This is kind of ironic given that my last post discussed looking outward, but in this post, I plan to provide a few updates on my life. When I do IG polls for feedback, I always have some who just want to hear about what's going on with me, so I’m going to do that even if it feels a bit weird. I’ll break things up by topic in case any of it is unbearably boring.
I. Summer Plans
This week I was lucky enough to receive internship offers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Laurel, MD. I was agonizing over the decision for a bit, but I decided to go with the APL offer for several reasons, even if it is slightly less specific to my career goals. I’ll be working as an intern within the Health Data Science and Analytics group within the National Health mission area, which is a lot of words to say I will probably be working on some statistical programming for disease transmission models or something similar. I feel like I will 100% be the dumbest person in the room at all times, but it’s all good—I figure that will just force me to learn more. It’s 40 hrs/wk, and I plan to work from roughly May 28 through August 9th. I’m already sad thinking about being away from EC for most of the summer, but I will have almost three weeks on the front end and a week on the back end. I’d really like to keep in touch with friends, so please feel free to hit me up over Skype if we can’t figure anything out while I’m in EC.
II. Some Projects Here at OU
While the classes I’m enrolled in this semester are relatively light, I’m working on three different projects that are keeping me busy. The first is through the Public Health Discussions (PHD) student organization that I joined last semester. Our group is all about research and advocacy for solutions to various public health issues across campus and in Norman. My sub-group is working with mental health, and our goal is to develop a mental health training module for freshmen coming into the University. We’ve developed a survey so we can gather feedback about existing mental health resources on campus, attitudes about mental health, etc. (I know OUMM is extremely annoying, but please take our survey if you can! It should be going out this week.). We also are making arrangements to meet with professors, counselors, and various other experts across campus as we develop this module. I’m extremely passionate about mental health issues, so I’m quite excited to see what kind of sort of training we can develop.
I’ve also been doing math research for my Honors Research this semester—I’m studying the relationship between math motivation and math anxiety (really happy I’m getting to do this and not trying to develop new proofs, etc.). It’s ironic because most of the time I don’t have enough motivation to write about motivation, but oh well. Also, it’s amazing to me how hard it is to get a study through the Institutional Review Board. This is my first time doing a proposal myself, and I've learned that if you don’t specify in at least 4 places that taking a four-minute survey about math has no risks and no benefits, your proposal will get rejected repeatedly. Also had to include a sentence about research-related injuries, so if anyone hurts themselves clicking the boxes on the survey, I will probably receive a phone call!
Finally, I’m still doing my research with the birds. I spent most of last semester developing maps like the one below, using either stable isotopes or geolocators to develop probability density surfaces for the breeding location of various migratory birds. This semester, I’ll be doing the same thing except using genomic data as the source material. This has required learning how to use a supercomputer, which has been quite difficult for a non-CS major like me. However, I enjoy it, and it’s cool to me that genetic variation at certain nucleotides has been shown to accurately predict migratory patterns. The other note with this is that my mentor for all this work, Dr. Contina, moved on Wednesday to pursue a new opportunity in Colorado. I began working with him during the fall of my freshman year for the First Year Research Experience and have been working with him ever since. We’re going to continue to work on the above-described project remotely so that’s nice, but I was certainly sad to see one of my favorite people from OU leave.
III. Trying to Be Athletic
My IM Basketball team is currently last in the league at 0-3, but on the plus side we are first in points against and probably first in turnovers too! Although we haven’t been winning, I’ve still enjoyed lacing up the shoes with some great friends and pretending like I know how to play basketball.
In other news, my three roommates and I are all about five weeks into the marathon training plan we’re completing in advance of the OKC Marathon on April 28th. It’s been great so far, but it’s about to get harder. Long runs for the next three weeks are slated to be 14/16/18 mi, and I saw a 5 mi tempo on the schedule for next week. It’s all good though, running is one of my favorite things in the world, and I can’t even count the number of times this semester that a run has brought me out of a brief funk or helped me to make a big decision. It's nice to feel in shape, but the mental benefits are even more valuable I think. I'm also still trying to lift some weights a few days a week, but I am falling way short of the organized program I set out to run (sorry Christian!). However, it's always been my view that everyone needs a couple things that they don't organize to a T, and I guess weightlifting is that for me right now.
Those are the big points, but other than that I’ve just been trying to enjoy life and spend some time with friends. Definitely can’t wait for it to get warmer, although I can’t complain about anything given that I hear Eau Claire reached record February snowfall levels by the 12th day of the month. Anyways, sending best wishes for those of you in the midst of that, and I look forward to potentially seeing some of you over Spring Break in March.