practice vs research brain

As I attempt to write a submission for a conference, the idea of practice vs. research brain is on my mind.  I tell people that it is hard to get back into academic writing. Yes, I obtained my PhD, but it was almost five years ago. After the last two years in a MSW program, in which we did writing, but not research, most of the focus was learning principles to apply in your practice/internship.  I characterize my foundation year internship as student services and both my second year ones as clinical mental health.

While we may read the works of therapists, who write in addition to their practice in mental health, it seems when we look generally at the practice of social work, there is not time to write. But also, I have to consider what writing means and my own background before coming into a MSW program.  I was already trained as a researcher, or may we say after eight years in a PhD program, an academic. While I must be careful as what I think and say only comes from my lens and non-scientific observations, it did seem that many of my classmates were more aligned with practice and not as concerned with the writing and academic components of the program. This makes sense- after all a MSW program is an applied program. I have heard in some programs, one does write a masters' paper, in ours it was all coursework and internships. But this is part of my point- I've been trained for the last two years in doing practice, not academic research, writing, and publication.

And now as I am thinking and planning my research agenda in my academic job, my brain feels jumbled and numb at times. But first, let me get to a point of why I started this blog in helping me write a conference submission. As such, let me go back to my internship experiences. My first year was in a GLBTA office, which did great work in a university setting. Academic knowledge was tied into the work of the office, though my role was more about running a mentor program and some work on ally development. In my second year, I interned in a chemical dependency rehab setting. This was a challenging internship for many reasons and again I am careful about generalizations, but it was not a setting in which one was easily allowed to ask why. I think there are a few reasons for this, but as someone trained as a scholar and researcher, this was frustrating, especially when things didn't make sense or didn't seem to be working.  Moreover, my role as an intern I learned was one of not asking these type of questions. And this is the setting in which I observed things, that  I did not understand or did not feel right with my training in sociology, social work, and feminist studies, in which I turned my frustration and why questions into ideas for a research project.

When I think about the not being to ask why, I also think back to my MSW program, in which every MSW student must learn about Evidence Based Practices (EBPs). And while I understand EBPs in terms of practice, though with any knowledge we must look at who was studied, when, why and the so forth to see how it might apply or its generalizability, and also use our practice wisdom in addition, sometimes it seems overwhelming to know so much while doing practice. I like to use what my supervisor in my last internship noted, use what works and use different interventions and approaches. This is a writing for another day.

But back to my point here is that I'm trying to figure out my research, draw upon sociology and social work literature and training in these areas for two areas I am interested in studying. But I am also teaching social service classes that are more skills based while also revising an internship program. My head is all over. And at times I forgot what it was like to read an academic article I truly enjoyed.  So two things. Sometimes I sound like I don't know what I am saying to people when I talk. And yes, it could be that I don't know what I am saying, but yet I also have so much going on in my head with all these different things, plus my personal life in raising kids and having a partner, that it does get jumbled. Maybe I'll figure out how to decompress this information better, especially as time goes by. But my other point is that it was really exciting to start reading academic literature again and remembering what I do know and have read.