About me
I am a PhD candidate in the School of Aging Studies at the University of South Florida. I will be graduating in Summer 2021 and will begin a Postdoctoral Research Fellow Position at Boston University and VA Boston. I submitted an NIH F31 Fellowship proposal titled “Identifying Pathways Between Daily Stress and Long-Term Well-Being in Caregivers and Non-Caregivers” (Co-Sponsors: Drs. William Haley & Soomi Lee; Collaborators: Drs. Brent Small, David Almeida, Hongdao Meng, & Mingyang Li) to the National Institute on Aging in 2019, and it was successfully funded in 2020.
My research focuses on studying caregiver well-being in a way that balances a strength-based model, emphasizing caregivers’ resilience, with a deficit-based model, emphasizing caregiver strain. Caregiving is stressful, and adverse outcomes like depression and low life satisfaction are common. However, caregivers also report positive aspects of caregiving, like increased meaning in life, growing closer to the care recipient, and learning skills. Unfortunately, these indicators of positive well-being have been rarely studied in comparisons of well-being in caregivers and non-caregivers. In addition to this line of work, I have worked to understand how caregiving status relates to outcomes such as cognitive functioning, sleep, emotional stress, physical strain, financial strain, self-rated health, and perceived change in health. I have also examined how caregivers’ experiences and outcomes vary based on factors like primary caregiver status (primary versus secondary caregiver), care recipient relationship type (e.g., parent versus friend), race, dementia status (non-dementia care versus dementia care), and perceived choice in providing care (perceived choice versus no choice).
In this post, I will be sharing some of my graduate experiences to provide some insight to other graduate students or those who are about to start graduate school. My post will be divided into three parts: developing an original research question, preparing an NIH F31 Fellowship Proposal, and securing a postdoc position.
Developing an original research question
For me, one key to developing an original research question has been turning to theory and finding the intersections of fields. The research questions I am addressing in my NIH F31 Fellowship and dissertation lie in the intersections of research on caregiving, stress, and positive psychology. My focus on these areas began during undergraduate research with Dr. Haley, which consisted mostly of directed readings and literature reviews on caregiving, stress and coping theory, and positive reappraisal, including benefit finding in caregiving. I became fascinated by caregivers’ motivations to provide care and their ability to use their spiritual beliefs to find comfort and meaning in their role. Around this time, I read other accounts of humans’ ability to build resilience and find meaning under conditions of stress through my Psychology of Aging course, which included Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” as a required text. As I broadened the scope of my directed reading to the field of positive psychology, I began to draw parallels between the concept of eudaimonic well-being (e.g., purpose in life, positive relations with others) and the psychological benefits that caregivers report (e.g., meaning, growing closer to the care recipient). This intersection formed the basis of my theoretical review paper, and later, of my NIH F31 Proposal and dissertation work.
Another key has been identifying issues with clinical or practical importance. I think this can be achieved by reflecting on your own observations of the human experience and from reading clinical and policy work in your field. Looking closely, I can see that my early life observations of my family’s experiences are reflected in some of my research questions. At the age of 12, I had my first exposure to the complex dynamics of family caregiving as I study it today. My great-great-uncle Charlie was diagnosed with bile duct cancer, and my mom became his primary caregiver. He enrolled in a clinical trial for treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital, and my mom coordinated care plans, attended treatments, communicated with providers, cooked meals, and provided emotional support to him and my aunt. As his condition worsened, she took on many of his personal care tasks. After a full year of failed treatments, repeated hospital readmissions, and unwanted placement in a skilled nursing facility, she advocated for his wishes to go home and enter hospice.
Charlie had been a father figure to my mom, and she freely chose to take on this role out of love and empathetic concern. The role “caregiver” became part of her identity and purpose, and she gained new knowledge and skills while fighting to give him the best care possible. To this day, she fondly remembers nurses mistaking her competence for experience as a fellow healthcare worker. But I also watched the emotional and physical toll that caregiving took on my mom – a woman balancing the demands of work, childcare, and elder care. I never consciously pursued research in caregiving because of these experiences, but I realize that they likely colored my conception of what it means to be a caregiver and how being one might have both positive and negative consequences within families.
Preparing an NIH 31 Fellowship Proposal
I was fortunate that my PhD program offered an optional PhD seminar in grant writing. The course was structured so that, every week, we drafted and submitted a specific portion of the F31 proposal, which was projected on the board for the class to critique. The first week, we defined our research topic and became familiar with the NIH website, NIH funding mechanisms, and NIH funding agencies and guidelines. Week two, we tackled the Specific Aims page. Week three, we covered the Significance and Innovation sections, and so on, until by the end of the semester, we had drafted a full proposal and learned how to critically review our own work and others’. After this seminar, I presented the proposal to my major advisors and, with their help, began solidifying my training team and revising the proposal for submission.
Preparing the F31 proposal was an exciting, but challenging, time for me. The opportunity to propose a project on a topic that I had been slowly developing for the past several years was empowering. Given the chance to do it all again, I would make the decision to submit my proposal for funding earlier on. After making the decision to submit, I would start assembling a training team while enrolled in the course and working with that training team on revising and fine-tuning the proposal for submission. For me, it took approximately 2.5 years of developing, revising, and resubmitting my proposal before it was funded. Had I made the decision to submit and begun collaborating with my training team earlier, I may have been able to shorten this funding timeline.
Securing a postdoc position or job
In the second year of my PhD program, I began saving interesting job ads in a folder on my desktop. It was a tip that I had learned in Proseminar – the School of Aging Studies’ PhD seminar focused on student success and career development. The idea was that by looking at and saving ads along the way, I would gain an understanding of the types of positions that were possible, the skills that were required or preferred for each, and which positions were most appealing to me. When it came time to actively search for and apply to positions, I would refer to that folder for ideas on which types of jobs I should search for, and which search terms to use on websites like GSA’s AgeWork, HigherEdJobs, and Indeed. I had also subscribed to several email listservs from various professional organizations, including the APA’s Div. 20 Listserv, which provided many of the job ads filling that folder.
I learned about the postdoctoral research position at BU/VA Boston through the Div. 20 Listserv. I had decided that a research postdoc was the right next step for me because I wanted to dedicate the next stage of my career to advancing my training in quantitative analyses, grantsmanship, and manuscript publication. After applying and getting the opportunity to interview, I did several things to prepare. First, I anticipated the questions that I might be asked and prepared a Word document with bullets that I would address in my response to each. I also met with mentors to discuss questions they have asked while interviewing postdocs and questions that I planned to ask. Mock interviewing with my mentor also helped, in addition to practicing speaking about specific topics out loud to myself. The process of verbalizing my thoughts made me more comfortable with summarizing my experience, training, and skills. I also spent time learning about the study – BEAMS – via NIH Reporter so that I could ask specific questions about the study aims and data content. During the interview, we discussed both what I could contribute to and what I could gain from the position. Specifically, I was asked to speak about my short- and long-term career goals, the skills I hoped to gain from the postdoc, and what an ideal job might look like for me. I was also asked about the types of mentorship configurations that would be most beneficial to me, about my experience developing the F31 proposal, and about my quantitative skill set including analyses and software used.
Takeaway tips
In sum, I encourage current and prospective graduate students who are working to identify a research topic or question to read theoretical and empirical work from adjacent fields and to reflect on their own observations, which may point to questions with practical and clinical value. Once you have a clear idea of research topic, taking a course in grant writing can challenge you to identify gaps in the literature, define specific aims of a project, and articulate the significance of a project in a non-technical way. The final product can be submitted for funding consideration or used to develop your dissertation proposal. Deciding early on whether and when you will submit can help your planning, submission, and resubmission process. Finally, I’ve learned that when searching for a postdoctoral position, it’s critical to prioritize fit between your research interests and priorities for career development and the needs and priorities of the potential mentor. Carefully considering both the skills you can bring to a position and the skills you hope to gain from it can help you and a potential mentor gauge whether the partnership will be a mutually beneficial one.