Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Confession: I don't really like to cook that much.

Correction: I'm not really motivated to cook for myself.

Condition: I'm single and live alone.

Conclusion: I don't really cook that much, for myself or anyone.

In the past, I've been pretty happy to "scavenge" whatever is in my fridge and/or cupboards, and call a grilled cheese sandwich and a pile of carrots dinner. That or grab some kind of food to-go from a local eatery (or, well, get dinner through the late-night working crew at work). But now that I've been on a graduate student stipend for a few months, I've realized I need a better incentive system to improve my cooking habits. Something with flexibility so I don't feel immediately overwhelmed, yet something with accountability so I also feel adequately compelled to change my behavior. 

Drum (dinner?) roll please.

Tonight, implementation of the "Dinner-in Nights" intervention - DINs - began with my great friend (and apartment building co-resident) Kelly. This pilot program involves each of us committing to cook at least once a week, and then alternating cooking for the other person every other week. This two-pronged approach aims to cultivate a non-intimidating cooking routine while promoting mutual accountability among two people with low access barriers (i.e., we live in the same building, we work for the same company) and high motivation for behavior change. We will report weekly progress as part of the overarching monitoring plan, and course-correct as needed. Limitations of this pilot program may include unforeseen scheduling constraints, self-recall biases (e.g., "Oh wait, it was my turn to cook this week? Ermmm...), and potential for suboptimal adherence. 

Can this count as our study protocol pre-registration?

Anyway.

To kick-off DINs properly, I made Molly Gilbert's tried-and-true (and truly delectable) chicken and broccoli with spicy peanut sauce with a side of quinoa. And before you think I'm a fancy quinoa-toting chef (or something), I'm fairly sure I purchased it circa 2013-2014 amid a fleeting cooking spree - it's hung out on a pantry shelf since. Like her cookbook promised, this dish was quick and easy and ever so tasty. Now Kelly and I both have leftovers in our fridges, and happy digestion in our bellies.

For more of Molly's great recipes (and 'riting), check out her blog at https://dunkandcrumble.com/

Today I learned...

When I was rerunning some analyses, I noticed that a number of patient-level data points were somehow negative versions of otherwise reasonable blood pressure readings (i.e., not 0 or -999, a frequent code for missing values). I'm going to investigate a bit more tomorrow, but it's likely that the negative values were interviewer errors and thus we should adjust them (i.e., multiply by -1) and now include these patients rather than dropping them. Takeway: know thy data.

Today I'm grateful for...

Easy access to a local Trader Joe's so I could pick up ingredients for our first DINs without breaking the bank and on the way home from work.

Today's best part was...

Brainstorming lesson topics and plans for a global health and data science training we'll be offering through the Washington Global Health Alliance (WGHA)'s STEM Global Teacher Workshop at the end of April. I'm excited for the opportunity to be more involved in curriculum development and teaching around global health measurement - more to come soon!

When I grow up, I want to...have a PhD?

What's your dissertation topic? Ummm...

What do you want to do after your PhD? Uhhh...

What do you want to get out of your PhD program - besides a doctorate? Oh, I can answer that one - I think...


It's been almost exactly 6 months since I started my doctoral studies at UW, and while I'm a few (coughmanycough) steps away from landing on a dissertation topic - let alone knowing exactly what I want to do with my PhD - I recently tackled something I had planned to do awhile ago. I wrote out my PhD hopes and goals within key categories; I mapped out the courses I wanted to take and when they were offered (and then color-coded them by degree program requirement - obviously); and put them all in a Google drive so I could regularly review and update them.

Several people, ranging from formal and informal mentors alike to current and former PhD students/friends/colleagues, had recommended completing this kind of exercise in one way or another. One professor told me to articulate 1-, 5-, 10-, and 25-year goals and then identify what experiences and skills I needed to meet them during my PhD. One of my best friends/former officemate and colleague/current PhD candidate recommended writing out what I hoped to learn and be exposed to over the course of my doctoral studies. And the list went on - clearly this was something I should do.

I drafted up an initial version the weekend after a 40 minute cryfest with my faculty advisor. The aim was to review the courses I had taken already, identify the types of methods and skills I wanted to learn, and then work out what kinds of next steps I should take in terms of projects, research assistantships, summer jobs, and so on. Not surprisingly - ha - I took it to the next level, and sought to find more tangible reasons why I was even doing this whole PhD thingamabob in the first place. Clearly, this was a long time coming.

For anyone currently in and/or starting a PhD program - I highly recommend this process. It's helped me garner greater focus, a better understanding of how I want to mold my doctoral studies, and - bonus - realize I'm already making progress toward real milestones I actually care about (versus benchmarks others were erecting and I inadvertantly got caught up in measuring my performance against them).

I imagine I'll continue to refine this working document, but in case anyone else wants a broader template from which to start their own "PhD goals and planning, 20xx-20xx" reference, here's my current structure (and a few examples):

• PhD goals and planning: 2018-202x
• When I graduate with my doctorate, I want to...
• Have expertise across impact evaluation methods and analyses
• Have exposure to different phases of evaluation projects
• Have spent time working at organizations and/or with country partners outside of my current research institute
• ...among others
• Topical areas I would like to spend more time on include...
• Vaccine coverage and vaccination determinants
• Malaria control and elimination
• Healthcare utilization (e.g., care-seeking behavior) and intervention effectiveness
• Intersection of quantitative global health and social psychology/sociological factors that affect effectiveness and outcomes
• ...among others
• The technical methods and analytical approaches I want to learn more about are...
• Impact evaluation and policy analysis techniques (e.g., stepped wedge)
• Data synthesis techniques for trend estimation (e.g., methods for combining administrative and survey data)
• Geospatial analysis
• Counterfactual models and simulations
• Qualitative data collection and/or analysis
• Network analysis
• ...among others
• Specific research and coding skills I would like to learn include...
• Becoming proficient in R
• Making maps
• Developing R Shiny tools (I did this!)
• ...among others
• Personal and academic experiences I want to have or benchmarks I want to achieve during my PhD are...
• TA-ing at least 1-2 courses
• Applying to teach (and then ideally treaching) a J-term course on global health measurement and analysis at my alma mater (current target is Winter 2021)
• Applying for at least 1 grant or fellowship
• Writing 1-2 first-author papers per year; supporting 1-2 team papers per year and/or providing regular scientific paper mentorship, coaching, etc. to team members
• ...among others

Spring quarter 2019 - here I come.


Today I learned...
...well, it's more like thought-about-more-deeply than formally-learned-something-completely-new, but I technically learned more about the challenges of conducting truly independent evaluations from a bravely written Viewpoint in The Lancet: Storeng & Palmer, "When ethics and politics collide in donor-funded global health research." I strongly recommend it.

Today I'm grateful for...
My research team's willingness to let me focus on studying for finals and recovering from an obstinate ear/sinus infection over the last week. Further, I'm now the bottleneck for a manuscript we're working on, yet everyone has kindly given me the space to focus on school and then getting closer to 100% health status. I'm incredibly thankful for this, and I look forward to wrangling results and a paper into submission this week (all the puns intended).

Today's best part was...
Honestly, being back in the office. I missed seeing my team and colleagues, and it felt good to back in "my" hotel space. PhD students reserve computer space at our offices through an online system, and I've essentially taken over "Hotel 2" at our northern offices. This is where I left the homemade paperweight the Murphy girls made me as a thank you for coordinating Girl Scout cookie orders at our institute for them (as if this was a huge inconvenience or something...ha). It kind of snuck up on me, but I'm starting to feel like I belong.

Another quarter, another...quarter?

And just like that, Winter Quarter 2019 is done. Two quarters down, one-third of my PhD coursework completed, over 54% of core classes finished...ok, enough with the statistics. At least for the next week - oh wait, that's a lie. I'll definitely be doing some statistics next week.

The quarter system is a weird, wild ride. Our professors shove a typical semester's 13-15 weeks of material into 10 weeks of class time and course work, taunting our minds and sleep schedules to stretch and shrink respectively. Throw in a snow day (or week, as Seattle did this year), and suddenly what was already a precarious timetable goes totally topsy-turvy. One professor recalibrates expectations, extending deadlines and shifting class foci; others charge ahead, recording lectures to supplement lost days and providing additional office hours to offset diminished face time. The quarter system can offer some great benefits - the ability to enroll in a greater variety and total number of courses, the opportunity to take a quarter off to do xyz without wreaking total havoc on timelines, among others. The quarter system also can be your foe - pushing, pushing, pushing until something gives, and that something is usually you.

About 5 or so weeks into this past quarter I gave. The days were flying by and while my colleagues and classmates were at least seemingly keeping apace, I felt sluggish and increasingly worried about falling behind. New concepts and equations and code swirled around my head without settling anywhere, an experience that shook me as I've relied on my brain and its swift uptake of information for decades. The isolating cycle of studying, coding, and doing homework alone left me desperately craving social interaction, but whenever I spent time with friends and people outside of work or school, I felt like I was watching my own social trainwreck from afar. Words were thick and clumsy, jokes wouldn't land, and I couldn't keep track of anyone's stories or updates anymore. Nothing felt good, everything felt out of reach.

Though no magical life 180 followed a a tear-laden meeting with my faculty advisor in mid-February, various bits and bobs gradually started to come together. I worked on a couple of group projects where I finally felt more useful and effective, slowly rebuilding some confidence in my head and brain capacities. I tackled some outstanding data processing needs for my research one weekend, and threw myself into a coding project the next - and even got an R Shiny app with Sankey diagrams to work! I spent more time with longstanding friends and new grad school ones alike, adding new layers and strength to the Seattle community I hold so dear. I began to haul myself out on some painfully slow runs, and started wobbling through some push-up and ab routines again. While the last month has been far from smooth sailing (e.g., I got pretty sick last weekend right before and then during finals, which ultimately led me to cancel a trip back East to see my nephew, brother, and sister-in-law so I could fully recover), I increasingly feel like I'm back at the rudder of my own ship. At least for now.

Today I learned...
Overtime in the NHL now stipulates 3-on-3 (plus goalies) sudden death play rather than the full squad. How exciting (and unexpected).

Today I'm grateful for...
Spending time with great people, of past and present Seattle. I got the chance to have dinner with Allie last night, I spent a couple of hours in Fremont with Chloe and Molly this afternoon, and I had dinner with Brooks in Capitol Hill tonight. I'm also grateful for the chance to rest and recuperate over the last few days; from sleeping 15 hours on Thursday to Friday morning and taking a full break from work and school, it's made a massive difference. My total A-game remains a bit illusive (i.e., my ear infection hasn't fully cleared and I'm still pretty drained), but I'm getting there.

Today's best part was...
Doing a meet-and-greet for two delightful, goofy weimaraners I'll be dogsitting April 6-7. Luke and Luna brought me so much joy.

Let it be, let it PhD

As I've sought to take a few beats and reflect on the last couple weeks, Let It Be by the Beattles floated into my statistics-scorched mind and has kindly stuck around. It's provided a gentle, melodious reminder of what I need to aim for as I face what I can only describe as deep unmooring of myself from head to heart. There will be answers, in one way or another; the nights will become less cloudy in time. I just need to find the ways to let it be, so to speak. Finding greater grace and acceptance, of what is and can be, and becoming more comfortable with the changing tides of this PhD ocean I find myself on.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be

There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

I spent about 40 minutes, ranging from simply crying to essentially sobbing, in my faculty advisor's office last week. "I'm so unhappy," I sputtered, almost immediately after I sat down. "I feel so useless and stupid and so lost...and so...undocked...unmoored?" I eventually got out, desperately trying to pin a label or two on the unsettling defeat and sadness I had increasingly felt over the quarter. "I don't belong here...I'm literally the dumbest person in my program...I shouldn't have done this...I'm so lonely...why didn't I go elsewhere when I had the chance?...I'm never going to be a statistician or health metrics guru or coding whiz...I hate feeling so dumb and unhelpful to my team and slow...and just everything." My faculty advisor passed me a tissue box and listened until I finished unpeeling the layers of self-doubt, despondency, and isolation that had brought me to this point.

Thankfully, my faculty advisor is no stranger to students' or employees' emotional roller coasters, and to mine in particular. Over the decade plus we've known each other, she has given me the tough love and feedback I needed (and often before I knew I needed it); supported me through exciting and painful professional decisions alike; and helped me navigate personal losses and heartbreak. For some people having this kind of mentor fusion across professional and personal dimensions may seem odd and/or would not be preferred. After all, faculty advisors can wield a lot of power of over your academic and career pathways, and the fact that mine has seen me through some of my personal lows, from the dissolution of an engagement several years ago to a more recent decision to stay in Seattle/go to UW and end a relationship with a man I nonetheless deeply loved, is sometimes a bit scary. Even after all of these years, part of me was terrified to admit the depths of my sadness, frustration, and rutterlessness at that meeting - as if I was letting her down as much as myself.

The remainder of our meeting was spent talking about the wide prevalence of such experiences in graduate school and especially PhD programs; how this particular program was never going to be a cakewalk for me ("If all you had wanted was a PhD, there were much easier routes"); and what tangible steps we collectively and I individually could take to hopefully improve aspects going forward. I left our meeting drained and still feeling unmoored, a sense that kept me raw and tears close at bay for hours, if not days later. Yet I also felt ever so slightly better, like heavy gears slowly inching toward motion, offering hints of a sunnier horizon and gently whispering, you’ll get there, just hang on a little longer. Let it be.


Today I learned...
I can be a steely tough scientist and emotionally splintered human being at the same time.

Today I'm grateful for...
The people who listen. The people who accept you, from the great to ugly, and want to see you succeed. The people I get to have in my life, since having such wonderful, genuine, emotionally-supportive people is never a given.

Today's best part...
Honestly, I'm still working that out. Perhaps an early bed time will do.

Elephants can get TB too

Winter 2019 midterms are finally over! Multiple snowdays last week and mounting non-school work made it feel like midterms would never end. Yet they did and I left them feeling more confident about what I learned this quarter than my first quarter. Whether that actually translates into good scores - well, that's another matter. However, I'm really trying to focus on the reasons I'm doing a PhD - to learn and to improve on the areas I struggle - and worry less about homework or exam grades.

This isn't easy, particularly when a lot of classmates get riled up about their GPAs, how much time they're studying for tests, and trying to ace class assignments. It's challenging to consistently quell the anxiety that you're not doing enough or gaining knowledge as quickly as fellow students; to genuinely derive satisfaction from your own (gradual) personal progress without comparing your performance against others and skittering into imposter syndrome feedback cycles. One step at a time, one step at a time...

Today I learned...
Two things! (well, two things that particularly tickled my fancy):
1) Elephants can get and transmit tuberculosis (TB), just like humans. Apparently it can be pretty rough on them too, with their large respiratory systems and all.
2) BMI - body mass index - also was/is called the Quetelet index. I was reading an early 1990s paper for a homework assignment and couldn't figure out why this Quetelet index kept being talked about (especially when the homework question was asking about obesity). Google revealed that, lo and behold, BMI and the Quetelet index are one in the same. I wonder why or how BMI became more widely known, both in general but also among researchers...oh the Google-ing rabbit holes to hop down!

Today I'm grateful for...
The IHME Post-Bachelor Fellowship. I'm currently helping with interviews (and dogsitting dogs of interviewers), and as I'm talking with candidates, I keep thinking about how much the program shaped my career and life trajectories. It was far from smooth-sailing and I certainly had my share of ups and many downs, but the IHME PBF program ultimately equipped me with the scientific foundation, skills, and passion for global health research that keeps me excited about pursuing this kind of work to this day. That and well, some of the most meaningful and lasting friendships, professional opportunities, and mentors I could ever imagine. So thank you, IHME and the individuals who picked me to join this the fledging program back in 2008. Thank you for taking the chance on a wide-eyed, ever-so-slightly enthusiastic, science-loving, non-coding psychology major who didn't know anything about global health way back when. It's been quite the ride ever since.

Today's best part...
Was the pure joy of a corgi luxuriating in Seattle's big snowfall from last night. Mickie the corgi, whom I'm dogsitting, and I walked ~3 miles this morning into the office, and well, the video is worth a thousand words.

And it's midterms...all over...again

And yes, thank you for asking! My midterm study corner is definitely as cool and hip as Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Today I learned...

That patients, who presented at UVM and Dartmouth neurology departments in Vermont and New Hampshire respectively, who waterskiied at least twice a month per month for at least one year (yes, this was the exposure measure) had a heightened odds for ALS than those who did not fit this waterskiing category. Of course, some of my epidemiology classmates and I spent a non-insubstantial amount of time trying to pick apart this study today. Our biggest question remains unanswered: who are these - brave? bonkers? - Vermonters and New Hampshirites who are waterskiing/have ever waterskiied during every month of the year? Or are they, since every lake is frozen in the winter, pursuing national or international waterskiing competitions elsewhere, and thus compose a completely wacky study population. SO MANY QUESTIONS!

Today I'm grateful for...

Friends who make food, for themselves and me, in exchange for being able to watch the Super Bowl on my TV. While I code/work. During the entire game. I am very open to this kind of deal in the future, particularly when homemade meals are on the table. Ha.

Today's best part...

Honestly? Realizing I could write about three lines of code to properly format an email list for the office-wide Girl Scout cookie order I helped coordinate on behalf of a former employee. Because maybe that means I'm actually making headway toward reprogramming my mind into being more code and statistics friendly...all the puns intended.

Dog days of code

morning.fun.with.dogs.before.coding.all.day <- c("Copper", "Spike", "Gabby", "Kelly")

Unfortunately, that's probably the extent of R I'll code today. For better or for worse, Stata is just so much faster for the data cleaning/formatting I need to reexecute in order to prep my project's data for new analyses next week. You win some, you lose some.

Today I learned...
*Technically, I learned this on Thursday, not today, but it's too good not to share*
While humans see in three primary colors (i.e., our eyes have three types of cones, which then allow us to see red, green, and blue light), chickens have 12 cones in their eyes, and thus can see in 12 different primary colors! Can you imagine how chickens would describe colors if they could do more than squawk - or if human beings could chat with chickens in...Chicken-ese? about how they experience the world?!

I learned in Chris Adolph's CSSS569 course, Visualizing Data and Methods, which has been phenomenal thus far. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the theory (cognitive psychology, hurrah!) and generation of effective visualizations of social science methods and data.

Today I'm grateful for...
A good night's sleep. I slept long and hard last night, which I desparately needed after a few weeks of various ups, downs, and stress involving the royal triad of school, work, and life matters. Physical and psychological lethargy had been dragging me down recently, so it was quite lovely to finally feel more spritely this morning.

Today's best part was...
Thus far, it's been solving some tricky automation code I needed to debug and troubleshoot today. I had spent various chunks of the last week trying to figure out how to code up a systematic way to select patients' baseline and endline biometric measures while accounting gaps in baseline measurement timing (i.e., at enrollment, sometimes patients didn't have A1c or blood pressure readings so we needed to use the next most recent measures), but hadn't been able to fully implement it across various datasets.