Yesterday I Defended My Master's Thesis

Mum and Matt were there, Mum's spending October in LA with her mum, and took the train down to attend. I presented the essential points of my project in about 30 minutes, with a 21 slide powerpoint, to two infectious disease physicians, a nursing professor, and a statistics professor. My cheering squad of two were the only other people in the room without the title "Dr.". I felt like I was babbling somewhat, but the committee and my family all said I presented very well. Good to know Mrs Heath's standard grade English class, and the Edinburgh Academy public speaking club paid off.

After the presentation and "public" discussion, the committee asked us to leave the room. Mum & Matt went for a coffee, I waited in the hallway to be called back in. After about 15 minutes my chair called me back in, and I was told it's very close to done, I need to expand a few sections and make a detailed table of studies on C. difficile and acid suppression. (That's the topic of my thesis). My chair also mentioned she'd like me to present to her infectious disease class, and I'm going to present the data at the hospital where the study is based. We (my on-site advisor and the team at the hospital) are putting together a paper based on this analysis and will be submitting it for publication. If it gets through it will be my first first-authorship on a paper.

Today I am doing no work. I put Mum on a train to LA, bought myself a couple of scented candles, and had a delicious sandwich, and now I'm catching up on free on-demand tv shows. Yay for Castle!

Tomorrow I begin with the revisions. I want to get this sucker finished and submitted so I can really celebrate.

That sound made by deadlines as they fly past

Summer has been and gone (officially, though it's still 80'F and sunny here) and I am getting closer to finished with the interminable thesis, though it does seem to keep expanding and needing more bits added no matter how much I write. Which is not enough most days. Chapters 1-4 are largely done, I have some feedback on them to go through. Chapter 5, the discussion, has bits done and bits missing. I sent the existing bits off for feedback so I could pat myself on the back for sending something.

My internship has finished up, so I am currently an unemployed graduate student. I've applied for three different federal jobs suitable for my post-graduate self, civil service hiring processes are very slow so it's worth getting in applications even though I'm not done yet.

In other news, Matt and I started visiting the local Unitarian Universalist fellowship. I have never been part of a church community except for the obligatory Presbyterian leanings of my schooling. A couple of the songs sung in fellowship meeting are actually songs I learned in assembly in primary school, but it's otherwise a quite different experience. The symbols above the lectern are multi-faith and secular humanist/atheist folks (with an interest in pagan traditions) like myself are welcome. As are pagan/atheist folks like Matt. The community is very welcoming, and there is a focus on volunteerism and "helping hands". I'm going to track down someone involved in the knitting ministry to see what type of things they knit for charity, and we both spent some time this past Sunday chatting with members of the small "earth-based spirituality" group. Most of them are Wiccan, and there was a marvelous moment when Matt pointed out the pentacle dream-catcher tattoo on his calf, and three other people pulled out pentacle necklaces or finger-rings and one of the three simply said "welcome!".

April: a SNAFU is better than a FUBAR

SNAFU: Situation Normal - All F* Up

FUBAR: F* Up Beyond Any Repair

I think my anxiety reached a head in April. I had a lingering migraine, complete with aches all over my body, for the first two weeks! I met with my stats prof, and wrote another missing section, handed the latest version over to my adviser to read on her trip to Tanzania (she is a jet-set HIV prevention doctor), evenings were spent napping and nursing the headache.

When I started to feel better I engaged in a bit of displacement activity: I unclogged the slow bathroom drains, ran de-scale stuff through the dishwasher and cleaned the oven. My gods, the oven. I did a second round of cleaner foam stuff on the the bottom the first round couldn’t get it all off.

Thesis Chair kept saying “simplify it, drop some variables, don’t try to do it all!”, and the Principal Investigator kept saying “you should include this, and this and THIS, and are you addressing this other thing?”. Then it turned out I was offtrack with my specific research question, a classic case of my committee of four, and me all thinking we know what’s going on, and are on the same page…but we weren’t. The bottom line is that the chair wants me to get a thesis together so I can defend and be done, the investigator wants it to be as close to a publishable paper as possible so that it’s more useful to her. My intention is to keep in touch with the investigator after I'm done and help her produce a paper or two out of this dataset anyway, it will be good to get my name on a paper or two from this project.

Thesis Chair was surprised I didn’t freak out, hopefully that’s a compliment. Most of what I have written is still good and useful, and the committee is going to work with me to try to get me done asap, but I will have to re-do the analysis with the new question. I met with the Principal Investigator (Dr in charge of the project at the hospital) to go over the database and consult on a better research question.

The new analysis already looks a lot better, and I'm plugging along. Analysis is the fun part actually, after some hair-tearing getting my database migrated onto the analysis computer. I actually resorted to calling Mr Riveter in to pat my shoulder and talk me through troubleshooting the data migration, I kept getting the same error message over and over and over…

The commencement ceremony is on May 21st, my parents fly in on the 20th. I can participate in the ceremony because I applied to graduate this semester, you don't have to be completely wrapped up to participate, since they have the ceremonies right at the end of term, rather than after all the results are in and processed like for my BSc.

Eeek/Wooo

Not dead, also not done yet. One page (two headings, ~300 words or so) of literature review left to go, revise the methods, meet with statistician on my committee to see if the plan I have for analysis is acceptable. Do analysis, report results...write discussion. Eeeek!

Matt is rapidly approaching the finish line, April 5th he will be done with his BS classes. Wooo!

Even Faeries get moles

In three weeks I turn 30, 21 days left of my 20's. I'm rather excited to be honest, I think the 30's will be good years. I also know that the only alternative to aging is not desirable at all.

I think I am most shocked to realize that 10 years ago today I was an exchange student at the University of California, San Diego. I had not yet changed apartments to get a single room, so I had not yet met a lot of the people I became good friends with in the last 12 weeks of my exchange year. Ten years ago today I was also in the final healing stages of my first tattoo: a crescent moon with roses on my left hip bone. My tattoo is almost old enough to be out of primary school! This faerie is my other tattoo, I got her/it on my lower right back in January 2001, so she's only 9.

I've had a love/indifference relationship with the faerie tattoo. I had carried the pencil sketch for this design in my planner since I was 15, but not long after getting it I discovered a variety of faerie art that impressed me even more, and having it on my back meant I didn't get to admire the artist's work every day like I have with the crescent moon. There is also an unfortunate cult of Tinkerbell fans, women who enjoy the bitchy princess spoilt brat persona, and adopt Tink as their mascot. As I grew up with peter pan, the flower fairies, and mythology involving the wee folk/sidhe, my impression of the Fae is that they are forces of nature, neither kind nor cruel, a symbol of the harsh beauty of nature. Definitely not a squeaky little female sprite who stomps her feet all the time and obsesses over human boys. I've been toying with the idea of expanding her wings, darkening the green, giving her an owl or a raven as a companion, or even choosing a slightly larger design and having her covered over by an acanthus leaf or a William Morris style peacock.

Matt took a closeup photo of the ink work so that I could study it, and decide what I wanted to do, but while cropping it and brightening it up a bit on photoshop I noticed something not part of the original design. An oval mole on her right upper wing (left as we look at her). Of course it's not on her wing, it's on my back, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't there when I got inked. Especially since the outline of her wing is broken at that point.

With my history that means time for a biopsy. I only just had a screening with my dermatologist, but the tattoo does disguise the mole, and she relies heavily on me spotting any changes. I'm waiting to hear back on a biopsy she took from my leg, a tiny but very dark mole we decided to investigate, but I think I'm going to call and make another appointment to show her this offender as soon as possible. I'm sitting here wanting to tear it off myself!

Of course there is a certain amount of self blame for getting tattooed at all, though who knows if I'd have spotted a new pointy mole back there at all if I wasn't studying a photo of my own back for planning purposes. I'm really done with the constant vigilance thing, though I know I don't get to choose, I have to keep an eye out for skin changes for the rest of my life.

Besides all this, I need to submit review board approval of my thesis project, get my Master's committee officially listed (I've got them lined up, but they're not on file), and apply for graduation. Instead I'm scanning through a few years of photos to see if my lower back shows up in any of them, in case I can find an earlier comparison.

Brain Dump

I have been busy, and doing considerably better with depression symptoms than I was by the end of August (I got burned out & overwhelmed, went to doc, decided to go back up from half to full dose of antidepressant, found a cognitive behavioural therapist near home, started getting better).

New job - not so new any more - I am settling into a routine, and working on two projects. I am trying to establish myself as generally useful, and specifically the resident neuroscience person, since everyone there is more experienced in epidemiology than I, my angle is being "Brain Girl". I have (mostly) been having fun branching out into a more professional work wardrobe, the discovery of getting dress trousers a size big, then getting the waist taken in has provided me with a few pairs of pinstripe wide legged pants that make me feel like Katharine Hepburn when I wear them. Or her more buxom cousin at any rate. I'm still working on wearing "grownup" shoes. I'd rather wear smarter clothes and stick with clunkier comfortable shoes than go the route favoured by my female coworkers of more casual dags dressed up with heels. Can't run from zombies in heels.

University is chugging along, I am having a hard time finding the time/brain space to put significant hours in on my thesis. I don't know how I did 9+ units and full time work when I started this program, but that head of steam has decidedly run out! My main focus in counseling (besides taking adequate care of myself) is time management, since most of my stress comes from the balancing act.

Time to go, dinner is served!

Can't talk, deadline will eat me.

Last session of class is tomorrow, revised drafts of Intro, Literature Review, and Methods chapters are due, along with a brief presentation on my project. Then I will be done. For two weeks. Then Fall semester begins.

I'm definitely having trouble concentrating, I'm feeling somewhat burned out, and seriously considering dropping my "extra" class next term. I've gone through the whole program planning my schedule on " I can take it!" principles, and I think it is time to give myself some slack. If taking a challenging work-heavy statistics class, working 20 hours in a my new field, and FINISHING MY THESIS can be considered slack that is. Now that I put it that way it definitely makes sense to skip the additional statistics class. Both the classes I'm signed up for have a reputation for being coursework intensive, and I have learned that can mean "twice as much homework as you'd expect from a three unit class".

Enough procrastination. Back to my second draft.

Sometime in June

I am back from my trip. This time last week I was in a jet-lagged haze, falling asleep in the car while Matt fetched Persian food. I landed at about 10.30pm Saturday, so with taxi-ing, finding my bags, and Matt realizing I was flying Delta, not United (so he was at the wrong terminal), it was Midnight before we were home. I should note that Matt's trip to the wrong terminal did not cause delay, my bags were at the bottom of the heap this time, I got the second one and looked up to see him walking towards me.

Now, a week later, I have not quite finished unpacking, but I have started the class that will walk me through the first stages of writing my thesis, spent an hour drilling with zils (finger cymbols) in Bonnie's ATS Belly Dance class, begun an internship at Navy Health Research Center (met lots of people, spent a whole day doing online safety training), and... Given notice at the lab at UCSD.

The last was in the plans only since the week before I went on holiday. Once I lined up the internship and had found they were happy to take me for the summer, but would be even happier to take me full time in the summer and continuing part time after classes restarted it was sort of a no-brainer. I have been concerned that my job prospects after graduation might suffer from only having the required 180 hours of field work, when many fellow MPH students are currently working in public health. I will miss the lab, the group I've been working with is a nice lot, smart and competent, and we have a lot of fun. I hope that I won't be losing touch, I feel like I'm going to be leaving with a bunch of good friends.

Look for me sometime in June

I backed into a car in the parking lot yesterday. In Matt's car. Yay. Granted, the other car was following RIGHT UP CLOSE behind me, invisible to all mirrors, I'm just hoping our insurance rates don't go up too much.

Exam this afternoon. Two presentations a week from today (one written, one...not), a four-page take home statistics final due in two weeks, and a tricksy methodology exam happening in two weeks. Plus preparing tables on thesis data for Pharmacy residents, lining up field work for the summer, working my job, and I think I'm supposed to locate a thesis committee by the end of the month.

Send reinforcements. Preferably with coffee and nutritious brain foods. I have plenty chocolate already.

Ahpree orry

I did not intend to hiate for that long. I have been rather busy, I reduced my work hours, but then added a thesis project to the mix, so I'm almost back to where I started, but generally feeling a bit more productive, and I'm definitely enjoying having graduate school be assigned proper slots of my time, rather than squeezing it in around a 40-hour work week.

Isabelle participated in an interview meme, and kindly formulated five questions to respond to here. I am thinking about what to say, and look forward to answering them, but I haven't got around to writing anything yet. Academic work, visiting parental units, and trying to spend time with Matt before his break from school was up definitely cut into blogging time. He and I just spent a large chunk of the day going over last year's spending, and actually drew up a budget. This is a first for us, we live within our means, but haven't been saving as much as we like, which means that spending has to be strategically pruned. Especially since I am earning half what I did last year. My poor February paycheck looked very skinny and underfed indeed, being the first full month of 50% time.

The new weekly schedule allows me to make it to Tuesday and Thursday morning yoga classes at 9, before going to statistics class. Bliss! Luxury! I've only managed one of the two sessions each week so far. Next goal is to make both, then add the preceding 8am "body sculpt".

The title: this is how my American Epidemiological comrades pronounce the term "a priori", which I expect to come out as AY-pri-OH-ri. It comes up a lot in statistics classes, and it took me a while to figure out what this apri-orry thing was. Apricot ornery? Apres orrery?

In brief

I have succumbed to Twitter. See sidebar.

Our cable company seems to be confused about which channels we get. Tonight we are watching BBC America. Tomorrow we might not be able to get it.

I am SO GLAD I reduced my hours at work.

Matt will be finished with his BS degree classes this time next year.

Tali is in my lap. I think he is drooling on my arm.

Drumroll...

My husband just mailed an acceptance letter for a new Systems Analyst job at a small local military contracting company. He had another interview in September, during the evil on-call week, but that job feel through, and he ended up hearing about this one through a former colleague. Also during an evil on-call week, which just ended on Monday. The new job involves some travel, mostly short trips, but no pager duty. No on call, and no weekend duties. This is a very nice way to head into a long weekend holiday to wine country!

Also, I can graduate 6 months sooner than I have been planning, IF I go full time 6 months sooner, and think up a thesis subject lickety split. I want to do it, it would be great to knock a whole semester off. I'd be defending this time next year, and finishing in December '09. Crikey.

How I learned to stop worrying and love to plan

Four weeks in and the cracks are starting to show. My back aches, my hips hurt, my shoulder is stiff, I had a migraine on and off all week last week, I'm irritable, stressed out, and having trouble concentrating on reading, homework, anything at all. I left my gym bag at the gym this afternoon.

I have not done any real exercise since I started classes in January, then I had a week of zoning out in front of the TV instead of getting to bed on time (by 10 - not too hard to achieve), Thursday I was off work because I woke up at 6.30 with a migraine, Friday I went in to work, but took it easy and left early. This weekend my parents have been visiting with us and I have taken it easy, no homework, taking full advantage of the unexpected two week extension on the larger assignment I currently have on the go. This afternoon we all (Matt, my parents ant I) went for a swim at our gym in Mission Beach and I got thinking that I need to make myself a schedule, and schedule in a workout class, or swim time, because this graduate school and work thing is starting to kick my ass, and I need, absolutely need, to be exercising to maintain my sanity and health.

So I have futzed about with iCal and, after blocking out my classes and work hours, blocked out the Tues/Thurs pilates session at my gym as totally doable. As long as I get to bed consistently and get my ass out of bed 8 hours later. You know what? I managed to get myself into a graduate program, I think it would be a little ridiculous if getting to bed, getting OUT of bed, and making it to a pilates class I've already paid for proved too complex for my abilities.

I have my little schedule printed out now. It includes approx drive times, 8 hour work days, class times, and the pilates classes. It's just like when I was in school. "High school" I mean, my homework diary in my pocket with the weekly schedule on the back, constantly consulted to tell my where my brain needed to go next...

Next, my brain needs to go back to the living room and hang out with my family. They just started talking about Dr Strangelove, I have to join in!

Copies of what?

The university enrollments office wants me to stop by with my A-Level certificates, since they need to see the originals and keep copies. Sure, I keep 9 year old high school exam result certificates handy at all times.

I am saved by my Mum, who was able to put her hand on the certificates inside about 5 minutes (a rare feat of finding in their house, usually once something is lost it's lost to a black hole only to reappear 15 years later when you are looking for something else entirely). Even better, the office is fine with faxed copies for now, as long as I bring by the originals for inspection once they get to me. It's beyond me why they need documentation of high school exam results, though I suppose it's something about the US equivalent "AP" classes, counting for university credit.

This morning I went on a bit of a rampage after putting up a shelf in the kitchen, I scrubbed the kitchen floor, cabinet fronts and all the doors and door frames in the flat. This may have something to do with wanting to nest before my family comes to visit for Christmas. Can't have grimy door jambs!

Slightly less active waiting

My application materials for the Master's program are now completely submitted. After applying online on October 4th, then sending in my essay on the 22nd, which was also the second day of the big fires and the beginning of a week when all the universities and some of the postal service were shut down for the duration, I found out in the last week of October that my home university had not yet sent the transcript of my BSc degree. Considering that the transcript serves as proof of possession of a bachelor's degree, and that the final application deadline was Nov 1st...I was a bit freaked out by this news. The transcript was "missing some information from the department", and the department had been contacted, but had not responded. For two weeks. There followed a few emails back and forth with the registrar's office in London (each with a one-day turnaround because of the time difference), some fingernail biting on my part, several slightly frantic calls to San Diego State to find out if they could at least LOOK at my application while waiting for the transcript to arrive, a short break to gnaw on the furniture in frustration and, finally, (after my mother offered to go to London and beat on the office doors herself) one phone call to my former department in London before it was fixed. Transcript mailed on November 1st, I am told the post mark is the important thing for the deadline, so I was under that wire by the smallest amount possible. I get the distinct impression the registrar's office never thought it important enough to phone for the missing information, just fired an email off into the ether. Once I called my department it was all fixed inside two days.

The day the transcript was mailed I found out that not all of my reference letters had arrived, but nobody could tell me which of the three was missing. The person in charge of those files was on holiday and "nobody else has access". Those tooth marks on the arm of the sofa? No, not Marble, too big, not fangy enough, those were made by an anxious female Homo sapiens sapiens wannabe graduate student. I was about to ask all three referees to re-send when I received a form letter telling me which reference was missing. I called my previous boss and she not only FedExed another copy of the reference, she faxed it and called the admissions office to tell them it was being re-sent. That type of overkill made me want to FedEx her cookies in return.

This morning my online application status page told me that my transcript arrived. Just when I was starting to think about lost-in-the-mail scenarios. The woman in charge of admissions returns next week, she of the magical one-woman access to the files. I don't know when I can reasonably expect to hear if I have been accepted or not, the session starts at the end of January next year, so it can't be that long before they send out acceptance letters...unless they like to keep things exciting and only notify students mere days before their graduate program begins. Which would fit with the way things have been going. So now I wait. At least now I am no longer waiting while expending my limited psychic powers willing strangers in offices in London to get off their arses and produce paperwork for me.

I hear massive cat battles going on in the living room, it must be dinner time for the felines. Tali has taken to chasing Marble about when he's hungry, she growls and makes a lot of noise when he does it, so it gets my attention. Little brat boy. He tried to run off with a half-knitted sock earlier this evening. He looked very cute hopping off the sofa with it in his mouth, needles and all, but I had to scold him, I don't want him thinking it's ok to nick my knitting.

GRE-AT!

Tah-dah!

Combined score 1390 (690 verbal, 700 quant)! The average score of people accepted to my Masters program of choice is 1100. HOORAY! Now I can start in my new lab without worrying about studying, all I have to do is write my personal statement and gather references and transcripts (which is still quite a lot), I might even be able to get my application in sometime in August.

unlucky/lucky

Today turned into one of those everything-going-just-a-little-wrong days, lots of tiny annoyances and inconveniences piling up, till I finally said "enough, I am going to get groceries, which will include a beer each for me and Matt, and the crapness will stop". It did too, though trying to buy gas on the way to Trader Joes was a comedy of errors in it's own right: pumps all full but one, much maneuvering to get lined up by it, only to find it's broken, then much further maneuvering to get in line for a different pump.

When I got back, the news was full of cutesy stuff that people are doing because tomorrow is 07-07-07, lots of weddings, people scheduling cesarean sections to pick their baby's birthday (um...shouldn't that be dictated by health reasons, not cuteness?)and I realized that I've scheduled to sit the GRE on The Luckiest Day Of The Decade [TM]. Sweet!

I think that my past week of cramming and mathematics practice will probably make a bigger difference than the accidental alignment of a bunch of sevens on the calendar. I've gone from getting only 15-20% of the maths right, with about 5 questions unanswered, to getting 80-plus% correct, and managing to answer them all, though with little time to spare. I am going to do more of the practice maths sections on my studying software this evening. Exam is at 8.30am, which means hopping on a trolley to the test center at about 7.30. I just hope that the real thing is quite similar to all the practice questions I've been doing!

Done for

The final exam of my epidemiology class was on Monday, I think it went well; though the article review assignment dragged my A- down to a B, the final might boost it back up to the land of A. Everybody did poorly in the article review. The online grades posting tells me my scores, and the averages for the class, and I'm above average on all but one assignment, though not spectacularly above average. Either way, it's DONE, I have made it through my first university class since 2001, next stop GRE review and writing the personal statement for my application.

Meanwhile, on the job front, I think I can now clarify the to-and-fro I've been hinting at for months, which will probably also help explain the DEF CON 4 stress levels over the past year. My supervisor/boss is relocating to a university in Philadelphia, where she will get her own lab space and extra money for grad students and staff members like me. I was offered a position there, but neither Matt nor I want to move this year. Oddly, Philly is on my list of potential cities to live in for the future, but I was thinking 10+ years kind of future, like after grad school, with a kid or two, wanting a house with a yard and to be close to the in-laws. So, I had to figure out what to do to keep me in cat food and hand-dyed yarn in the interim. The university I work for is pretty good about finding positions for staff members left without a lab group, but there are a lot of research groups here, and I was concerned I wouldn't be able to find one that worked on stuff that interested me, or, worse, that I'd end up stuck in a group with unpleasant interpersonal dynamics. Scientists can be a bit of a mixed bag, and NONE of us get people-management training, not even the supervisors. I lucked out, I will be working with a bunch of very bright and straightforward people, the whole group is very low on drama, as the two professors in charge of it wouldn't stand for interpersonal nonsense and ego wars. They know about my plans to pursue an MPH, and will be supportive of my taking classes, which is essential as some of the MPH classes are in the middle of the day, so creative rescheduling will be required.

My current group wraps up the very last week of June, so we're in the last few weeks of experiments, focusing on finishing up a couple of projects before my boss and the grad student head off to Philly and start setting up there. It is hectic. I'm making a lot of to-do lists so that I don't miss anything I have to do each day. It's especially hectic because I'm taking this Friday off, and the next Friday, for a group trip to Idyllwild, and then May War in Potrero, the only condition for me being able to take this time off is that I have to get 5 days work done in 4 each week so my absence doesn't set us back. Whew.

So far the antidepressants seem to be a big force for good. The first week, on a half dose, I had a pretty bad sore throat, but that went away as soon as I went up to the full dose. I have been calmer, I have so much more mental and physical energy, and no nausea or crazy appetite stuff like the other AD I was on in 2001. I have still gotten stressed out periodically, but it's just so much less than before, and it's been a stressful couple of weeks, so it would be odd if I hadn't got upset at any point. Plus, I recovered fast from each upset. I think this is going to work out that they do just what I want them to do: take the edge off and enable me to take actions that will help my mental well being naturally, actions I was struggling to even begin because I was struggling to overcome the depression and anxiety in the first place. It's harder to take good care of yourself when you really don't see the point. It's harder to concentrate at work and do a good job when you're convinced it'll all fail anyway.

Speaking of work, I think my 40 little samples of homogenized brain have now thawed, so it's time for me to start doing my thing.

Classic Taupe

I did well on my midterm: 94 out of 100, I can definitely live with that. I think it's interesting that the questions a lot of people would have treated as "gimme" points, I skipped over because I focused more on memorizing the scientific terms than the acronyms for various medical associations and sources of information. Largely because the scientific terms are more interesting, therefore easier for me to remember. I think I should get extra bonus points for choosing the harder ones in the sections where we got to pick which bits we answered. (Of course I think that, I want a good grade, I want extra credit just for being fabulous. And British, definitely extra credit for being British).

Since I was cramming for my exam, the newly laminated floor of the back room has remained unfinished around the edges, sporting little edges of plastic sheeting and blue masking tape instead of an attractive skirting board. We made up for that this weekend by not only installing skirting board, but painting the room first. Mental note: next time paint BEFORE installing lovely new floor. Though we were lucky, we only got a few tiny spatters, which clean up easily when it's latex paint on laminate. For the painting Matt and I both wore coveralls from his days in the Navy. The ones he wore most days to work on the ships. We were very cute in our matching blue jumpsuits with the name on one side of the chest, and U.S. NAVY on the other. Next time we paint we'll have to get photos of the coveralls.

The room looks lovely now, it had been kind of sad with it's uninspiring carpet and dinged up walls with furniture smudges marking up the cheap white paint that came with the place. Now it is classic taupe with red cherry floor and the skirting boards are the same laminate colour as the floor. Hopefully this will inspire us to treat it as a real room, not just the storage shed with the computers in it. Next big project we are saving up for will be the same laminate floors in our bedroom, which is bigger, but a simpler shape, so hopefully will feel easier to do.

Matt is in NorCal on a business trip from today until Friday evening. With luck he'll make it in to San Francisco for dinner at least one evening, I wish that I could have gone up with him and made a little vacation of it, I love San Francisco. It's definitely a long weekend trip I want to do with him sometime.

SPROING!

That is the sound of Spring. It has Sprung. I now have a waltz going around in my head that I learned as part of the School For Girls choir, it's a good waltz, so it's OK. Though I always thought the bit about the violets blooming was inaccurate because there never were a lot of violets around, crocuses and daffodils and a few early flaming parrot tulips. No violets.

Living here I feel as though we go straight into summer, the bright hot sun, with a breeze that varies between a little warm and perfectly cool. I really wish my lab had windows so I could enjoy watching the weather go by.

This coming Monday I have my first exam since early 2001, which was my ill-fated finals in London. This midterm is based on an 18 page terms list with definitions of words related to epidemiology. Some of the definitions are actually contradictory to the text book, a lot of them are inelegantly worded, but I have been told "stick to the version in the list, even if the book says otherwise". I am torn: I don't know if I'm more worried about being able to learn it all by then, or about being marked down for an "incorrect" answer because I find it easier to memorize paraphrased definitions that make more sense to me.

I suppose this is the part of "school" that I find the hardest. Not the learning and understanding of new stuff, it's the flaming hoops of nonsense you have to jump through, the atrociously written homework assignment it takes longer to decipher than to actually answer, and the terms list that someone pulled out of their ass and then didn't even bother to proof read before flinging it at us. Um. Sorry. That was a little disgusting.

I know I will have to deal with more of this, and I know that if I do go through this program, THEN get into the Epi Doctoral program, and end up teaching this class, I will want to rewrite the terms list, and maybe I'll be told it's not allowed, and maybe I won't possibly have the time to, but I really wish academic success were based more on learning and intelligence than on the ability to parrot back a definition exactly as written, even if parroting their exact wording may detract from real understanding of the term or concept.