Great Minds 2: Lara Varpio

This is the second post in my Great Minds series, a set of interviews with writers and thinkers who have inspired me. My academic work has introduced me to numerous professors doing fascinating work on literature, cognition, and social action. Lara Varpio is my second great mind.

Assistant Professor in a Faculty of Medicine is not the first place one would expect to find an English PhD graduate, but that is just where University of Waterloo Department of English Language and Literature PhD alumnus Dr. Lara Varpio finds herself at the University of Ottawa. Lara is a recent PhD graduate with a job, and that should be an inspiration for current and potential PhD students alike. I hope this interview with Lara provides as many valuable insights for my peers as it did for me.

A: How did you end up in the English PhD program at UW?

L: I should start by saying that the work I do now is fairly removed from standard department of English training. I am originally from Sudbury. I did my BA in English at MacMaster. I soon realized that I wouldn’t get too far with a Bachelor of Arts. The Master of Arts professional writing stream at UW interested me. But my work was not related to medicine at all.

A: Could you discuss your experiences as a grad student?

L: After completing my MA, I moved to Sweden for 3 years. I was a professor and I taught Business Communication. After one year, I was bored intellectually. So I contacted Catherine Schryer to find out about doing my PHD from abroad. I talked to the department chair at the time, Neil Randall, and, despite the fact that nobody had ever done a PhD from abroad, the department let me in. So I started my PhD while living in Sweden . . . I remember for a course with Professor Michael MacDonald, I submitted my class presentation on a CD-ROM. I found a video camera and one of my students in Sweden videotape my presentation. I completed two terms of coursework abroad. For the third term I came back to Canada for the residency requirement and then I realized how homesick I was. I completed my work in Canada.

I didn’t want to waste time on a dissertation that didn’t engage me. I approached Catherine Schryer and told her that I probably would not complete a PhD if I didn’t find something intellectually engaging. She introduced me to Lorelei Lingard, who introduced me to the medical education community at the Wilson Centre [for Research in Education] at the University of Toronto. We joke that I went there for a 3 day visit and stayed for 3 years. I brought my experience with Actor Network Theory and Rhetoric to the table, and I was the first PhD student that the Wilson Centre co-sponsored.

A: What advice do you have for current graduate students?

L: It’s so important to find a project that engages you. Aside from that, think outside the box when it comes to funding. So often English graduate students think about OGS and SSHRC. I was the first Arts student at Waterloo to get CIHR funding. So I got medicine to fund me and OGS as well. But I couldn’t get my SSHRC application past the department . . . Also, your supervisors are key. The importance of your supervisor to your later success cannot be underestimated. I am also a big believer in mentorship. You need people to offer guidance. I was lucky to find mentors in Catherine Schryer, Lorelei Lingard, and at the Wilson Centre. Academia is changing and you need mentors and you need people to help you walk down the new academic corridors. Also, complete your PhD studies with the end in mind. Decide on your dream job. It doesn’t have to be tenure-track in a department of English. There are different kinds of PhDs, some are theoretical, some are practical. You can make your PhD the tool you want it to be for where you want to go. You can teach or you can be a researcher.

There will be a dark night of the soul. If you’re doing graduate work, there will be a night where you feel like you can’t do it anymore. It’s important to take those experiences seriously, but it’s also important to look at those moments in the overall picture. Think of those moments in context. Sometimes you will want to give up, and maybe you should; but don’t be too hasty.

A: Do you have any career advice for current PhD candidates?

L: I have found my dream job. I can take all the theories and skills from my graduate work and apply them in a different context. Medical Education is my sandbox and my training in the Humanities is my shovel and pail. Every day I am excited to go to work. I have total control over what I do and how I do it . . . When it comes to finding a job, I can’t stress the importance of networking enough. A lot of jobs will never get posted, and you will never find them if you’re waiting for postings to appear online. I recommend PhD students go to conferences, especially if there is someone giving a talk who they admire. Prepare for the talk by thinking of one good question. One intelligent question—and you can underline intelligent. If you can ask that question, you can start a conversation. If you do it right, you should end up with their business card in you hand. I always did that and I still do. I find the people by attending their presentation, I ask an intelligent question, I ask about a recent article. Build connections with people you want to work with.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of networking and the importance of being a good networker. You don’t want to be sucking up; you have to look like someone who is interesting and who is doing exciting work.

 

Job advice for Arts graduates entering the workforce

I’ve just completed an eight month work placement component for my English MA. Before I was finally hired at a local marketing company, I was turned down by six companies in a row. I realize now I wasn’t hired at those first six jobs because academic hubris got the better of me. I thought that my graduate student status would automatically qualify me for jobs ahead of undergraduate co-applicants. Bad move.

It took me two months to find a co-op job. Coursework was mounting and I needed to find work. It was very frustrating. So I booked an appointment with an advisor, attended a practice interview session, and had my resume edited. Along the way, I asked a lot of questions and received a lot of helpful advice. I was hired by the next job I interviewed for.

This post is a synthesis of my advisor’s advice and the advice of several prominent local technology managers–gleaned from a Non-Acadmic Careers Workshop. I hope these tips help you find the job of your dreams.

What makes Arts graduates worth hiring?

Analytical thinking

Arts students are taught to analyze poems and dense literary or philosophical texts by breaking texts down to their fundamentals and researching problems that have plagued academics and scholars for hundreds of years. In the workforce, Arts graduates can do the same thing for business problems. Analytical thinking is thinking on your feet. It’s the ability to make a point, back it up, and persuade your audience.

Lateral Thinking

Lateral thinking is quickly recognizing connections between dissimilar concepts. This is how Arts graduates use their creativity and experience to connect with the needs of their employers. I had no experience in communications, marketing or professional writing when I graduated with my English degree; in fact, all I had on my resume were jobs waiting tables. Lateral thinking allowed me to pull transferable skills out of my past experiences. On my resume and cover letters, I argued that a waiter has to be an expert at customer service, multitasking, defusing tense situations, working in a fast paced environment, in a process of constant decision making.

Critical Thinking

Do you think literary theory or philosophy doesn’t matter in the “real world”? Your experience with critical theories gives you a critical viewpoint. This when you use your powers of analytical thinking to explore a concept/object, but then detect flaws, logical lapses, or potential binaries that could be impeding some type of progression/connection.

Whether your perspective is postcolonial, postmodern, linguistic, or philosophical, Arts graduates think critically about problems, solutions, and processes from multiple perspectives. You’re finding problems before anyone else realizes there are any.

Scholarship

Aside from the ability to learn, write, and think, your Arts degree represent respect for timelines, schedules and deliverables. You’ve worked hard under pressure to ensure timely completion of your work. Graduate students should mention the difficult application process for graduate studies, and the strategies they use to manage an intense workload.

How will your resume and cover letter lead to job interviews?

Cover Letters

For every job your apply for, take the posted job requirements and demonstrate your awareness and abilities with an individually tailored cover letter. Carefully read the job descriptions and try to single out buzzwords to smoothly incorporate into your resume and cover letter. Pay attention to striking verbs that are likely common within your potential employer’s corporate culture. This demonstrates you’ve done your research and, thus, you’re a quick learner.

Buzzwords

Potential buzzwords to consider: experience, rhetoric, human factors, interactivity, information architecture, technical communication, user experience, product management, versatility. In any communications field, remember to talk about an audience.

Skills

Computer hacking skills, Bow Staff skills . . . Seriously though, don’t forget to highlight your extra-academic skills. Employers are interested in your experience with music, drama, dance, sports, and any other type of collaborative enterprise that demonstrates teamwork, creativity, or coordination.Also highlight any volunteer experience you have.

You might want to tweak this section of your resume depending on the job you’re applying for. For example, demonstrate an interest in technology if you’re applying for a job with a technology company.

Also discuss your awareness of or experience with relevant technology for the workplace (this information is in the job posting; for example, a posting may indicate experience with Microsoft Visio is recommended). Remember, you may not have experience with Microsoft Visio, but you do have experience with research. So go look up Visio, check out its Reviewers Guide, and familarize yourself with the program. Then you can add “familiarity with Microsoft Visio” to your resume as the job posting indicates you should.

References

Ensure your references are up to date and let them know that phone calls will be coming. Don’t be afraid to remind your reference of the skills that made you a good colleague while you were in a professional setting.

Professional Associations

Though likely out of your purview right now, consider membership with a professional association, such as the Society for Technical Communication, the Usability Professional Association, or the Editors’ Associate of Canada. These certifications are a great way to demonstrate that you’ve purposely gone out and became certified as a specialist in a given field. All of these professional associations have student rates. Professional certification is a nice balance with an academic career—it shows practicality and that you know what you want out of your career . . . even if you don’t.

How do I nail my interview?

Commitment

Discuss an interest in educational opportunities, professional development, or a future with the company —after all, you’re a graduate and employers look at degrees as evidence of commitment to an ideal. Ask abut pay raises, objective setting, and employee reviews—again expressing an interest in self-improvement and training that will contribute to your employer.

Questions

Ask lots of questions about the organization that will cause interviewers to “sell” the company to you. If they’re selling the organization to you, then you don’t have to talk as much during the interview and the interviewer feels great about their job at the end of it—it’s a win/win and it makes you look good. Remember, effective questions for the interviewer will be based on your research.

Answers

Interviewers want to know what kind of person you are. The business world is about deadlines, multitasking, and teamwork. These are the kinds of activities at the job–not the job itself—so demonstrate you’re aware of HOW to work effectively. Anybody hiring you is thinking of systems, relationships, and how to streamline company processes. You need to show how you will fit in. Interviewers want you to highlight the fact that you know how to learn.

Importantly, before answering a tough interview question, take the time to pause and think about your answer. Don’t just start rambling and then lose your thought process. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “good question, let me think about that for a second.”

What kinds of questions are they going to ask?

One technical communications manager I spoke with mentioned three standard interview questions her company uses, why they ask them, and the answers they want. Here they are:

#1: Think about a time you had to sell a problem, influence a decision, or recommend a change nobody wanted. How did you forward your agenda?

The goal of questions like this is for you to tell the interviewer how you communicated effectively in ’situation X’. Remember, your answer doesn’t have to be something professional, it can be personal. So you could talk about an experience with a group project in school or an experience from your jazz band—it’s up to you.

#2: in the past, have you had to deal with a difficult developer? How did you get the information you required from that developer?

Some company interviewers will deliberately use terminology that you’re not familiar with in order to put you out of your element. The goal of this questions is for you to demonstrate lateral thinking by connecting the fact that, although you probably haven’t worked with a “developer,” you have worked with a difficult person—again, a great time to talk about how you communicated effectively in ’situation X’. So talk about how you were working with a difficult person in a collaborative setting and the strategies you used to forward your agenda.

#3: How would you start documenting a software feature?

Again, the interviewer knows you likely don’t know about “software features,” but they want you to make a connection; they want you to think laterally. So talk about how you would document anything: you would do research and use analytical, critical, and lateral thinking to establish your audience’s need. From there you would write a concise, effective document about that “software feature” for that audience.

Any other advice?

I can’t emphasize this enough: RESEARCH! Demonstrate that you’re aware of what the company you’re applying for does and what your potential role there entails. This is great fodder for questions you will ask during your interview, and interviewers love being asked questions!

Technorati Tags: Job interviews,resume writing,cover letters,job advice,jobs for recent Arts graduates,getting hired,job interview questions

 

End-of-life interviews . . . and verbs Part II

A quick review

In my last post, I discussed modals and how they’re used to make predictions about the future. More importantly, I consider modals as grammatical markers that indicate that a palliative care patient is discussing the legacy they’ll leave behind after they die. As promised, this post is about grammatical aspect: which is a grammatical marker that relates information about whether an event described by a verb is ongoing, has been completed, or is being repeated. Again, I’ll include the caveat that modality and aspect are my focus for my discourse analyses of end of life psychotherapeutic interventions between doctors and palliative care patients. By better understanding how patients use grammar at the end of life, I believe that we can better understand how they situate their stories in relation to themselves as dying patients, and the individuals they were before they were diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Primary auxiliaries

You’ll recall that auxiliary (‘helper’) verbs encode information about plausibility, and temporality into sentences. Modal auxiliaries are one kind of auxiliary verb, but the primary auxiliaries relate perfect aspect, progressive aspect, and passive voice (the last, as mentioned in my last post, I won’t be focusing on).

The perfect aspect or the perfect “have”

Unlike the verb “to have,” which means to possess, the perfect “have” introduces the perfect aspect into a sentence and is always followed by the past participle form of the next verb (Remember the mouse“might have been being eaten” by the owl.)

My research argues that, along with using modals to discuss legacy, dying patients’ narratives contain other grammatical markers that indicate a relation between the patients’ narratives of the past and their present situation—in other words, patients use aspect to relate the character they are now to the characters they were before terminal diagnosis. That being said, the perfect “have” has three different contracted forms: in the present tense ‘s (for has) and ‘ve (for have), and in the past tense ‘d (for had.)

So it’s important to note how patients use the perfect aspect. Below are amended examples taken from narratives where patients connect their pasts with their present using the present perfect aspect and the past perfect aspect:

Present perfect aspect

1) “Like I say, you’re busy and when you’ve got your health, you don’t stop and think. I’ve had many years with cancer, but when it became malignant, I was angry.”

2) “I hope I haven’t cried too much for you.”

3) “I’ve made lots of mistakes. Don’t we all?”

4) “I’ve lived a good life and I’ve had a wonderful life. Life is hard, but like everybody else, you just go through it.”

5) “I’ve always said that man upstairs, he’s got your number and when that number comes up, there’s nothing you can do.”

6) “I was sick when I was eight, and that’s continued all my life.”

Past perfect aspect [for this aspect, the auxiliary perfect “have” is in the past tense and distinguished by italics]

7) “You know my husband and I went to Malaysia and we’ve been to a number of other places. We’d planned when we were in Malaysia to go back and just drive around the islands. We’d planned to have many, many more trips . . . unfortunately we’re not able to now.”

8 ) “Last year I wrote good bye letters to all of my family members. If I’d have left it even until now I think I wouldn’t have been able to write as clearly as I did. I can’t remember what I said in them, but I know that I was quite satisfied with what I’d written at the time.”

9) “We went to Spain once with another couple, though I certainly wouldn’t have done that if my wife hadn’t been alive.”

Language as timeline

How can I prove that the perfect tense indicates a relation between the present and the past? Using Reichenbach’s system of temporality in language (from Experience and prediction [1938]), we use language to relay three points of time that are relevant to a normal statement:

· Speech Time (S): the time the statement was spoken or written

· Reference Time (R): the time on which we focus

· Event Time (E):the time at which the event took place

If we imagine these points on a timeline, which tense and aspect are used depends on the relation between S,R, and E.

So let’s consider the following statement:

6) “I was sick when I was eight, and that’s continued all my life.”

In every case, we understand S to be the moment of the interview; R, the time on which we focus, is the patient’s lifespan since age six; and E, the time the event took place, began when the patient was six, but has continued to S (the time of the interview.) On a timeline, we can represent this relation as follows (where the dotted line represents that the time the event took place is the patient’s lifespan since age six.)

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - S

E_____________________________R–>

Age six                                Time of interview

As you can see, the present perfect aspect creates a relation between the past and the present.

 

To contrast this, though, here’s an example of the less common past perfect aspect:

7) “We’d planned to have many, many more trips . . . unfortunately we’re not able to now.”

We don’t have any set dates here, but we do know that at some point in the past plans were made to travel but were interrupted by a terminal illness. Again, S is the moment of the interview; yet this time R, the time on which we focus, is the implied interruption of “many, many, more [trips];” and E, is the past instance of planning those trips—pre-diagnosis.

E______________R_______________S–>

Planning        Interruption        Time of interview

Perfect aspect is a way of indicating the relation between the focus point (R) and the time at which an event took place (E). Tense, on the other hand, is a way of indicating the relation between the focus point (R) and speech time (S): in the first sentence, R and S coincide and we get the present tense; in the second sentence, R precedes S and we get the past tense.

For an event that happened in the past, if we use the perfect aspect, we are focusing not on the time of the event, but on some later time, for instance “now” or “the moment of terminal diagnosis.” Hence, the perfect aspect is used when we want to indicate the importance of an event for what is going on now. And therefore, patients use the perfect aspect to connect moments from their past on a timeline between the moment of their terminal diagnosis (past perfect) or the present moment of the dignity interview (present perfect.)

Obviously we don’t need to draw timelines to situate every example; the contexts of patients’ narratives provide all of the information we need. Yet, I think this is a useful exercise for proving the relation between the past and present in dying patients’ narratives

The progressive aspect or the progressive “be”

In a similar vein, another primary auxiliary is the progressive “be” that follows modals and the perfect “have”—if they occur—and indicates that something is in progress. The progressive “be” is followed by a lexical verb in its –ing form—so, if “been” appears in a verb string but isn’t followed by a verb in its –ing form, then it isn’t the progressive “be.” In many cases, the progressive occurs in a verb string with the perfect “have” to further ensure that the listener is aware there is a direct relation between the narrative event and the patients’ current life:

1) “Well, you won’t believe this. I’ve been writing a biography of myself.”

But the progressive “be” doesn’t have to be used in a verb string with the perfect “have:”

2) “Palliative care wasn’t just offering me hope it was like ‘we’re gonna find that you have no pain anymore.’”

3) “One of the things when I became ill, was that I decided that I was not going to be angry anymore with anyone because it was a waste of time. It’s better to be nice to people than to be angry.”

I haven’t fully synthesized my argument about the progressive “be.” But I believe, pending a bit more research, that the progressive is a way of relating past events more directly to the present moment by implying that they are ongoing. This is powerfully important for differentiating statements made by palliative care patients–especially for psychotherapy–because this verb tense indicates that the sentiment is incomplete and therefore may require closure. If a therapist can use grammatical markers to determine statements that suggest a lack of closure, they can use these markers as focal points for discussion and therapeutic intervention.

Conclusion

I don’t have any major findings to report as of yet but I will publishing this research in a forthcoming academic article along with my research supervisor and a psychiatrist. As I’m sure you can imagine, this research causes me to think about some of the most profound existential issues that we must all face: death, dying, and legacy. I find myself brought nearly to tears when I read these documents and this series of blog posts serves to functions: first, to share with you just what the hell I do when I tell you my second job is discourse analyses of end of life psychotherapeutic interventions between doctors and palliative care patients; but second, to invite you to understand the remarkable nature of palliative care as I see it. On this second point, have you ever thought of volunteering at a hospice or palliative care ward? Dying patients have stories to tell and they have a lot to teach us about life. After this research project, I think about it a lot–I’m just in grad school right now and can’t find the time. But I will someday . . . if I ever finish school.

 

End-of-life interviews . . . and verbs

A lot of people ask me for more information when I tell them that my second job is discourse analyses of end of life psychotherapeutic interventions between doctors and palliative care patients. When I explain that I do both thematic and grammatical analyses of these interviews, people still ask what that means. Today I will discuss what I mean by grammatical analyses and I’ll save an explanation of thematic analyses for another post. Specifically, I am looking at the way that palliative care patients use verbs and how verbs are grammatical markers that evince a sense of mortality for these patients.

What are verbs?

Verbs are the central part of a sentence, especially because they select what other parts can occur in a sentence. So take this sentence as an example:

He wears her pendant as a reminder of days long past.

In this sentence the verb is wears and we know that the verb must be followed by more information because “He wears.” is an impossible sentence. Yet, have a look at these two sentences (the one with the asterisk is another impossible one):

*He wears her her pendant as a reminder of days long past.

He gives her her pendant as a reminder of days long past.

Here, the verb decides what type of phrase can follow it. In these examples I’ll illustrate more examples of how verbs allow certain concepts to follow them:

*He wears her concept as a reminder of days long past.

*He wears her pendant quickly.

He grabs her pendant quickly.

These simple examples illustrate that verbs are the central part of a clause (a clause simply means the smallest meaningful part of a sentence) and therefore are the most influential aspects of how a sentence can be understood. I’m explaining this because I believe that studying how people use verbs can reveal how they situate themselves in relation to time and space, and their own personal beliefs.

Lexical vs auxiliary verbs

Okay, here’s where things get kind of complicated, but I’ll try to keep this interesting and use good examples. In brief, the English language strings together verbs to relay the complexity of space and time into sentence meaning. So, for example, here is a string of verbs about an owl eating a mouse:

The mouse might have been being eaten by an owl.

Here we have the word might (a modal) followed by a string of four verbs (have been being eaten)—each of these verbs contribute to how this sentence can be understood in terms of space and time.

In this sentence, the most important verb is the verb eaten as it is the main focal action of the sentence. Eaten is the lexical verb of this sentence, the most ‘contentful’ verb. The remaining verbs in this sentence (“have been being”) are auxiliary verbs—verbs that contribute to other ways a sentence can be understood; they ‘help’ the lexical verb and can only occur as part of a verb string.

Auxiliary verbs

Auxilliary verbs provide information about the modality, aspect, or voice of a sentence (for our purposes, I’ll define voice here, but I’ll elaborate on it in another post; here my focus is modality and aspect):

Voice

Grammatical voice describes the relationship between the action that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (the subject or object). So, when the subject enacts the verb, the verb is in the active voice; when the subject undergoes the action described by the verb, it is in the passive voice.

Modal auxiliaries

Modality relates to how plausible the speaker thinks it is that what the sentence says will actually happen (this is why modality is sometimes referred to as grammatical “mood” and why grammatical markers of modality, as mentioned, are called modals). English does not have a separate verb form for the future as some other languages do. And, because my work studies palliative care patients discussing the future after they have died, I look at how patients use grammatical markers to indicate a future after they’ve passed away. Below are amended examples of how palliative care patients use modals to discuss their futures:

1) “I’ll always think about my family, even if I be in heaven. I will always protect my family.”

2) “I believe that your essence continues after death, you don’t end, so to speak. The body disappears, so you shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about small things.

3) I know I’m going to die and I’m ready as most people can be. I don’t know what it will be like when it happens.

4) All in all, I’m not going to miss much. (9.4)

5) “I could die in six months or it could be six weeks. Who knows?

6) “I hope my husband can manage himself and eat well.

The core modal verbs are can-could, may-might, shall-should, will-would, and must. The modal will most commonly indicates a focus on the future (as in the first and third examples), and the second most common way we discuss the future is the verb string “be (am, are, is; was, were) + going to,” as in the third and fourth examples. However, as we can see, other modals also refer to the future.

So in the above example, dying patients discuss the future with the following modal constructions: “it would,” “you should be,” “I could be,” “he can,” and “I will,” etc.

So, overall, the modals used here are really used to make predictions about how likely it is that something will happen in the future. The choice of verb, then, depends on how confident the speaker is about the statement.

Next up: Aspect

So in English we use modals to make predictions about the future, and which modals we choose indicate our belief in the likelihood of the statement occurring. Think about how you talk about the future, and you’ll realize that we almost always use modals. I thought I could fully discuss verbs in this post but I’m already running a bit long. I’ll follow up this post with another about grammatical aspect: which is how we relate information about whether the event described by a verb is ongoing, has been completed, or is being repeated. In case you forgot the reason I am telling you all this: modality and aspect are my focus for my discourse analyses of end of life psychotherapeutic interventions between doctors and palliative care patients. By better understanding how patients use grammar at the end of life, I believe that we can better understand how they situate their stories in relation to themselves as dying patients, and the individuals they were before they were diagnosed with a terminal illness.