Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Exponential growth!


This graph which serves as the image for this post was copied from a paper I had to review/present for one of my courses this summer. But it also accurately depicts the personal and educational growth I feel I've experienced over the last 5 years.

Little did I know how significant my knowledge base would grow in the years since I took my first programming course (~ 2010?) to bring me where I am today, able to use knowledge from almost everything I've done both professionally and academically. And I couldn't be happier by the synergy of it all given everything I had to go through to get here!

That said, I have no words for the utter exhaustion I felt at the end of last week, where I'm now a full-time student for the first time in years. Combined with the intellectual requirements for my fellowship, and I'm using brain cells in ways I thought I had LONG since put behind me, like my Chemistry background. I use it EVE-RY-DAY and I LOVE it! I'm also using PubMed and PubChem and since I LOVE to read journal articles this is kinda nice too! Add to it the "foot" my Health Informatics Prof placed up the collective butts of my ENTIRE class with the our first assignments, then it probably makes sense why I was up till' midnight reading, writing, and thinking while I put the final touches on assignments that were due at Midnight on the 26th. Whew!!!!

Movin' on, I think I now have the minimum 3 members I needed for my dissertation committee and that's great. But the realization that I will likely NOT Have the health disparities focus I wanted is kinda disappointing. The short story is that to get what I need to get done academically the way I want to do it, something HAD to be compromised. And the fact is that folks with health disparities focused projects just ain't getting published, thus funded much these days. And this is the game I have to play if I'm going to get through this MD/PhD with a research career in mind. I simply have to do what I gotta do to one day do what I wanna do!

Other news is that I have an Orgo student for the entire summer and with my MCAT prep occurring simultaneously, this is a fantastic (and lucrative) thing to have on my plate right now! Of course, that contributes to my weekly exhaustion especially since I work 6 days a week, but then I thrive in controlled chaos like environments. At least so far.:)

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