in a room and it’s dark you don’t even open the windows your mind and your body is wasting away you’re sitting there behind it and what do we do energy drinks
He uh um what’s this eating it’s called what eating um comfort eating thank you comfort eating yes when you start eating and eating and eating because I’m going to perish yeah it’s not worth it but what we need to rather be doing and channeling our spaces is to find how
Do we assist people to manage the balance between publishing and also living wholesome productive lives where you can go out there it’s a nice summer’s day and enjoy the outdoor without worrying you know sometimes the fear is what keeps us also awake you your mind is telling you you know you
Should be doing something you should be sitting and writing but in your mind everybody the whole nation is watching rugby you are locked [Laughter] up writing an article which will probably due respect get rejected and you’ve missed a moment in history where the spring box have beaten
Number one number two number the top four teams hey by one point all through and you miss that moment in history what I’m simply saying here yes we must publish but let’s be very very careful how we approach this idea of publishing at our own Peril and
We perish at our own Peril when we just ignore the signs around us I laugh at some of my PhD students who come to the office and I and one of them came the other day wearing a a black T-shirt and I said hey Chief you could easily be a
Prop for the old blacks you know that says Prof I’ve been writing a lot and and the the truth of the matter is he’s just graduated with a PhD he has been writing a lot and with that he’s not had time to exercise and do that I wish we
Could come to a space where we balance that is where my my contention is but but you are the only one who can know what that balance looks like for some balance just means it said certain times setting boundaries and parameters you just close the laptop I don’t want
To work anymore and you go to the next task and the next activity so publish or perish becomes very crucial let’s be very careful about this and I and I still think my my question is maybe one which is not going to be answered have we really believed a lie about
That you want to say something you’re burning yes Yeah yeah so so the number game is also crucial to address and I’m glad you mentioned that but but also a developing Trend now is is no longer about being prefixed on numbers two academics met at the printer one said I’ve got 10 papers another one said I’ve got 15 papers so
Who’s the better academic and let’s be careful that we think that the numbers attest to being better you could have 40 papers and somebody’s got six in and getting more citations and more and and that’s just the trend that we are observing nowadays that uh having more doesn’t mean quality it doesn’t attest
To productivity but what we need is to create I’ll come back to you a pipeline and and I still maintain that the solution is balanced you could actually find yourself uh working much better by striking that balance with what you do and in terms of also uh um the
Expectations around you I’m so glad also that uh in some cases uh the voice of reason should be senior academics when we go to interviews Dr towns when we go to an interview we we we shouldn’t let the meeting be hijacked by the idea of saying 10 papers is better than five
Let’s now start looking at the metrics around those 10 let’s start looking at the metrics around those five and it takes the responsibility of senior academics who sit on those promotions committees and or selection committees to to to run away and and I and I don’t blame the HR colleagues because they
Probably just have their job description and SP this is what we want but but I’m actually learning that some of the best work I’ve produced in the I’ve come later on in my career where I’ve been going fewer articles but with more impact and more intentionality about what I’m intending on on
Writing I think also the the pressure the pressure ofer pressure for Department yeah dep that you that ofish yeah also that to the man perhaps instead of making research more favorable and being aligned to something that but it’s put in as a thing of a competition a lot of so I think also
Balance yeah the key word is balance I’m we’re not I’m not saying don’t publish and I’m also saying don’t perish I’m saying don’t perish as well but strike a balance between what you want to do and the time has G colleagues it’s no longer about uh what is this
High School boys high school stuff mine is bigger than yours no it’s not about that it’s really about saying you know what Darlington I made it into um uh Journal of workplace learning it took me two years to get into that journal and we look at the journal it’s credible a
The the peer review process is there clear outlines and terms of what you’re wanting to cover in terms of uh uh post publication policy reviews that are coming that’s great not just sending to everybody and saying like like that thing of five I’ll send to all5 whoever
Responds first and the best gets the paper and the rest will just get rejection L it’s becoming a common Trend by the way to do that will perish you see now some of this information never [Applause] not weish how many this you need to get get those results
You see so like you mentioned Experience inform now you know when I reflect on myself I I wish I could haveone yeah guide guide because later later when I was there when I started you know to di into this my PR thanks Prof my prediction is this is going to be with us for the longest
Of time and you are going to sit and reflect anelisa 5 years from now when you’re an associate professor or whatever uh on some of these things and maybe some of us will be in retirement homes just thinking about our lives and how at least we’ve stopped ourselves
From perishing okay the second one okay there are seven so this is number one the second one is the numbers game okay it’s linked to publish or perish um and the question here I ask is uh when is too little a lot and too much little play of words there yeah yeah
When is too little a lot and when is too much little there’s been a a move towards the numbers game um you know we measure how serious you are as an academic by how thick your CV is how many conferences have you attended half of the times you were at
The casino in these conferences gambling your way anyway but but the the the crucial thing we we we want to also emphasize and link to the publish or Parish thing is that let’s also not get sucked into the numbers game numbers game also featured in supervision okay don’t take more than
You can Cho you know you’ve got you want to get uh quicker to the race of being an associate professor and then you want I’m supervising 15 PhD students 15 PhD students realistically how do you give all 15 feedback and so what happens there are serious compromises if you like breaches around
Quality control yeah you’re not we we can’t we can’t even with the honors students some of you are getting your first honors students to to supervise let’s be frank don’t don’t say h o i want seven honor students all at once get one work with that one student and
And as a qualitative researcher I think the important Point here is that let’s also embrace the beauty about the qualitative experience okay quants is nice uh it it tells a lot in terms of numbers quality is also what we ought to be talking about um the numbers game also features in Publications and
Outputs obviously we’ve spoken about it to the publish or Parish people want more to see more and and I think really I I am vociferous and I I speak out in in a interview or a promotion thing to say let’s look at the Quality a candidate with with five papers doesn’t
Mean it’s poor quality let’s stop this thing of always thinking the guy with the biggest uh number of P yeah is the best it’s also let’s also Embrace there some people are extremely talented who will go for more because they can do it and they’re creative about it but we
Need to also be guided and I think this is also covered very well number three is there ever anything called the well-rounded academic and I often get the system is pressurizing us to be well-rounded what if I’m just a great teacher and and Dr towns is telling me
Prof you must produce these number of output in terms of resarch what am I what if I’m just a great researcher who deserves to be sitting at home with a with a with a with a Mojito H working on papers and while you lot are busy
Marking and te and I know the The Strain because a lot of you are one mind part of your mind is like with your marking I know what it’s like to teach 200 and odds some of you I taught you in those classes and I and I can sit and I know
300 odd students and H is breathing on me the marks must be in at a particular time what we ought to be embracing is the aspect of how do we compliment people because of their natural talent that they’ve got some people are great writers so why don’t we find a way of
Bringing great writers together and saying let’s let’s let’s find in a department ways of saying the writers focus on the writing while they are working with others those who teach and and and and and I’ll tell you some institutions professors it’s mandatory that they teach first year
Classes first year classes in some cases is reduced to TOs and early career who are still come and it’s unfortunate because some of you your first experience of teaching is going to be traumatic it’s going to be traumatic 300 400 students I remember in my second
Year uh well not second year but one year I taught a second year class A Very problematic class in Alice and it was bad it was so bad that at night when I’m sleep they would even call my number and they start playing a
Song it was so bad that I would be told um I’m going to kill myself because of you and my name you say my my spirit will Echo your name in the corridors of the afterlife I lodged it to you you you’re part of the leadership yeah my my spirit
Will will Echo your name in the corridors of the afterlife imagine how traumatic that is just because somebody failed the module so the well-rounded academic I said it’s skirting between Utopia and reality I’m not sure if there’s ever anything like a well-rounded academic but sometimes we need to stop being selfish as academics
And find ways to complement each other so if you’re teaching a module I love what our TOS have done this yeah I don’t know let me let me not praise them too much because we don’t know if there will be output BR but they are working on it
I know they are working on papers I was at a workshop and they said no the TOs have come together and they writing a paper together so what they’ve done is they’ve identified a community of practice within the teaching and they also said guys if we don’t complement
The other side we’re going to perish if that’s the correct word so what did they do they came together and they started working working together to say let’s also write together as we are teaching together that’s the level of um being unselfish that we are talking about but
If you’re going to surround yourself say no I think really the well-rounded academic is a myth and I think we need to find ways of complimenting each other that’s number three number four the implication of the work we do for policy and advocacy and I say here we are more
Than just about about making theoretical contributions what’s the one thing that people do in the PHD chapter the last chapter the chapter makes an important contribution which is theoretical a model is proposed but I think there’s a gap we’re missing which is policy and advocacy a very few of us
Write policy briefs based on the articles that we write and that’s where the the beauty Darlington about the newspapers come in to to to be able to translate your thesis or your 7,000 word manuscript into a language that policy makers understand is a is an art in fact you get more people reading
The work than uh the few who just read the work to say oh I need to site some work so policy implications are really often neglected we don’t write for policy like this event we’re having we could even invite a showcase at the end of the year Dr Town’s provincial
Government to say we want to showcase all the work that has been done by Forte related to Local Economic Development we’ve got stalls around students standing next to posters we invite the the the authority figures to say come and listen and share ideas with us to say how does our work inform policy
Nowadays uh we start talking about what we call imperatives uh sdgs sustainable I often say to people if you’re woking up at 3. M you should be able to say which two sdgs does your research fit within if you are not able to do that then perhaps maybe revisit that aspect
Because your work must inform imperatives like stgs the national development plan uh agenda 2063 African Union sadic plans even institutional plans and goals that need to be there so that’s number four we are more than just making theoretical contributions we are also about policy and Advocacy number
Five being an academic in the digital era making your work making you work with technology rather than technology working for you or vice versa okay we need to find creative ways of using technology to help the work that we do if you’re still sorting out references manually when we’ve got tools like Mally
End note if you still remember the table of conscience in the word document when when I kid you not when we did assignments we would put the dots ourselves you know and sometimes when you print you would see the numbers snaking like you need to also academics need to develop
Those dig that digital those digital skills and digital acument uh research gate marketing yourself making as much noise about your work making a lot of noise about your work on social media if not just about following gooi and all the other Goos that are there but it’s
Also about making sure you are also marketing your work profiling yourself as an academic your your greatest cheerleader is yourself uh do you have a research gate account what are you doing on your LinkedIn profile in terms of sharing your work and and I think it’s crucial
That we find ways of making technology work for us there’s also a lazy way of trying to do things the easy way using technology to do all the work when you should be doing the work I think that balance is needed and and I think this this is something we also learned from
Our undergraduate students and their experiences okay number six as academics uh and people who are interested in academic writing we will have to deal with moral and ethical con conundrums and I ask a question here can we ever be honest as researchers well this person forgot to fill in the
Questionaires the last three questions so I’ll just uh put a little bit of exes so that yeah so so on a day-to-day basis we are faced with those moral and ethical conundrums I mean there’s a website I I advise you to check out it’s called retraction tocom if you get featured on
Retraction that means something is wrong retraction is the website where your article can be called back say we’re not going to publish what are some of the reasons for retraction plagiarism uh fights over authorship so we wrote the paper myself Darlington and Dr Rani and then myself and Darlington
Decide to skip Dr Rani and Darlington let’s just write this paper and then Dr Rani one day wakes up bam she says Prof and darington have written a paper Dr chori have written a paper together and then she says I Bo I contributed to this work how come I and what does
Daring drori Do Dr do Dr rungan can go and say huh this work must be removed from the journal so all of us are going to be faced by those moral and ethical conundrums that we must address and you know them very well uh in challenges
That even when you are a student then finally and I think this is a nice way to end it off Dr towns um our heal Health matters and I think it links with the first point publish or perish so if you publish you’re publishing for Success if you’re
Perishing either those two things are perishing your mental or your physical capabilities I think we must also be uh honest that we are more than the papers we WR we need to also acknowledge about the our Humanity okay we are people we are human beings we we go through the pulsating
Moments of the spring box winning by one point and in those moments and what they do to our our physique we we go through the pain and the tears and the cries of and the joys and the ulations and the successes that come with those moments
But I want to also urge us we need to take over our health colleagues yeah and I’m so glad I see a lot of water around the tables I don’t see Red Bull monster and all sorts of things that we we drink can consume in the name of
Trying to get ahead uh let’s take care of our physical health let’s take care of our mental health there’s a there’s a a word that I want to teach you all that you can also say and you know what that word is no yeah you don’t have to agree to do
Everything don’t get robbed into every paper come let’s do this you’re there and you know it’s going to it’s going to keep you awake two three nights in a row trying to keep up and satisfy people who probably don’t like you anyway but I just bringing you on to that so let’s
Learn to say no but let’s also learn to take care of our mental and physical health let’s talk about this one I’ve got a question what do what have you done in the last couple of days in view of uh your mental and physical health do you know sometimes just taking a break
From writing to watch a movie it just frees you and sometimes it you can even give you ideas cycling going out there and some people like working in rooms where there’s no ventilation the lighting is poor all in the name I want to get ahead get ahead
Get ahead let’s take care of our mental and physical faculties sometimes watching something or listening to something that just the mind a bit Yeah because that alone yeah I must warn about Tik Tok there I I find this new Revolution of academics who they spend 30 minutes writing a paper two
Hours on Tik Tok in the name of I’m I’m refreshing the bad field okay I me balance is the first word that we learned yeah find ways of just finding time and and also some of you like to uh put laptops on your lap while you’re working and the amount of hits
That there some research I saw there which scary stuff about even the physical effects of that so let’s take time so in that Dr towns these are the seven things I think that are crucial and I’ll will make the presentation available to the colleagues publish or
Perish if we believed a lie let’s be careful of the numbers game when is too little a lot and too much little is there ever anything number three called the world rounded academic is this even possible number four the implication of the work we do for policy and advocacy
We are more than just theoretical contributions number five being an academic in a digital era we must also find ways of making technology work for us number six moral and ethical conundrums can we ever be honest please let’s watch out for that one I think retraction will help you there and
Finally number seven me Health matters take care of your mental and physical health uh we are more than just the papers we are right we also need to acknowledge and um be frank with our Humanity as as as as human beings okay I think that’s it for me yep