Stay discovered

One of the professors in my program forwarded this blog post to us after having had a discussion about intellectual property and publications. It's a pretty cool take on a pretty undiscussed topic...in essence that the people who discover things weren't really the first people to think of it...but they were the first to 'keep it discovered'. And they are often the first ones to take a bunch of thoughts other people may have had but make connections that other people may have not. Good stuff for recognizing your worth but not going overboard with it :)

I also love that a professor in Occupational Therapy talking with students in Health Services suggested a blog on Entrepreneurship...this is the beauty of an interdisciplinary degree people!

So as not to take credit where credit is not due, full blog is here:
andrewhargadon.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/ideas-are-cheap.html

Zzzzzzzzz

My posting history is tragic and the year is barely started...apparently PhD students don't have blogs.  Either that or they don't have jobs.  I barely have the energy to type but I feel obligated to at least let everyone know that I am in fact still alive.  I finally went to my blog list and started reading the blogs I used to follow all the time and realized that it's been since...wait for it...November since I read any of them.  Which then made me realize it's been quite some time since I posted my own.  So, here are a few of the highlights and lowlights from the past month...



- my grandfather died

- all my cousins and aunts and uncles had a beautiful celebration of his life

- I'm loving the job

- in a very scary way I'm loving statistics...I know, clearly I need mental health assistance

- it just took me an hour to organize my list of things to do...that is NEVER a good sign

- I've eaten my weight in s'mores and ice cream as rewards for just getting through some days

- I've drank my weight times 8 in coffee as rewards for just getting out of bed



A few facts I've learned in the past month...

- the word occupation in occupational therapy means the things that 'occupy' your time...it makes so much more sense now.  By the way OTs are kinda amazing I figured out in the process of learning about them.

- reviewing 9233 articles to find the ones that relate to my literature review can actually be just one of the to-do items on a list of 20 things to do this week...tragic

- it seems as though literature reviews may be a pretty standard 'oh, I need to do a literature review real quick' thing in my life for the next 4 years...and beyond

- you can in fact listen to the same Jesus Culture DVD over and over again every night while you study and it never get old

- Words with Friends and Scramble are spectacular ways to take a mental break from studying...again, the fact my 'break' is a word game likely lines me up for the mental health assistance

- Emoticons are very addictive...if you do not know what this is get yourself an iPhone and download them, I'm in love (I would insert an emoticon with hearts in it's eyes here if this was a text)



So...happy random Thursday.  I'm giving up on accomplishing anything else tonight and instead I'm going to head to bed.

Belated Thankfulness

A few days ago in a devotional I am reading the author asked 'What opportunities have you been given recently to profess the goodness and faithfulness of God?'  As I thought about the question I realized I had a huge situation to profess the goodness and faithfulness of God but was so busy I never even mentioned it...which is generally the way God's goodness and faithfulness gets missed by the way.  So here it is...I just finished my first semester of a PhD program and although I had only one mortgage payment of savings going into it and no paycheck, my bills have been paid, I am not in credit card debt and I never once begged for food or gas.

Even just typing it, I can tell it's tough to explain just how amazing this really is.  As of August 10th I had no job, school started in 15 days, I had a prospect of a job but the process of actually getting it was going to take a while, and financial aid hadn't arrived yet.  When it did arrive it would have paid my tuition and given me about $500 to support myself for 4 months.  First I got an e-mail from my program director that I had been given a scholarship to help cover my tuition for the first 2 semesters.  That allowed financial aid to actually go to living expenses.  But the job situation still didn't move faster.  I was offered a contracting position to help write a strategic plan which would provide a few hours of work each week.  But even adding that to my work at church I wasn't going to be brining in enough to pay the mortgage each month.  Then it gets good.  I won my very first poster presentation at a medical conference which gave me a cash reward.  A friend asked me to give a presentation to one of her classes and had money from the school to pay me.  Three random refunds that I had been waiting on came through right when bills were due.  I found out that the little bit of money I had put in a Roth IRA 5 years ago could be used for school expenses.  Brandy moved in which meant that once she started getting paychecks we would be splitting expenses.  And then last week I won a random drawing at school and got a Visa card.  I mean honestly, that is random people.

So, perhaps this is not the funniest or most engaging story ever, but it is life, and it's proof positive that God knows what's happening whether it seems like it or not.  One of the things that is most amazing is rather than God just providing a big lump of money that made it so I didn't have to worry about it again, He just made money come in when it needed to be there.  My bank account balance spent most of the past 4 months in the 10s, sometimes in the 100s, but it never went negative.  $100 here, $50 there just in time to pay what needed to be paid.  I don't think I would have realized how amazing or been aware God was watching over me if He had just made a lump of money available.  And so, rather than ignoring it or saying a cursory thank you and moving on, I decided to give a verbal (well written) testimony of God's goodness and faithfulness.  I hope it encourages someone to trust that God's got your back even if you don't see how He can possibly pull it off.  Believe me, when I add up the numbers it still doesn't make sense, but it's December, my bills are paid, I have money to buy food and fill up my car with gas and I'm starting my new job on Monday just in time to get a paycheck to pay the mortgage next month.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good and his steadfast love endures forever. (Psalm 107:1)

The Journal Stacks

Today I was searching for articles for 3 projects I need to do in the next few weeks.  It's very handy if you search from on campus because the websites with journal access will automatically recognize you and allow you to download the papers as a PDF.  Occasionally you will find a paper that is in some random journal that the library doesn't have and that doesn't have online access and you need to request an interlibrary loan, which generally means I'll find a new paper, because I'm lazy like that.  But, for one topic I was looking at there really weren't all that many interesting papers and I have to read WAY too many journal articles to read non-interesting ones on purpose.  So, I went ahead and clicked the 'Find it at MUSC' link...which I found out was in actuality for this one how to find it in the physical bound journals on the shelves upstairs.  WHAT?  You want me to get up from the computer and FIND this thing!?  What century is this!?  But I felt like a bum if the only reason I didn't read an article was because I had to do some legwork.  So, up I went, with my copy card loaded with money that was given to us at the beginning of the semester (when I was SURE I would never need it).  I arrived in the journal region and stopped dead in my tracks as I saw something along these lines...

I'm pretty sure it's been a solid decade since I needed to find something in the midst of THAT.  I informed my brain that 'I really can do this, get yourself to finding the Journal of the National Medical Association Volume 101'.  To make a long story short, here I sit reading my article on exploring socioeconomic variations in diabetes control strategies, none the worse for wear but certainly distressed by how difficult I made that process out to be.  As Jen said when I told her 'what has technology done to us?'

Beautiful Quote

All life is interrelated, somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.  - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


I heard this quote last week.  Beyond the fact that I find Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be insanely inspirational in his own right, this seems to capture the reasoning behind throwing your life into helping others.  However lost and mis-aligned this country may have become since it first embarked on its course, the idea that there are inalienable rights is one that I have always felt needs to be remembered.  The thing is, those living outside our country have the same inalienable rights, and so we really are never far removed from the rest of the world.  It is, when you get right down to it, the reason that I feel so strongly about international missions and would love to do international adoption.  And it is the reason that global health and health disparities are two of the top three topics that led me to and will focus me as I go through this degree.  So, in case you were wondering why I changed course mid-career, there it is.  I am caught in the "interrelated structure of reality" and I plan to do something about it.

Controlled Panic

So...we are 2 weeks in...my short version of how I am feeling about it is - controlled panic. It's intense that is for sure, but very awesome when you sit in a class as they are explaining what you are going to be trained to do with your degree and you think 'this is EXACTLY what I want to do and I never knew it existed!'. I am still working on figuring out how to regain my balance and find some kind of equilibrium in life. My advisor told me yesterday it usually takes a year and a half to get some traction...yikes...that is a lot of time to control panic :) The helpful aspect about that is the stress I'm feeling because I think I should have gotten control of myself already can go away :)

So, this morning I was listening to the Switchfoot CD and heard this song and something about it was exactly what I'm feeling. The idea of going back to school for a PhD in a field I've never taken so much as an undergrad class in, no longer being at the job that is my comfort zone with my comfort zone people, my schedule being all whacked out and every day being different, class times and schedules and assignments changing randomly and suddenly, and the idea of what is ahead...and yet, God has told me that He will be with me, that He will never leave or forsake me, that He will see me through and that the battle is not mine. I can stand and see the deliverance of the Lord, I can say that He that is in me is greater than he that is in the world, and that though trials may come, He has overcome the world! Panic is my hurricane...but it's not taking me out!

I've been watching the skies

They've been turning blood red

Not a doubt in my mind anymore

There's a storm up ahead

I'm a fighter fighting for control

I'm a fighter fighting for my soul

Everything inside of me surrenders

You can't silence my love

Hello hurricane, you're not enough

Switchfoot - Hello Hurricane

A few things...

...that I love. That Southwest has a straight through flight to Baltimore. That there is an app to let me blog from the airport. That there is an app to let me make lists of things to do...and organize them! That I parked in residential parking for four hours after things didn't go as planned and I didn't get a ticket. That SAS after much battle is loaded on my computer. That I figured out libname command in said SAS program...believe me this is no easy feat. That I have a mentor and classmates that are enormously supportive. That I get to see my dad, sister, grandparents, and aunt in a few hours. That I get to have a fried chicken party with my wonderful friends when I get back.

While there were a few moments of utter frustration this week, the longer I type the more things I find to love :)

A Tad Busy

And so school has begun...I don't even want to begin to discuss my to do list - suffice to say I had to download an app on my phone so that I can organize everything and sort them by due date or category or priority...oh, my...

Pull Up, Pull Up!!!

I have 5 days left at DNR. It's somewhat freaking me out and every time I think about it I start to enter emotional panic mode. Hence I'm not thinking about it all too much. But, I did think it is appropriate to share some of the the best comments about life given by co-workers this week:

"You're leaving too! It's probably for the best. Look at those of us who have been here for 35 years - we've got anti-depressants in our drawers and liquor on our desks."

"Generally your e-mails are very organized, but as I was reading that one I was thinking, this is very stream of consciousness, something in her life is spirally totally out of control"

"Pull Up, Pull Up!"

School Shopping

Yesterday Brittany, Nikole and I went school shopping...which I haven't done in 8 years...it was pretty hysterical...and quite successful!

Perceptual Adaptation

I am exhausted. This week I attempted to dump my brain onto Word files and e-mails to prep someone else to take over the job I've been doing for the past 6 years. I also ran 5 nights of Vacation Bible School, which in case you haven't worked VBS in the recent past takes quite a large quantity of energy to get things ready, know what is going to go wrong before it goes wrong, fix what goes wrong after it goes wrong, and show no fear, indecision or exhaustion to the kids. And, all the while I suppressed the desire to panic about any of the facts in my life: that in one month I have no idea how I'm going to pay my mortgage, that I'm going back to school in a field that is totally new which takes literally all my brain power to focus and absorb the information, that the one year anniversary of my mom's death is looming on the horizon, that I'm going home next weekend to visit my grandfather for what possibly could be the last time...the list of reasons to panic could go on but I'm too tired to keep typing.

In short my life is upside down. Actually, no, it feels worse than that. In college psychology class I remember learning about a study where they had people wear glasses that made the world upside down and after 4 or 5 days their brains actually inverted everything so that they were seeing right side up again. When they took the glasses off, they were seeing everything upside down, and had to wait for their brains to invert everything again. It's called perceptual adaptation. I more or less feel like for the past two years I have had to take those glasses on and off about 20 times and my brain is feeling ready to give up on telling me which way is up.

In case you were wondering, it's a rather intense thing to feel, and not all together enjoyable. But...it's where am...I am in the land of continuous perceptual adaptation. Here is the thing though. The first few times I had the glasses put on or had them taken away I more or less freaked out. I was out of control of my life, I had no idea what was going to happen and I had no clue what to do about it. For me, that is a reason to freak out. The longer this goes on, however, and the closer the flipping back and forth happens the less thrown off I seem to be. Really, the past two weeks has seen some pretty major changes (so much so that half of you reading this don't even know I'm not going to be working in two weeks...yeah, I really don't feel like going into it) and yet, I'm shocked at how minorly phased I am all things considered. I have finally reached the point where I'm totally fine with waiting on God to tell me where to go next and I totally trust that He is going to. Being able to honestly say that is all by itself a sign of how far God's brought me. It's one thing to say you trust God...it's another to actually do it.

So remember how I wrote a number of posts about how much I hated the question 'how are you' after my mom died? The new question on my hatred list is 'so what is your plan'? Most people really don't believe you when you say you don't know, and you're ok because you know that you will when you need to. But guess what? I don't know. And I know that I will when I need to. My life is upside down, but it will flip back up at some point. Until then I will sleep with the ceiling as the floor.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. - 1 Corinthians 13:12-13

Me and Dorothy

While reading my first of many research papers to prep for my first of many abstracts to submit to my first of many symposiums, I find the sentence...

“We suggest that the association of emotion-focused coping with dysfunctional outcomes is closely related to the way it has been operationalized in coping measures”

…I am most certainly not in Kansas anymore.

Wow...I have entered a whole new world!

3 little letters

Day 27: a photo of something you are looking forward to

Half of me is excited, the other half is intimidated and nervous. Yesterday I got my acceptance letter for the Medical University of South Carolina's PhD in Health and Rehabilitation Science. Ideally, in four years I will be adding 3 little letters to the end of my name...3 little letters that are going to involve A LOT of studying!

By the way, for those of you I haven't talked to since I applied...yeah, it's kinda crazy, eh?