Writing for the MPH: a W/Rite of Passage
A message to BUSPH students
A recent BUSPH graduate compared her experience writing an International Health paper with an arduous ocean voyage. It was the year of the film "Titanic" and images of shipwreck and disaster plagued her all along the way, but she finally reached the other shore, safe, satisfied, and ready to begin anew. With that metaphor in mind, I urge you to think of the writing that you do for the MPH degree as an engine that drives your crossing from public health student to public health professional. Many SPH course writing assignments assist you in this transition. You will likely be expected to write scholarly research papers, critical analyses, and argumentative essays, as well as reports on your field practice experience. Courses may also require that you write funding proposals, briefing papers, study designs, recommendations for interventions, policy analyses, program evaluations, needs assessments, budget justifications, media campaign kits--the possibilities are as diverse as the writing tasks you will encounter in professional practice, for which these assignments aim to prepare you.
You may find that the skills that got you through your learner-centered undergraduate writing may no longer be sufficient for the purposes of an audience-centered graduate level writing assignment, in which we expect you to move from the sheltered stance of exploration and discovery to a riskier one of analysis, authority and advocacy. The transition from student to professional has a stylistic counterpart in the way you write: a move from writer-based prose to reader-based prose. Linda Flower, a specialist in teaching writing, comments on this distinction:
Good writers know how to transform writer-based prose (which works well for them)
into reader-based prose (which works for their readers as well). Writing is inevitably a somewhat egocentric enterprise. We naturally tend to talk to ourselves when composing.
As a result, we often need self-conscious strategies for trying to talk to our reader[1].
Those "self-conscious strategies" are at the core of the resources and recommendations presented in this guide.
The process of writing is both distinct from and inseparable from the product. Many faculty emphasize both components and require that you submit two drafts of an assigned paper; others might make an early draft optional. These assignments allow time for revision, further probing, and rethinking--not just so you can tinker with words and style, but to give you the chance to make substantial changes in content and structure as your thinking develops and deepens. You may not figure out what you're really talking about until you complete one draft, and this discovery is a good use of the first run-through.
But as you work on later drafts, you apply what you know, manipulate it critically, and pitch it to a certain audience, with the ultimate intent of getting someone to take action. And that intent has implications for structuring the argument, for providing enough detail to make your case, for using language that will be acceptable and accessible to your audience, and for writing in as clear and powerful a style as possible. We don't expect you to accomplish all this in a first draft, but we do expect it in a final one! A first draft isn't wrong, it's just raw. Redrafting is a process of ripening. Like all ripening, it takes time. Even if an assignment doesn't require multiple drafts, as mature writers you should allow the time for them.
The multiple-drafting process goes hand-in-hand with other elements of writing I most often emphasize. For example, when IH students begin their concentration papers, I ask at the outset that they work hard to clarify the problem they're focusing on (and why it's a problem) and their purpose in writing the paper, in terms of a particular audience. These may be especially difficult tasks if you're just starting out in the field. But the more clearly you can focus the problem and the purpose at the very start, the more firmly you will grasp the logical structuring of the paper to follow.
I also harp a lot on "appropriate use of source material". I admit that I use this phrase as a euphemism for "avoiding plagiarism", which can be a very big, intimidating and complex issue. (A recent article referred to a finding of plagiarism as "the academic death sentence" [2]). But using sources appropriately means not only staying out of academic trouble; it has a larger and more positive purpose. It's how you seize control of the narrative, how you use your sources to establish your context and make your point rather than let the sources overwhelm and use you. The way you introduce and weave other voices of authority into your narrative will be a key component of your "pitch".
I am a stickler for clear, jargon-free language and a simple, direct style even in presenting the most complex and nuanced material. I may often contradict the rules that your English teachers, professors or employers have set down in the past. For example, I tell students that it's acceptable to use the first person. I say that pompous, academic-sounding gobbledygook prevents you from getting your message across. I encourage students to express their opinions fearlessly when they can base them on strong evidence and reasoning. I insist that bad public health writing has bad public health consequences and urge you to edit yourselves ruthlessly.
We all know how frustrating it is to read brambly thickets of prose, constantly getting stuck on thorny wording, with no light coming in and no discernible path. There's more than enough of that kind of writing out there, and we hope that one of your contributions to public health will be to shed light and clear a path. Whether you're already an accomplished professional but now struggling with a return to school after many years and maybe using English as a second language, or whether you're well-habituated to academic routines but just starting out in the field of public health, the rite of passage embodied in writing for the MPH will undoubtedly involve significant challenges. I hope that the resources and tips included in these pages help to make the passage a fruitful and satisfying one.
Lucy Honig
Writing Specialist for the Department of International Health
References
1. Flower L. Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing. 4th Edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1993:224.
2. Howard RM, Plagiarisms, authorships, and the academic death penalty. College English 1995;57(7):788-806.