[Applause]
phears I’ve had a few doing with
setbacks in academic life in this
presentation I’m going to talk about
three issues that often concern both
academics and students and those are
firstly getting a PhD secondly getting
published and thirdly and probably most
difficult of the three getting grants so
the first of them getting a PhD well
some of you might actually think why on
earth would you actually bother getting
a PhD or trying to get a PhD because it
can take so long it took me 10 years
part time to get a 15 the shortest
period you can get a PhD in this three
years so if you’re doing a PhD as many
academics do part time it’s going to
take you often four and a half five
years plus of course unless that is you
do a PhD by publication or a PhD by
professional practice which you can do
in a shorter time period but you have
already to have done a loss of work to
get either of those PhDs
do you actually really need a PhD well
here is Pat mal de Silva who was a
colleague of mine at the Institute of
Psychiatry in London had now was a world
authority in a number of different
conditions obsessive-compulsive disorder
panic disorder morbid jealousy and
Buddhism he never had a PhD so he never
got higher than a senior lecturer at the
Institute of Psychiatry but it didn’t
stop him having a worldwide reputation
so why was i interested in getting a PhD
well partly because my mother had been
to see a fortune-teller in Ireland and I
was the eldest of five children and the
fortune-teller told my mother two of
your children will become doctors so
that gave me a 40% chance of becoming a
doctor I thought worth going for
unfortunately the fortune-teller didn’t
say they’d be the pure type of doctors
PhDs as opposed to M DS proper doctors
who get paid lots of money but today’s
story really begins in a car park in
Milton Kings at the Open University when
in truth this isn’t actually a car park
at Milton Kings it’s just a car park I I
managed to find on the web and I was
sitting in my Volkswagen Golf car in
tears on my own the reason I was in
tears is because I just had a PhD
supervision session with my two
supervisors and they said to me well
Jerome you’ve been doing this PhD for
over three years you’re actually not
getting anywhere here’s the choice you
either stop now and give up or you
actually take a year out and come back
and put a bit more effort in so I was
pretty devastated I really thought I
ought to give up so part of that grief
those tears were the fact that I
actually had to give up and I actually
left the PhD now why I actually failed
in the first place well maybe it’s
because I was in an asylum at the time
though like other people I have to say
like our actor friend earlier who told
us he was in prison but he wasn’t
actually in prison he was in doing a
product
in prison I was actually working in an
asylum as the clinical psychologist I
was probably the only one out of
hundreds of staff it was actually doing
a PhD so it wasn’t really a research
culture
I picked the wrong subject to study
which was social skills training quite a
boring area and I was trying to apply
social skills with some of the most
disabled people in that hospital so in
essence it was a project doomed to fail
and fail it actually did so fall down
get back up so how did I get back up
after that setback well I just
discovered the value of conducting
research and I got really interested in
carrying out research projects in the
hospital we did one project for example
where we surveyed the entire hospital
and we discovered that when trusts were
coming into the hospital to take
patients away because the hospital was
going to close they were taking the best
patients first this empirical discovery
led the hospital to change its policy
and wards were allocated to the
different trusts so that they just
couldn’t go in and pick out the best
people as it were for themselves so
having really got interested in research
the specialism I was working in at the
time was an area called psychiatric
rehabilitation and I had heard about
this psychiatrist dr. Frank Holloway and
worked in South London and he’d actually
written books I’d never worked with
someone who’d written books so I was
determined to go and try and work with
him and I managed to get a job with him
in South London at the Institute of
Psychiatry
and modeling now having moved there in
1992 it was it was an incredibly
inspiring environment
to be in it was an environment where
research was everywhere so I really
threw myself into research and published
quite a lot of papers with other
colleagues there within five years a
panel was convened to consider my claims
to the title of senior lecturer and when
I went into that panel was about eight
professors in there the first thing they
said to me was just to reassure you
you’ve actually got your seeing
electrician so then sat down and they
proceeded to ask me questions but one of
the things was that they said to me was
you will never be more than a senior
lecturer unless you get a PhD whoops I
had already been down that route and
haven’t succeeded and here these people
are saying unless you get one you’re not
going to succeed anymore in this
environment so I decided to start a PhD
the second time this time however I was
careful to choose the right area now it
was an area that I had already co-edited
two books on I had 17 peer-reviewed
papers and nine professional papers as
well and this was the area of
occupational stress now those of you
that may not know about phd’s will not
know there are actually there’s no exams
to sit with a PhD there’s actually only
two elements to a PhD there is first the
production of the thesis and then there
is an interview with two people in
Britain typically who asked you about
your thesis and you have to defend your
thesis to them sounds actually very easy
but it is incredibly difficult and
anyone who’s been through a fiver will
know how difficult that actually is and
it’s a bit like going to face a couple
of gunslingers because you often you’ll
have an external examiner
as a specialist in the field and knows
lots about that area and sometimes
you’ll be lucky and have an internal
examiner who is probably a friend of
your supervisor who’s not going to be
too difficult
unfortunately I didn’t get an internal
examiner like Vance I got a very
ferocious Scottish and I say Scottish
because I can see Brian in the wings
they’re a very ferocious Scottish
academic and normally internals are
gentle she was any gentle but gentle
with me and there’s the outcome so we
had arranged a celebration because I had
I was supremely overconfident that I get
a PhD and we got the champagne and the
meal well I didn’t want to drink the
champagne I at the food had tasted awful
steak chips and sweet corn my favorite
and I ended up going to bed at 10
o’clock at night
totally disconsolate what was even worse
was the outcome of the viber they said
you need to make major changes we’re
going to give you 18 months to do it
and furthermore we want to give you
another vive a– now I never heard of
this outcome I’d thought you either
pastor you failed I didn’t realize there
was this intermediate stage where you
might actually have to have another
visor so 18 months later had the Reviver
past had the champagne
got the certificate got the PhD now I
was told you are not going to go any
higher without a PhD what went right so
right subject right participants right
research environment but becoming dr.
Carson did prove as easy as I actually
thought it would be so each of these
eminent psychiatrists Oh had to say in
my future and the first people I went to
see were Professor Sir David Goldberg
and professor absolutely man and they
looked at my CV and said you’ve not been
publishing much of it we have you that
Lancet paper oh dear what a shame it was
in 1997 it was now 2006 so it couldn’t
be counted in the 2008 research
assessment exercise which is what they
were thinking about professor smuggler
the chap of the extreme right stopping
the canteen one day and said it does
anyone had to chat to you about your
publications oh no and then finally I
got to see professor Thorneycroft the
chap at the bottom there sitting very
casually and professors Donna Croft said
to me you need to have four papers with
you as the first author all in journals
of an impact factor of Griffith and
string with the exception of The Lancet
paper I don’t think any of my papers had
ever been in journals through an impact
factor of greater than 3 so I made some
attempts to try and actually recover the
situation but unfortunately I was
unsuccessful and perhaps the the
greatest insult was I sense of paper to
the Journal of advanced nursing were I
already had four or five papers in that
journal and it was rejected with that
even being sent for review and what was
even worse it only had an impact factor
of one so they said to me you are going
to have to transfer to the trust and
work full-time for the NHS but you can
keep your title as honoring senior
lecturer if you have been a fully booked
senior lecturer at the Institute of
Psychiatry
you do not want to drop your status to
honor it
armory is for people who have never been
a senior lecturer
at the industry Toscana tree but often
have a medical qualification and are
given honorary status because they give
the occasional lecture so recovery
became part of my recovery and I
published a number of books with people
who have mental health problems and
these are three of them here however
putting so much work into recovery
actually led me to a state of burnout
and at the age of 54 I took early
retirement from the NHS and you get a
lump sum I got a lump sum of 75 thousand
pounds and I blew five thousand pounds
on a party it was worth it I didn’t have
a single drink I was too hyper to even
have a single drink at the actual party
so after a year at home trying to
survive on an NHS pension of 21,000
pounds I realized that math didn’t work
there so I was forced to get another job
by a miracle of God I ended up as
professor of psychology at the
University of oh how did that happen I
don’t know how that happened but I can’t
tell you how delighted I am to be
professor of psychology at the
University for Bolton because it’s the
most wonderful place to actually work
I’m sure most people say that about
their own universities so getting a PhD
for me help me get the professorship and
I probably wouldn’t have got a
professorship without the PhD so very
important to get that PhD getting
published in Macmillan and I could do
publication workshops and when I was at
this period of semi-retirement he said
would you write an article for me I’ll
give you a hundred pound
I said I’ll write it for nothing but
I’ll take the check anyway
and the article started writing for
publication is easy ooh
bold start sometimes it’s helped helps
when you’re writing to start positively
when the paper actually came out you
changed it to writing for publication is
easier than you think
wonderful he actually improved what I’d
actually said now some of our learned
colleagues here
dr. Machuca said dr. Marie Norman Neal
Duggan and I’ve come up with a number of
tips on writing for publication twelve
simple tips they’re probably the most
important tip I can actually give you is
passion write about something that you
feel passionate about because then the
words will flow if it’s something you
feel passionate about of course there
are different types of journals don’t
start with The Lancet The Lancet has a
95% rejection rate yes mum would love to
see your paper in The Lancet but
unfortunately very few people ever get
to see that their papers in The Lancet
because it’s so incredibly hard to get
in and you get used to rejection when it
comes to submitting journal papers and
in fact after we revise one paper and we
sent it back to a journal the reviewer
said I never want to see this paper
again well needless to say we didn’t
send it to them again they wouldn’t have
it anyway but we ended up sending it
nowhere else an occupational therapist
who did a master’s degree was advised by
his supervisors to submit his paper to
the British Journal of occupational
therapy it was reviewed by three people
it was rejected he was so disappointed
he never submitted another paper for 15
years so what you have to bear in mind
is every academic get papers rejected
everyone has actually had rejections so
maybe try something easier try doing a
book review the joy of doing the book
review is you get to keep the books
write a letter to the editor research
has been done on the psychologists
magazine and there’s a whole variety of
different types of articles it turns out
the thing the psychologists like to read
most are the lessers pages blessing and
the reason for that is because it’s
where they’re all having adore each
other so it’s actually very interesting
and you can’t write anything that’s more
than 200 words so they’re all very short
and most was with the attention spans of
gnats can actually manage that type of
thing and bear in mind as well as
professor izing said journals need
papers with that papers as no journals
so some journal somewhere is waiting for
Europe paper you just don’t know which
journal it is at the moment but trust me
it’s there at waiting for you so my
third and final point is about getting
grants this is Professor Jeffrey gray
one of the most eminent psychologists in
the world he told me he only succeeded
in 1,000 grams one out of ten be honest
what chance does that give us is one of
the greatest people in the world can
only get one out of ten it means we
probably need to start slow go for small
pots of money and so we build up don’t
go for the big things so let me just
conclude then farriers I probably had
more than a few but we all have to do
with setbacks in academic life the boxer
Nicola Adams the first woman to ever win
an Olympic gold for boxing in 2012 in
London and again 2016 in Rio choo to
Olympic gold said fall down eight times
get up 9 thank you very much
you
phears I’ve had a few doing with
setbacks in academic life in this
presentation I’m going to talk about
three issues that often concern both
academics and students and those are
firstly getting a PhD secondly getting
published and thirdly and probably most
difficult of the three getting grants so
the first of them getting a PhD well
some of you might actually think why on
earth would you actually bother getting
a PhD or trying to get a PhD because it
can take so long it took me 10 years
part time to get a 15 the shortest
period you can get a PhD in this three
years so if you’re doing a PhD as many
academics do part time it’s going to
take you often four and a half five
years plus of course unless that is you
do a PhD by publication or a PhD by
professional practice which you can do
in a shorter time period but you have
already to have done a loss of work to
get either of those PhDs
do you actually really need a PhD well
here is Pat mal de Silva who was a
colleague of mine at the Institute of
Psychiatry in London had now was a world
authority in a number of different
conditions obsessive-compulsive disorder
panic disorder morbid jealousy and
Buddhism he never had a PhD so he never
got higher than a senior lecturer at the
Institute of Psychiatry but it didn’t
stop him having a worldwide reputation
so why was i interested in getting a PhD
well partly because my mother had been
to see a fortune-teller in Ireland and I
was the eldest of five children and the
fortune-teller told my mother two of
your children will become doctors so
that gave me a 40% chance of becoming a
doctor I thought worth going for
unfortunately the fortune-teller didn’t
say they’d be the pure type of doctors
PhDs as opposed to M DS proper doctors
who get paid lots of money but today’s
story really begins in a car park in
Milton Kings at the Open University when
in truth this isn’t actually a car park
at Milton Kings it’s just a car park I I
managed to find on the web and I was
sitting in my Volkswagen Golf car in
tears on my own the reason I was in
tears is because I just had a PhD
supervision session with my two
supervisors and they said to me well
Jerome you’ve been doing this PhD for
over three years you’re actually not
getting anywhere here’s the choice you
either stop now and give up or you
actually take a year out and come back
and put a bit more effort in so I was
pretty devastated I really thought I
ought to give up so part of that grief
those tears were the fact that I
actually had to give up and I actually
left the PhD now why I actually failed
in the first place well maybe it’s
because I was in an asylum at the time
though like other people I have to say
like our actor friend earlier who told
us he was in prison but he wasn’t
actually in prison he was in doing a
product
in prison I was actually working in an
asylum as the clinical psychologist I
was probably the only one out of
hundreds of staff it was actually doing
a PhD so it wasn’t really a research
culture
I picked the wrong subject to study
which was social skills training quite a
boring area and I was trying to apply
social skills with some of the most
disabled people in that hospital so in
essence it was a project doomed to fail
and fail it actually did so fall down
get back up so how did I get back up
after that setback well I just
discovered the value of conducting
research and I got really interested in
carrying out research projects in the
hospital we did one project for example
where we surveyed the entire hospital
and we discovered that when trusts were
coming into the hospital to take
patients away because the hospital was
going to close they were taking the best
patients first this empirical discovery
led the hospital to change its policy
and wards were allocated to the
different trusts so that they just
couldn’t go in and pick out the best
people as it were for themselves so
having really got interested in research
the specialism I was working in at the
time was an area called psychiatric
rehabilitation and I had heard about
this psychiatrist dr. Frank Holloway and
worked in South London and he’d actually
written books I’d never worked with
someone who’d written books so I was
determined to go and try and work with
him and I managed to get a job with him
in South London at the Institute of
Psychiatry
and modeling now having moved there in
1992 it was it was an incredibly
inspiring environment
to be in it was an environment where
research was everywhere so I really
threw myself into research and published
quite a lot of papers with other
colleagues there within five years a
panel was convened to consider my claims
to the title of senior lecturer and when
I went into that panel was about eight
professors in there the first thing they
said to me was just to reassure you
you’ve actually got your seeing
electrician so then sat down and they
proceeded to ask me questions but one of
the things was that they said to me was
you will never be more than a senior
lecturer unless you get a PhD whoops I
had already been down that route and
haven’t succeeded and here these people
are saying unless you get one you’re not
going to succeed anymore in this
environment so I decided to start a PhD
the second time this time however I was
careful to choose the right area now it
was an area that I had already co-edited
two books on I had 17 peer-reviewed
papers and nine professional papers as
well and this was the area of
occupational stress now those of you
that may not know about phd’s will not
know there are actually there’s no exams
to sit with a PhD there’s actually only
two elements to a PhD there is first the
production of the thesis and then there
is an interview with two people in
Britain typically who asked you about
your thesis and you have to defend your
thesis to them sounds actually very easy
but it is incredibly difficult and
anyone who’s been through a fiver will
know how difficult that actually is and
it’s a bit like going to face a couple
of gunslingers because you often you’ll
have an external examiner
as a specialist in the field and knows
lots about that area and sometimes
you’ll be lucky and have an internal
examiner who is probably a friend of
your supervisor who’s not going to be
too difficult
unfortunately I didn’t get an internal
examiner like Vance I got a very
ferocious Scottish and I say Scottish
because I can see Brian in the wings
they’re a very ferocious Scottish
academic and normally internals are
gentle she was any gentle but gentle
with me and there’s the outcome so we
had arranged a celebration because I had
I was supremely overconfident that I get
a PhD and we got the champagne and the
meal well I didn’t want to drink the
champagne I at the food had tasted awful
steak chips and sweet corn my favorite
and I ended up going to bed at 10
o’clock at night
totally disconsolate what was even worse
was the outcome of the viber they said
you need to make major changes we’re
going to give you 18 months to do it
and furthermore we want to give you
another vive a– now I never heard of
this outcome I’d thought you either
pastor you failed I didn’t realize there
was this intermediate stage where you
might actually have to have another
visor so 18 months later had the Reviver
past had the champagne
got the certificate got the PhD now I
was told you are not going to go any
higher without a PhD what went right so
right subject right participants right
research environment but becoming dr.
Carson did prove as easy as I actually
thought it would be so each of these
eminent psychiatrists Oh had to say in
my future and the first people I went to
see were Professor Sir David Goldberg
and professor absolutely man and they
looked at my CV and said you’ve not been
publishing much of it we have you that
Lancet paper oh dear what a shame it was
in 1997 it was now 2006 so it couldn’t
be counted in the 2008 research
assessment exercise which is what they
were thinking about professor smuggler
the chap of the extreme right stopping
the canteen one day and said it does
anyone had to chat to you about your
publications oh no and then finally I
got to see professor Thorneycroft the
chap at the bottom there sitting very
casually and professors Donna Croft said
to me you need to have four papers with
you as the first author all in journals
of an impact factor of Griffith and
string with the exception of The Lancet
paper I don’t think any of my papers had
ever been in journals through an impact
factor of greater than 3 so I made some
attempts to try and actually recover the
situation but unfortunately I was
unsuccessful and perhaps the the
greatest insult was I sense of paper to
the Journal of advanced nursing were I
already had four or five papers in that
journal and it was rejected with that
even being sent for review and what was
even worse it only had an impact factor
of one so they said to me you are going
to have to transfer to the trust and
work full-time for the NHS but you can
keep your title as honoring senior
lecturer if you have been a fully booked
senior lecturer at the Institute of
Psychiatry
you do not want to drop your status to
honor it
armory is for people who have never been
a senior lecturer
at the industry Toscana tree but often
have a medical qualification and are
given honorary status because they give
the occasional lecture so recovery
became part of my recovery and I
published a number of books with people
who have mental health problems and
these are three of them here however
putting so much work into recovery
actually led me to a state of burnout
and at the age of 54 I took early
retirement from the NHS and you get a
lump sum I got a lump sum of 75 thousand
pounds and I blew five thousand pounds
on a party it was worth it I didn’t have
a single drink I was too hyper to even
have a single drink at the actual party
so after a year at home trying to
survive on an NHS pension of 21,000
pounds I realized that math didn’t work
there so I was forced to get another job
by a miracle of God I ended up as
professor of psychology at the
University of oh how did that happen I
don’t know how that happened but I can’t
tell you how delighted I am to be
professor of psychology at the
University for Bolton because it’s the
most wonderful place to actually work
I’m sure most people say that about
their own universities so getting a PhD
for me help me get the professorship and
I probably wouldn’t have got a
professorship without the PhD so very
important to get that PhD getting
published in Macmillan and I could do
publication workshops and when I was at
this period of semi-retirement he said
would you write an article for me I’ll
give you a hundred pound
I said I’ll write it for nothing but
I’ll take the check anyway
and the article started writing for
publication is easy ooh
bold start sometimes it’s helped helps
when you’re writing to start positively
when the paper actually came out you
changed it to writing for publication is
easier than you think
wonderful he actually improved what I’d
actually said now some of our learned
colleagues here
dr. Machuca said dr. Marie Norman Neal
Duggan and I’ve come up with a number of
tips on writing for publication twelve
simple tips they’re probably the most
important tip I can actually give you is
passion write about something that you
feel passionate about because then the
words will flow if it’s something you
feel passionate about of course there
are different types of journals don’t
start with The Lancet The Lancet has a
95% rejection rate yes mum would love to
see your paper in The Lancet but
unfortunately very few people ever get
to see that their papers in The Lancet
because it’s so incredibly hard to get
in and you get used to rejection when it
comes to submitting journal papers and
in fact after we revise one paper and we
sent it back to a journal the reviewer
said I never want to see this paper
again well needless to say we didn’t
send it to them again they wouldn’t have
it anyway but we ended up sending it
nowhere else an occupational therapist
who did a master’s degree was advised by
his supervisors to submit his paper to
the British Journal of occupational
therapy it was reviewed by three people
it was rejected he was so disappointed
he never submitted another paper for 15
years so what you have to bear in mind
is every academic get papers rejected
everyone has actually had rejections so
maybe try something easier try doing a
book review the joy of doing the book
review is you get to keep the books
write a letter to the editor research
has been done on the psychologists
magazine and there’s a whole variety of
different types of articles it turns out
the thing the psychologists like to read
most are the lessers pages blessing and
the reason for that is because it’s
where they’re all having adore each
other so it’s actually very interesting
and you can’t write anything that’s more
than 200 words so they’re all very short
and most was with the attention spans of
gnats can actually manage that type of
thing and bear in mind as well as
professor izing said journals need
papers with that papers as no journals
so some journal somewhere is waiting for
Europe paper you just don’t know which
journal it is at the moment but trust me
it’s there at waiting for you so my
third and final point is about getting
grants this is Professor Jeffrey gray
one of the most eminent psychologists in
the world he told me he only succeeded
in 1,000 grams one out of ten be honest
what chance does that give us is one of
the greatest people in the world can
only get one out of ten it means we
probably need to start slow go for small
pots of money and so we build up don’t
go for the big things so let me just
conclude then farriers I probably had
more than a few but we all have to do
with setbacks in academic life the boxer
Nicola Adams the first woman to ever win
an Olympic gold for boxing in 2012 in
London and again 2016 in Rio choo to
Olympic gold said fall down eight times
get up 9 thank you very much
you
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