Literature Reviews

In Senior Inquiry, we've had a Literature Review due, and a Table of Evidence that's due this coming Friday. It was actually a relatively fun task to search for nursing articles relevant to my topic. Which, by the way, is "the current status/recent history of incorporating Liberal Arts into Nursing Undergraduate education." The best thing I did was to schedule an appointment with the nurse-librarian and have her help me with finding articles. My search on CINAHL had only gotten me about 15 articles, but with her help I got about 30 more. As I read through all the abstracts to thin out the articles that would be helpful from those that didn't apply, it got me excited about what I was researching. I could see some of the places that my research would take me- into nursing history, into current curriculum requirements, into student's opinions of their undergrad education... So, now that I've got all these articles to work with, I just have to sit down and start reading them!

Stephanie Johnson

How to Conduct a Research Project

1. You will/should be reading a lot of research articles. Don't even try to do it on your computer. Read the abstracts and then just print out anything that looks useful (this is where your printing budget with the SoN comes in handy). Keep it all in your backpack and take an article out whenever you have a free hour or two. Read outside, read at your favourite cafe, or read in bed at night. Scribble notes as you go. You will be surprised at how you suddenly feel like a real-live academic, a learner, a researcher. Handling the physical papers rather than digitalized .pdf files will suddenly make you like what you're doing. I started doing this two weeks ago and it's been the greatest educational breakthrough of my life. No joke.

2. Ask for help. Ask for external pressures. Ask for accountability. Don't rely simply on your own self-motivation to get the work done and done well. You didn't get to where you are on your own and you won't get anywhere else by yourself, either.

3. Do not allow yourself even an ounce of bologna. It will suck your soul dry and you will fail at life. Don't give people the idea that you're farther along than you are, don't cite an article as saying more or less than it actually does, don't pretend to be interested in anything you're not. Be completely honest with yourself and anyone who asks about your progress and your attitude - especially your advisor.

4. Fall in love with the people you are learning about, and with the knowledge and ideas about them that you are coming to grasp. Be careful you don't become enamoured with systems, theories and processes abstracted from their human applications. In such things you can lose your focus. People matter - anything else that holds significance does so because of how it relates to people.

- Zach

Opening Thoughts

For the last few weeks, I've been talking a lot with Dr. Jean. She's a physician who helps run a mission clinic in the highlands of Papua New Guinea where I want to do my research project this summer. Emailing back and forth about travel plans, research points, cultural issues, logistics, etc... The more we plan, the more I realize that, fun as it will be, this is actually going to be challenging in an unprecedented way.

I'm not just saying that the project is going to be tough academically and logistically. It's also going to test my endurance and my character. At Penn, I think we often get away with "playing school." We all complain a lot about how hard we have it, but the truth is that our classes are rarely the center of our attention 24/7. If this is going to work however, I'm going to have to pour a lot of my life into it. I'm trying to enter a culture that is radically different from - and often diametrically opposed to - the one I've become accustomed to in the US. Once there, I'm trying to sit down and talk with them to develop a means of understanding each other's worldviews as they relate to health and wellness. It's all very abstract, and it's hard to know what issues and question to focus on. There are also a lot of practical problems, such as the generally suspicious disposition of Papua New Guinean highlanders towards foreigners.

Furthermore, if I don't choose to expend all the energy and creativity and resourcefulness on this project that I can, I'm going to have far worse problems than a mediocre grade. My advisor, who has invested so much in me, would be very disappointed, I would essentially be defrauding every agency that has provided me with funding, and I think it would be crippling for my own development as a nurse, an adult, and an agent of shalom (peace, goodness, wholeness) in the world. So I think the stakes are high, but I also think that this is going to be one of the most rewarding things I've ever done by the time it's over.

All that to say - I think I'd better get to work.

- Zachary Smith Ferris