Today

Today is a proud day. It is a historic day. It is a day that has brought tears of joy to my eyes and hope to my heart. Today, America has entered a new era. It marks a euphoric moment as my country embraces change and steps forward to lead once again.

Today, we welcomed our 44th President - Barack Hussein Obama.

Today, the doors of the White House have been thrown open by a new President who promises to listen to us as he goes about the tough business of restoring our nation and its reputation in the world. Equally as important, he is a President who will - if his career thus far is any indication - inspire us to be better and more engaged citizens.

As if it weren't historic enough to have such a transformative figure stepping up to lead us, Barack Obama is also our first black President. The gravity of this moment is breathtaking. What does this mean for the future of American politics? What will our future leaders look like? Will we have a rainbow of representation in another eight years time? This by no means solves the racial disparities that still plague our country but how great a leap forward we have taken today.

Today, I am so much more hopeful that our broken world can be saved. This is a turning point in history. The world is watching us. Change will not come quickly, but I have so much faith that in four (or eight!) years, we will look back, amazed at how different a country America is than it has been for the last eight years. Today is a moment of time I will always remember. The tears streaming down my face as I watched President Obama take his oath, the feeling of solidarity with my fellow Americans, and that hope that has characterized Obama's long run to get here. Oh, that soaring hope. Today has been a very good day.

New Year, New You

Ok, I realize we're already two weeks into the new year and I have yet to truly address most of my resolutions - run more, blog more, write in my journal more, and basically take time away from my computer screen to keep myself healthy. After all, how good am I at public health if I forget to keep up habits that contribute to my well-being?!

So...I'll try to do a better job of updating my Seattle Chronicles - if for no other reason than at the end of 2 years (well, 1.5 at this point, I guess) I'll have some record of what the hell I've been doing out here. In the spirit of starting fresh, here is a game that will help the non-public health people in my life understand what I might do with an MPH. This game is especially pertinent considering the latest "Block" of our program - epidemiology and biostatistics.

http://www.mclph.umn.edu/watersedge/

In other news, I started my practicum position today. For the rest of the school year, I will be interning with the HIV/AIDS Education team in the Seattle/King County Department of Health. Everyone there seems really nice and it's good to be back in the HIV/AIDS world. It's an issue that I remain passionate about, even though it's been a few years since I've worked at FIGHT. I'll be creating education materials - right now the priority is to create a fact sheet for case managers and other frontline workers explaining the risks of transmitting HIV if you have an undetectable viral load. For those of you who may not understand what that means, I'll post my InfoGram when I'm done.

Tonight, I need to work on my latest assignment - explaining what Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYS) are. And since it's almost 10pm and I have to work tomorrow AND this is due at 6pm...I'd better stop procrastinating and hop to it.

Subterranean Healthcare Blues

This is a video I made last weekend with my classmate Erin. We had to convey a message about medical harm. Before we spent a week delving into the issue in class, I had no idea that medical harm (adverse events during surgery, medication mixups, etc...) is estimated to be the THIRD leading cause of death in the US.

My cohort (Group Apollo) is facilitated by Stephen Bezruchka, MD and he explains why we should be concerned about medical harm much better than me in this article.

I will try to post more pics soon from Kate's visit, the Joe Biden Rally, V-Diz and Samir's visit, and fall in Seattle.

Prom Queen

Mike, Jennie, Ana, Me, Tiffany, Jon

I asked a guy to Junior Prom. He turned me down and we both ended up going with friends. No one asked me to Senior Prom so a group of "Prom Renegades" went to the VD (RIP Villanova Diner), bowled, and went to the after-Prom party. I was only asked to slow dance ONE time in all of high school, and it was by some creepy guy I didn't even know.

Tonight, I had a second chance. I went to the Pro-Choice Prom - a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood - with some of my COPHP classmates: Jennie and her boyfriend Mike, Jon, Tiffany, and Ana. Thanks to my loud friends cheering me on, and a plea to the crowd that I NEEDED this crown to make up for missing Senior Prom over 10 years ago, I WAS CROWNED PROM QUEEN!

Ok, there wasn't really a crown, but I did get to slow dance with the King to Purple Rain.

It was an excellent night. You can see more pictures here.

HOLY SHIT!

Fuck yeah, baby. WORLD FUCKING SERIES!!!! If you're not from Philly, you don't even know how huge this is. Man, this is when being in Seattle totally sucks. I want to be running down Broad Street with a cheesesteak in one hand and a Yards in the other.

My First All-Nighter

In our PBL classes (the three hour class that's done in the Problem Based Learning style, when we dissect case studies and review each others' work) we have to tell the group what we'd do differently on our next assignment. Without fail, I always say time management. Time is my worst enemy and this week is living proof of that.

I knew this week was going to be rough. I had an editing project that I had to get done for my last job so I stayed up until 4am Tues/Wed finishing it so I can put it behind me and focus on school. Needless to say, I ended up sleeping late, until noon or so. This is bad because I have a Learning Objective, assigned Tuesday, that I have to research, write a 3-5 page paper on, and post by 7pm on Thursday. This wouldn't have been a problem if I didn't volunteer with the SPARX program to do vision and hearing screenings at a Head Start program tomorrow. Not only did that require that I go to a training on Wednesday night, but it means I lose about 4 hours of time to work on my Learning Objective (and since I signed up for this activity before I knew how crazy my schedule would be, I'm also scheduled to do one next Wednesday, yikes!).

I had to make up the time somehow, so I stayed up all night. Well, I'm trying to anyway. It's 4:54am now...I feel like a nap might be more productive at this point than 2 hours of sleep. The good news is, I think my post is in pretty good shape. The bad news is, I have to spend my afternoon trying to assess the vision and hearing of a group of 3.5 year olds. By that point, I might be on the verge of passing out. I hope I don't let any blind or deaf children fall through the cracks! Thank god Seattle is the Coffee Capital of America.

Oh, and Kate is coming to visit tomorrow so that's good too. I just hope she doesn't mind tucking in early - her jet lag should be useful on that front.

Now that I've procrastinated, I'll post this video about drug resistant TB, a major public health issue, presented in a very compelling way:

Here I Am!

I thought a blog would be a good way to keep people out East updated on my new life in Seattle but I've been here for over a month now and haven't had any adventures worth writing about. I spent most of the time before school started getting settled and figuring out how to get around on the bus - my only option other than walking since I don't have a car or bike (yet).

Well, finally the "adventure" has started. School began a week ago and it has been a BIG adjustment.

A bit of an explanation. My Public Health program is called the Community Oriented Public Health Practice (COPHP). There are 15 COPHP 1st year students altogether but for class we are divided between two groups. While most MPH students take core public health classes like epidemiology, biostatistics, intro to public health, etc., COPHP students learn through case studies. We read the case out loud in class and then discuss what we know, think we know, and need to know. Based on the "need to know" we come up with learning objectives and divide them up between us. Each person then has to research their learning objective and write a 3-5 page paper which we post online 2.5 days later for everyone else to read.

Going into this program, I thought I'd be well prepared since I've been writing grants for the last two years. I know how to research a topic and I think I know how to write fairly well. I don't know that anything could have prepared me though for having to take a somewhat vague topic like "How have US health trends changed in the global rankings?"** and turn it into a paper without really knowing what exactly my fellow students should be learning when they read it. I've only "posted" two papers so far but both times it's been extremely anxiety inducing. Putting my work up for other people to read I think:

"Is it good enough?"
"Did I do it 'right'?"
"I wish I managed my time better."

I'm learning that to thrive in this program, I'm going to have to face down my insecurities in a major way. I'm also going to have to tackle something that's always been an issue for me: time management. But at the end of the day, I need to remember that out of a hundred students, I was one of the handful that was actually accepted so I must be intelligent, even if I might not feel that way as I get used to being a student again.

While it's been a challenging first week of class, I am learning a lot and it's exciting to talk to my classmates about topics that I find super interesting, like how international financial institutions (such as the World Bank) screwed the third world and how socio-economic issues impact the health of a society.

I see myself using this blog as a place to let people know how I'm doing, to share what I'm learning, and to post pictures of Seattle, which is a lovely city despite it's substandard public transportation system (oh, how I miss the NYC subway). At the end of two years, it'll also be a nice record of my grad school experience.

**For the record, the US ranks 30th in the "Health Olympics" - a lower showing than you'd expect from a country that spends more than any other on health care (over $6,000 per person or $2.2 trillion annually).