Strengthening Research Engagements in Dentistry

It has long been held in industry and society at large that breaks in your education and career are huge negatives that must be avoided at all costs. While it is true that long breaks spanning years to decades can definitely have that impact on your hiring potential, well-timed, short breaks can have the opposite effect on your mental health and general well-being. It is important to acknowledge that none of us work in completely sterile, mechanical environments free of the risks and perils brought on by human error and each one of us have different capacities for different tasks that add up to our nature and capability to function in our respective work environments. Identifying the need for short breaks, enforcing boundaries and actually timing them in a manner that helps your team members, and your organization succeed is a skill that remains yet to be recognized. In a society plagued by ever-increasing demands on interpersonal relationships and industrial exploitation of its workin...

When working with a team of specialists, it is important to remember that different people have different opinions that stem from the fact that we belong to different environments and have different experiences to draw knowledge/wisdom from. Managing each team member as an individual entity and considering them integral units of a collective organization is easier said than done. While we would all have an easier time if we were all like-minded, ongoing discussions and friendly debates on these very differences lay the foundation for continued growth. However, the key take-aways are "ongoing" and "friendly". In every organization, discord amongst employees is unavoidable; but how these discords are managed is vital to how the organization functions in the long run. It forms the basis of a company's work culture. Avoid culture shocks by finding work in organizations/companies that match your cultural expectations in the workplace.

There really is no shortage of work anywhere. Even when we scurry around trying to find the right job to fit into, the reality is that what we're trying to attain is not just "A JOB", but "THE JOB". Take away all pretenses of our preferences and their requirements, and there really is no shortage of work anywhere. Even our chores qualify as "work" that needs to get done, don't they? Reading an article or a piece of paper is "work" too. They qualify as work because they take time to accomplish; time that will never return to us. So really, preferences and requirements are never actually about work, they're about our time, and an appropriate compensation in lieu of something so valuable and non-renewable. CHOOSE WISELY.

All of us aim to succeed in the tasks we set out to perform, but it is important to note that different people define success differently. For some it is simply being able to complete an activity/task, while others measure it in terms of time, energy and/or resources spent in an effort to complete said activity/task.   In any scenario, we often come to think of the presence of delays and setbacks as a hallmark feature of failure, which we are taught to avoid at any cost. This indoctrination comes in various forms and in all walks of our lives.   What I have come to understand, however, is that can choose our response to any setback.   When we remove the concept of failure, replacing it with setbacks along the long road leading to success, each setback becomes a defining moment in our endeavor towards success. Resolution of each obstacle now becomes a milestone for new developments, change in perspective and learning.   There is no failure, only th...