So you want to write a term paper?
I’ve been a teaching assistant every year that I’ve been working on my doctoral degree. In that time, I’ve probably read about 300 papers from students in public health. The main requirement of most of those papers is to take a public health problem, or a disease/condition, and write about it with a discussion of how it can be addressed by public health.
Among those 300+ papers, I’ve read some brilliant discussions on stuff that is really relevant. One student wrote a wonderful treatise on why pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is not good enough to contain the HIV pandemic. Indeed, a recent scientific paper points out that there seems to be an increase in drug-resistant HIV because people who go on PrEP don’t stay on it and get infected, then go back on it and then off again. Or people who are receiving antiretroviral treatment (ART) are getting off of it and triggering resistance in the HIV they carry. That paper not only explained the scourge of HIV/AIDS, but she explained what other things need to be done to counter the inevitable drug resistance that would arise.
Of course, among those 300+ papers, I’ve read some doozies. There was this one paper that was written in pure stream of consciousness. It was well cited/researched, but the writing style was like that of a person delivering a speech more than writing a paper. In essence, it was exhausting. By the time I finished reading it, I had forgotten what the main gist of the paper was.
Then there are the really bad papers. There are those papers that have maybe one or two references to them, or ten references (but nine of them are to websites or — gasp! — Wikipedia). They’re the papers that I hate to read because the writer falls into circular arguments about what they’re trying to say. They don’t get anywhere, is what I’m trying to tell you. (See what I did there?)
But the truly horrible papers are the ones that are no more than encyclopedia entries. They’re the papers that students just fill with facts and figures and never really reason through. For example, if I ask you to write a paper about influenza, don’t write this:
“Influenza is a respiratory viral infection caused by the influenza virus. Thousands of people die each year from influenza. There is a vaccine. Influenza is transmitted through droplets. Seasonal epidemics occur in temperate climates. There are pandemics once in a while.”
Those are all verifiable facts. However, you’re not telling me more than the stuff that I can find myself through some Google searches. Instead, I want to read something like this:
“Infection with the influenza virus causes a respiratory disease known as influenza. Influenza is characterized by fever, cough, sore throat, and body aches. In some cases, influenza can become complicated and lead to pneumonia or sepsis. These complications are common in the very young, the very old, or people with pre-existing conditions that lead them susceptible to complications. There are, of course, some people who are otherwise healthy but still become severely ill. During an average year, between 3,000 and 40,000 residents of the United States die due to complications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are several vaccines available against the influenza virus. In the United States, the trivalent and quadrivalent vaccines are used each season to try and halt the spread of the disease, at the very least, or prevent complications from the infection and excess mortality. The trivalent vaccine contains three strains of dead influenza viruses: two Type A and one Type B. The quadrivalent vaccine contains four strains: two Type A and two Type B. Both vaccines are injectable. A live-attenuated virus vaccine is available, but it is not currently recommended for children and people at higher risk of complications.
Because influenza is transmitted through droplets, public health authorities recommend that people practice good hand hygiene. Examples of hand hygiene include, but are not limited to: hand washing after using the bathroom, before eating, before caring for someone (e.g. a small child), after touching surfaces that could be contaminated with droplets (e.g. door handles), and after sneezing or coughing.
In temperate climates, like the majority of the 48 contiguous United States, influenza epidemics occur annually around fall and winter. This is in contrast to tropical regions, where there is less seasonality and influenza may be epidemic at any time during the year. For this reason, the influenza vaccine is administered between August and November each year in the United States. (This timeframe may vary in other countries, depending on their influenza seasonality.)
From time to time, changes in the influenza virus genome are significant enough that there is no acquired immunity in the human population. When this happens, the resulting strain of influenza may spread very quickly around the globe, resulting in a pandemic (a worldwide epidemic). Public health authorities at all levels of government and international organizations must then coordinate in responding to the pandemic. Such responses may include social distancing, enhanced vaccination campaigns (if a vaccine is developed in time), deployment of countermeasures like medical equipment and medication, and enhanced communication to the public in order to inform everyone of proper prevention measures and treatments available to them.
In conclusion, the influenza virus is a significant pathogen in that it shows the ability to return every year and cause a significant number of deaths, not to mention the loss of productivity from people who become ill. Public health authorities perform various tasks to inform the public on how to prevent infection. Or, if a large epidemic or pandemic does occur, these same authorities collaborate with other agencies to counter the effects of influenza at a large scale. Although not perfect, the influenza vaccine remains the best public health intervention against influenza, so it is recommended that everyone receive the vaccine, especially if they are caring or around people who are at high risk for complications from influenza.”
See? Not that difficult… Of course, that was not a whole paper, but you can see where each paragraph could then have one or two more paragraphs with it to support the assertions made. There could also be an additional paragraph or two for a discussion of what more can be done, or what could be done beyond what is already done.
Thoughtful discussion and analysis of the facts and figures is what gets the high grades in graduate school. This is because professors — and us teaching assistants — can see that you are exercising your brain and will one day be a formidable colleague of ours. We know that we can turn to you for advice on what to do about a public health problem… That you wont just blurt out facts and figures as if you’re some sort of a robot.
Then again, from time to time, I’ve encountered professors who don’t seem to care about the papers they’re grading. This is either because they don’t have time to grade the papers, or because they genuinely don’t care. They’re far and few in between, but they’re out there. Even then, I recommend that you give your all to your term paper and come up with something wonderful. You never know if it will get published somewhere. At the very least, you’ll have a product you’ll be proud of and you can share with others.
Just a few more tips:
- Take your time and don’t wait until the last minute to write. Writing is a process that must be done slowly and deliberately. We can tell when you rush through something and end up writing poorly. I recommend going for 300–500 words per day on your paper, and work on that paper for at least three weeks. Yes, there are some people who can write something at the drop of a hat and come up with a quality paper. But chances are that you are not one of those people.
- Don’t get cute. I once had a student write a paper all in iambic pentameter. They were a brilliant student, and they thought that I wasn’t going to read the paper. Well, I did, and I deducted a ton of points for trying to pull that off. (Although, truth be told, I was amazed that they did.)
- Don’t plagiarize, even by accident. One of the big no-no’s in academia is plagiarism, where you take someone else’s work and present it as your own. It’s easy to do this inadvertently, however. In what I wrote above, I might have put in a string or two of several words that others have used. The key is in making an entire sentence your own. If you’re ever unsure, just google the phrase or sentence you’re writing. Chances are, if it is a duplicate of something else, that something else will come up in the search results. Now, if you ever do get in trouble for plagiarism, own it. Don’t fight it. Don’t claim that you didn’t do what you did. You’re probably not going to make a living writing, so it’s not something that will completely derail your career. Owning it allows you to grow as a person and avoid plagiarism in the future, when it counts, when you have a high-paying job that depends on your writing output.
- Finally, seek help if you need it. Academic institutions in the United States have a lot of resources for you to use. There are writing labs and tutors to help you craft your paper and make it flow well and look good. Even the most horrible stream of consciousness papers can be rescued and turned into something good.
Good luck!
René F. Najera, MPH, is an epidemiologist, amateur photographer, running/cycling/swimming enthusiast, father, and “all around great guy” (according to confidential sources with knowledge of the internal workings of his head). You can find him on the campus of the best school of public health in the world, working on his doctoral thesis, or on the streets of the Charmed City, also working on his doctoral thesis.
