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."

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.