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."

Not a Light and Fluffy Post

The best thing about Christmas was that my brother came out and we went for a short hike down by the cliffs near Pacifica, and it was gorgeous and peaceful and awesome and I got to hang out with my brother. I mean, of course we had some major Christmas drama in our family, but a 3-ring circus would go unnoticed in our household. This post isn't about that.

I was going to write a happy, fluffy post about finding the perfect planner and Mrs. Miniver and how it's worth it to splurge a little bit on a book you look at several times a day and keep all the details of your life in, but this post isn't about that, either.

I could write about how I'm going down to LA tomorrow to see B, and how I'm really excited because I haven't seen him since Thanksgiving, but unfortunately, nope, this post is not about that.

I am scared shitless about a big promise I once made to myself. I don't know if I can keep it.

Once upon a time, I was in high school. I was going through some pretty rough times, and I thought, well, if I can just keep going and make it through this, then maybe one day I'll be a doctor. I had dreams about graduating from UCSF with a diploma in my hand and an actual MD. I had dreams about joining Medecins Sans Frontieres and visiting all sorts of places and seeing patients all over the world. I had dreams of being a community doc, getting to know people and earning their trust and retiring at eighty having delivered half the town. Or lobbying congress to do something about the fact that millions of Americans are told, "We don't give a crap whether you live or die," and that it's largely based on how much money they have in the bank.

It's scary to wake up and realize that you are on the brink of do or die, which, in our third year of medical school, we are. I didn't come this far to fail now. But there are two major hurdles in my way. One is the thesis.

I could write a book on this thesis. It's an MS in Health and Medical Sciences. What does that even mean? But I'm excited about my project. It's a qualitative evaluation involving fifty in-depth interviews. It's interesting. I have lots of cool data. I want it to be perfect. But it can't be perfect. It has to be finished. I have to finish the thing pretty much next week, and that is a lot of pressure. All these voices in my head keep saying, "But I'm not ready! I don't know enough! I haven't done enough! Wait! Give me more time!"

And the dangerous part of this is that I could take more time. There is no deadline for the thesis, not until we start rotations. I could be writing my thesis until the Friday before the boards! Which is a great way to fail the boards. And that is unacceptable. I'm mad at our program because I think they've lulled me into a false sense of security: "Oh, the boards will be fine, don't worry about them." "Everyone passes, who cares?" "You only really need a month to study." And this is from professors. They should know better. I think they're trying to not psych us out, but I feel duped.

Because now that I've been reading up on the boards, here's what I've learned. The boards (or the USMLE Step 1) are an 8-hour-long, knowledge-based, multiple choice exam. You take the test on the computer and choose the answer based on a combination of the information they give you and your prior knowledge. There are often as many as six answer choices. There are even choices that are correct, but just not as correct as other choices! Bottom line, it's a difficult exam.

You need to take the boards, and pass them, before you are allowed to rotate through the hospitals during your last two years of med school. More importantly, residency programs use your boards score to evaluate you, because the second boards aren't finished until after you've applied to residency programs.

And here's the worst (or best) part: If you pass, you can't retake them. You are stuck with that score for life, whether you did your best or not. So from here on out, I have only one thing in mind, and those are the boards.

So why am I scared shitless today? Today, we got our mock board exam scores back. And let's just say I was not amused.

If you are not my thesis or the boards, take a number.

Santa Claus Ain't Comin'...Just Yet

Santa ain't comin' to our house tonight...he has been asked to postpone his mission so that my younger brother A can make it home. We didn't know until yesterday when, or if, A would make it home from his job in NV. And of course there can't be Christmas when A is out there working instead of home with us. Luckily, he is coming! But not till the 26th, so our 25th will be a very quiet day (I'll be re-re-writing a paper).

But tonight is December 24th, after all, so I've been wrapping presents and singing and listening to EWTN, which I find very soothing. In San Francisco, Grace Cathedral has its famous midnight mass. I went a few years ago and the sermon was about suspending disbelief. The Rev. said, "For all the skeptics out there, you think, oh, no way that it's true. Who would believe that? But just for one moment, just think, what if it happened? What if it is true? That would change everything, wouldn't it?"

I was wondering about that. I don't know that it would change much, except that I'd be in purgatory for quite some time trying to figure it all out (hopefully I wouldn't be lost forever).

Because although I don't believe that my Lord and Savior was born as an infant to a virgin who was born free of sin and conceived by the Holy Spirit and delivered without pain, I do think that the Nativity story is a very old and very true lesson about what human beings value and why they value it. Hope, love, new beginnings, sacrifice, being able to cope with what life brings... these things are valued in cultures the world over. Combine that with a warm and steady light, spiritual and physical, burning in the dark months when days are short and nights long, and you have what may be a universal need to celebrate that courageous human spirit that keeps us going during the hardest times of our lives. We have a need to survive.

Speaking of survival (or lack thereof), one present I'm giving this year (not telling who, they haven't opened it yet) is the latest version of the Darwin Awards. For readers unfamiliar with it, the book tells the sometimes tragic and always humorous tales of people who died in ways that were lamentably dumb before they reproduced, thus removing themselves from the gene pool. It serves as a cautionary tale to those of us who do not want to be up for consideration ourselves.

But this is not the point. The point is that St. Nick is probably glad that he has one less house to visit tonight (he's making the rounds as I type). In this day and age, even Santa does not go undetected. The kind elves at NORAD are tracking his flight: http://www.noradsanta.org/en/index.html. He's currently in Hawaii. You can play videos where the NORAD journalists speak briefly about Santa's journey.

I bet my parents wouldn't have been arguing earlier if they had known they could be watching Santa and his reindeer instead. Poor parents. Poor Santa.

But it's Christmas Eve! And in spite of everything, or maybe because of it, it's a terribly beautiful, wonderful world.

The Christmas Uncertainty Principle

Certain pairs of physical properties cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. The more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known.

In our family, the Christmas Uncertainty Principle applies to both brothers and fathers. The more you know about the exact distance from home of said male, the less you know about his ETA. The more certain you become of his ETA, the less you know of his distance from home.

Allow me to illustrate. Currently, my brother and father are in Vegas and Tokyo, respectively. When are they coming home? I have no idea.

However, when each was on a plane over, I knew their arrival time to the nearest five minutes. But I couldn't have told you where they were.

So wags the world away.

Uh-oh. I just woke up. And no, it wasn't a dream.

So it's the middle of December. WHERE THE F&^# HAS MY BRAIN BEEN ALL SEMESTER?!?!

It's like I've been on autopilot for three months academically, while I dealt with a host of personal/emotional/ identity-building stuff, and meanwhile, I thought that my academics would just sit around and wait for me to come back from outer space. But no, it's December. And I didn't dream it: the fall semester is pretty much over (or it will be by Monday).

There is, indeed, an unfinished thesis to finish. Yes, there is that matter of that one tiny, dreadful, 8-hour-long quiz known as the Boards coming up way sooner than I thought. And no, I will never get those three months of my life back. Literally the only thing I remember from the entire semester right now seems to be the snack we ate in class thrice a week. People have been bringing in really nice bread and cheese and chocolate. Especially chocolate. I mean, I'm sure I learned some medicine too, since I did do my final exams without failing them -- but goodness, I have such amnesia right now.

My class celebrated the end of our last fall semester ever at the JMP with a succession of three (3) parties. The first was on Thursday night and was at a professor's house. This professor, who I'll call G because that's what his name starts with, is sort of a music fanatic. He has guitars. He has microphones. He definitely has a piano. Plus enough sheet music to paper the walls of his very large, very nice house. I can't even tell you how therapeutic it was to get there and just belt out every non-obscene song I knew. At times, I didn't even care if I was in tune, I just needed to sing. I had forgotten why I sang in high school. It's cause high school, like medical school, is a very emotional and academically challenging time in your life (especially if you're an idiot and take math-chem-physics higher). And singing gives you that endorphin rush you get when you exercise, without the sweat.

There were maybe four or five of us who sang/played/rocked out until 3 am that night. And, exhausted as I was, I came home feeling all glowy because although I do not claim any great talent, catharsis will do that to you.

The second party was sadder and shorter, as it was a going away party for C. The stupid bay bridge closed at 11 pm, which meant I could only spend a few hours there. But it was nice to have just the third year classmates together to celebrate the end of a mini-era and wish C well for the next stage of her adventure (which I'm pretty sure will turn out to be a fabulous one). She's moving to the East Coast, where there is Real Snow (not the magical but nearly invisible flurries we saw on Monday and Wednesday up at the campus).

Then, Saturday was W&D's housewarming. Again, I stayed out late. Really late. But I met kids from my alma mater, so randomly. A friend of a friend of a friend brought people I actually knew and hadn't seen in about three years to this party! And then one housemate's sister goes to school in the same town (in Southeast Asia!) as my high school. To top it off, my classmates (other than E & C) finally got to meet my brother, who is my physical opposite and a gentle giant. Since they knew all about him from our class meetings, he was totally spooked and later told my mom it was the "weirdest party ever." People kept coming up to him and saying, "Hey A! How's Vegas?" and he was like, "Um. How do you know my name and where I live?!"

So Saturday was good, especially the catching up with old friends.

However: the parties woke me up out of my little cocoony haze. I couldn't believe fall was over. I couldn't believe winter break was around the corner. And I couldn't believe, and still can't, just how much work is coming my way.

Eep.