Quick Update from Niya

Hi everyone! I'm writing as a short eye-strain break from doing the Powerpoint presentation for my research talk on Friday. It's going to be a tough weekend, trying to finish this presentation and...(drumroll please)...the final draft of my thesis!! I am hoping to file the thesis sometime next week! Please, if you are reading this, cross your fingers for me.

I also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that my blog-name has changed from my initials to Niya, a combination of two of my names. I like it so much better. I'm slowly trying to find a good balance between comfortable anonymity and personal narration! We'll see.

Clinical Clerkships are Coming!!

Today was the day our class found out what we would be doing next year. Clinical clerkships are the hospital rotations that medical students go through in their 3rd and 4th years, before they can take the 2nd boards, apply to residency programs, and hopefully graduate with an MD. At our school, there are five different "tracks" -- three of them are centered around one particular hospital for six months, one of them is very traditional (you rotate every couple of months from department to department at different hospitals), and one is the one I'm in! We stay at the same hospital all year round, we actually get our OWN cohort of 50-70 patients, and we learn all the subjects at once. We still have to take the same exams as everyone else, but the idea is to do a longitudinal experience that's more representative of actual practice.

Last Friday, we all entered a lottery so we could rank these five program in order of preference. And this afternoon, we each got an email telling us where we'd be!

For me, this means I can live at home, rent-free, for the next year. It means I know where I'll be all year. The sacrfices are: I won't have the 'traditional' clerkship experience, and I don't know WHEN I'll be on call -- the students in my track get called over to the hospital at pretty much any time of day or night. If one of your patients goes to the ER, you go to the ER. She has a baby, you go help catch the baby. Etc. But how exciting!! I'm so excited!!

I'm sublimely happy. I'm dancing on air. This is total motivation to study for the B-word that rhymes with swords.

Tidal Wave

I just came back from school. Oh my god, everyone in my class resembles a walking zombie: "Theeesiiiis....Boooarrrrds...OSCEeeee's...arghhhhh" (OSCE = scary clinical skills exams). I don't think any of them are getting enough sleep. I know I'm not. My friendships are on pause, no holiday cards went out this year, and I barely manage to keep my poor cat in kibbles and clean litter.

That said, even though I have work coming out of my ears and I'm working 17-19 hours a day, with maybe two meals and a shower thrown in if I'm lucky, other people still have it much worse than I do. For instance, doing all of this when one of your family members is struggling with cancer (it's happening to someone). Doing all of this when your partner is losing a loved one (also happening to someone). Doing all this while raising a child (will happen to people in the class below me).

So if you ask me how I am, I'll say I'm fine. Not ecstatic, but fine. And not miserable. I've seen worse. But I might not be able to chat for a while, sorry about that :(

Plus, working admissions is pretty fun!

This week:
-- Poster session for which I need to finish the poster & get it printed, like, yesterday
-- Lots of research meetings
-- Homework for class and review stuff I didn't get (oh, yeah, med school)
-- Figure out how to study for boards
-- Sleep enough to function
-- Read up on clinical skills before Tuesday
-- Revise thesis after aforesaid meetings
-- Feed cat. More than once.
-- Replenish contact lenses
-- Get a bunch of stuff done for the Admissions committee
-- Take a shower
-- Buy food, toothpaste, and other basics
-- Talk to awesome fiance
-- Thank big (jk) brother for gift of amazing mulled wine

The First Draft is In!!

Thankfully, the first draft of my thesis is in!!! Now I just have to sort through everything else. But yee haw! Now, maybe if I get a few hours of free time, I can watch a movie to celebrate.

Paraody Therapy

Please, everyone, watch where you put your umbrella. Or, as your mom said, "You could put someone's eye out with that thing!!" It's been raining and storming all week, and I'm a little overworked and underpaid.

Which I deal with by writing parodies. Here is my lastest, fresh from the oven. Don't worry, my data hasn't actually gone anywhere (yet).

It's My Thesis, by AAC

Nobody knows where my data has gone
Microsoft crap strikes again
Why must this happen to me?
Take a deep breath, count to ten...

CHORUS:
It's my thesis and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
Cry if I want to
You would cry too, if it happened to you

All of my classmates seem done with their work
Winning awards right and left
Meanwhile I'm struggling away
Sitting here, feeling bereft

[CHORUS]

I'll turn it in, not a minute to spare
Thrilling when I cut it fine
But, oops! You can't do that here
There's just too much on the line

[CHORUS]

One day they'll ask you what happened to me
Please tell them my tale of woe
For if I don't survive this
It's a tale that they should know...

Tired and Working

Hmm. When I'm both tired and working, as I am tonight, the strangest things occur to me. Like my latest pet peeve. Now, like most people my age, I sometimes order stuff online. But I read the description before I buy it. And under many items, people post reviews saying "Oh, it's so much smaller than I expected!" or, "Nice, but much bigger than what I was going for."

This would be absolutely fine -- if the dimensions weren't posted right underneath the item. In standard units. That we can all measure for ourselves. Unless you're straight up accusing the seller of fraud, which these reviews were not, you are just announcing to the world that you buy things without making sure what you want is what you get. Which means you have more money than common sense.

Hail to Pathetic Fallacy!

It's hailing. Outside. It stormed all night long, and now there is hail hitting the many windowpanes of my second-floor apartment. I really like it -- the whole world outside has gone from gray and blah to stormy, misty, and exciting.

And it's perfect pathetic fallacy, because today is the LAST day I'm giving myself for the first draft of my thesis. By day's end, I will submit what I have, come hell or high water. Or, apparently, hail.

Thank you to the kind folks who are helping me with ideas, edits, and opinions!

Oh, and if you read this, please keep my bro in your thoughts. He has a dislocated shoulder from a sports injury.

Update: Bless my curls, it's SNOWING!!! Or at least, the gently flurrying ice crystals that are as close as we get to snow here. The sun came out, the hail stopped, it's still partially raining, and there are little flurries floating in the air. I bet there's a rainbow somewhere!

Excited. About. Work!!!

OMG, how often can I say that I'm bouncing up and down because I'm so excited about my work?! Well, I am. I just finished the first draft of one of the key tables in my paper, and I'm just so happy! It looks so pretty (it's Arial font size 11 and it all fits on one page)! It holds so many ideas! I'm sure my committee will tear it apart, but right now...I don't care!

Happy. Funny how one good project can make you feel so good...I'm...stuck on a feeling!

On an unrelated note, why is sunblock white? When it dries it makes me look like my skin is flaking off! I'm trying to practice what I'm (supposed to be) preaching, so I'm wearing SPF 15 whenever I'm out in the daylight. I know, I need Vitamin D, but I do consume fortified dairy and I do expose my skin to UV light.

On another unrelated note, I just had a good and quick conversation with my dad. He's such a trooper. He took the trouble to read my paper and comment on it, and call in the middle of his work day, even though everyone knows the financial system is in complete disarray. Go awesome dads! For some reason, talking to my dad makes me miss my brother. Maybe I'll give him a call later today. Da boyz: gotta love 'em.

On Writer's Block...and How to Un-Block ItI

I am overwhelmed with this thesis right now. As everyone warned me, qualitative data is immense, and complex, and not easily whittled down into a normal-sized paper. And I have at least three separate research questions. I probably could do a traditional 30-page research paper, but what I really want is to be able to boil it down to its essence. Call it the positivist scientist in me, or maybe just the pragmatist. People do tend to lose focus after 10 pages!

So here I am, trying to figure out how to move past the panic into a more functional mindset. And I have come upon a discovery that works, I think. Instrumental music. I can't focus on music that's particularly loud or that has lyrics while I work, because it distracts me and I can't think over the thoughts the music is generating. But if I listen to soft instrumental music, it helps. And it unblocks me.

Now I have theory as to why this is. Instrumental music (especially jazz, but also classical, etc) is all about complex patterns. Qualitative research is all about finding patterns that reflect the complexity of your data. So it makes sense that listening to patterns would help align your brain and get it ready for pattern-finding. A lot of analysis and work that I do is pattern finding, so maybe that's why I've always liked working to instrumental music or just silence.

I'm going to go test this theory on myself right now. If you're reading this, good luck with whatever you are working on, too!

Planners and Papers and Meetings, Oh My!

I'm down in LA, staying with B. He started school this week, and so I'm mostly at home during the day, immersed in a world of thesis. Today, I found a paper on PubMed that did exactly what I'm doing -- only at a different site. Phew! I seriously almost choked when I thought I had been scooped. Luckily, so far, so good. But it's a really, really good reason to finish my work efficiently and with attention to detail.

So I'm checking stuff off in my brand-new Moleskine planner, which is International Orange, the same color as the Golden Gate Bridge. I don't usually like orange, but this one just attracted me. I love new planners. This one is amazing. I don't know if I'll ever want another planner. It was worth every single penny.

So anyway, it's Tuesday night (technically Wednesday) and I'm putting the finishing touches on my background paper. Of course, now I have to work this other paper in. I am kicking myself because it was published in 2008. I should have seen it. It's in a journal I read. I came so close to missing it. Yikes.

Which would be my bad because...I've been invited to speak at a conference! It's this spring, it's the premier conference in my field, and they gave me 25 minutes. I'm so excited. I wonder if these almost-scoopers will be at the conference? That would be amazing! They are students in sociology. I wonder if they'll think I'm a complete fraud? I'm using a sociology theory but I only minored in it, and that wasn't the classics. But if they are there it should be fun. We're making a tiny little research field! Yay!!

Now, I just need findings. You know, to present at said conference. I think I've answered my research questions, but I really just need to solidify and read. And come up with a plausible discussion of these findings, complete with a beautiful model.

Sigh.

It's like Murray said in the timeless 1995 film, Clueless: "Just relax and drive, baby. Just relax and drive."