Today's thoughts

UGH. I am so unproductive in my assignments today!!! I wasn't able to accomplish anything solid. Though I finished some chores like laundered the rugs and rags, and also swept and mopped the floor. Also learned a new guitar piece, Billie Eilish's Billie Bossa Nova. It's an extremely easy piece and the melody is nice. Also attended this morning my brain health coaching session and journal club in the afternoon. Hmm. Pretty productive I guess? But the productivity is not necessarily directed towards my assignments and research work. Also did some in-room exercises. Now it's 1815H and I need to cook cacio e pepe. Maybe I'll try to do some work for two hours before retiring to bed. I notice lately that I'm productive in these final hours of the day before sleeping. So my power hours are around 10AM-4PM, then 10PM-12MN. The hours in between are just blah.

Anyway, time to cook! Will be studying propensity scores after dinner. 

Spring Break 2024

Spring Break, for me, is a way to catch up with research work backlog. Ugh. Not complaining though, I love the moments I get to focus and dive deep into my research. What bothers me really are coursework assignments. Ugh. Annoying things that get in the way. Or perhaps they are actually not annoying as long as I'm just doing assignments and not research work. But anyway, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

So the point really of this post is life lately: spending happy time with the husband and catching up with all the research and assignments. I am struggling with my manuscript, especially the discussion section. I'm looking for literature to explain the indirect effects of discrimination on cognitive function with depression as mediator among older adults across different population groups (i.e. NHW, AA, and MA). The thing is, what's in the literature is contrary to what our results are, which is something bothersome as it makes us question whether our dataset or analysis is wrong. The thing is, both me and my adviser have analyzed the new dataset separately, and we both have the same results (yay! that means I ran my analysis correctly!). Anyway, I guess right now the challenge is digging through literature, sorting them out and  organizing them into a coherent flow of words. In short, what I'm writing must make sense. And the hard part is that there are so many sources where I am getting my arguments, it makes me confused. Just writing a few paragraphs takes me at least 5 to 8 hours of intensely focused work. Anyway. 

Just putting in here a collage of Mico and I, at night in bed, laughing and giggling about nonsensical things. It's just so nice to be in love and committed and in-sync with someone whom you really trust, the person whom you know has your back and commits to be there for you forever. Cheesy, yes, but there's that peace and contentment, knowing that no matter what, this person is someone whom you can fully trust with your whole, unabashed, and uninhibited self. That feeling is just... beautiful. Mico gives me that feeling. 💓 I thank the Lord for my most wonderful husband. 💖

11 March 2024, Monday, 0218H. First weekday of Spring Break

Today's thoughts

I am fatigued. Ugh. My hormonal changes make me feel exhausted. I also have a brain fog right now. I hope it clears up later today. I don't know why today is exceptionally heightened. I get fatigued when I'm in my ovulation period but today it's worse. Am I getting old? What triggered this outlier feeling? Does it have to do something with my diet? The stress I'm in right now? Yo no se. Je ne sais pas. Ich weiss nicht. 

The brain fog. Ugh. Brain fog. My mind isn't performing as it should. I can't quickly connect the dots. I feel lost. The train of thought isn't train-of-thought-ing. The brain isn't brain-ing. The mind isn't mind-ing. 

I just want to sleep. Curl into a ball under the sheets in this cold, dreary, rainy day...

Today's thoughts

I woke up at 7:30AM because of a bad tummy. Went to the toilet. Then went back to bed. I couldn't immediately fall back into sleep so my mind was still active, thinking of the things I need to do today. Then I remember Mico's alarm went off at 8:30AM. So at this time my brain was still awake but almost ready to doze off because next thing I knew, Mico kissed me goodbye at around 9:00AM. 

Then I woke up at 10:48AM. I just stayed in bed, rolled around, and refusing to get up. When I finally felt guilty of being unproductive and lazy after doom scrolling on my phone, I decided to get up. It was almost noon. Ugh. An hour wasted. Ick. Got up, fixed the bed, opened the blinds, got my sink shower paraphernalia, and went to the sink to wash my hair. Yep. I wash my hair in the sink on days where I don't want to do a full body shower. A work colleague of mine used to tease me that I'm like a cat - I don't like getting wet. Well, there's some truth to that I guess 😅

After that ordeal of washing the hair and face and and pits and feet in the sink, went to the toilet to wash and soap my V and B (oooh, like the initials of Vic Beck). Then did my AM skincare routine, prepared coffee, and at 2PM, I'm in front of my computer ready to work. 

Wow. It took me almost three hours upon waking up to start working. That's an AWFULLY LONG TIME. Okay, let's review where my chokepoints are.

1. The time difference between waking up and getting up: one hour. Fuck. This needs to be addressed. Let's try to decrease this time difference to, hmmm, part of me wants to take a drastic cut, like 15mins. But a part of me also doesn't want to shock myself. So... hmmm.. let's do 30 MINUTES. Let's get up within 30mins after waking up.

2. The sink shower method takes up more time than the usual in-shower shower. I can hear Mico right now in my head telling me that I'm being inefficient with the sink shower 😂 He kept on telling me about this but really, I just don't want my body getting wet 😂😂😂 except of course, when it's swimming time. I love swimming. But anyway, how do we remedy this? I could try ways removing some steps... but I'm not sure what steps... Or you know what, maybe this sink shower method is here to stay. I mean, I just do this like once or twice a week. The rest are in-shower showering. So I guess for today, it just took longer because I needed to do the sink shower. 

Other than these two, I don't see any chokepoints remaining. I guess the task that took the most time was the shower. It took me almost two hours to do that shit. That's a very long time. WTF. Maybe because I was taking my time in shampooing and conditioning my hair? Also, I did a hair leave-in treatment so that's why it took long. But two hours??? Man, that's a lot of time.

I should really be more conscious of the time I allot for my tasks. For the mundane ones, I don't feel they take long, but they actually do! Ugh. I should be mindful of this. When I work on assignments and research projects, I feel they take sooooo long, but I've only been at it for two to four hours. Perhaps I feel this because my brain consumes a lot of energy and effort when I need to concentrate on something, versus when I am on autopilot doing mundane things. Time goes by but I don't feel exhausted because the brain doesn't need to engage so much, compared to when I'm thinking. Time still passes but I notice everything really clearly. Hmmm... interesting.

Well, lesson learned for today is to be more efficient with time by tracking time vis-a-vis daily tasks. I've read something about the time blocking technique. I used to do this when I was in ANU, tried to revive it in the start of my PhD in 2021. I had a hard time following it and I'm not sure if I became more efficient. Anyway, we can try it one more time and try to be more mindful of what I'm doing.

Until then,

A weekend in the life of an international PhD student in the US

Fell asleep at 2 AM, woke up at 9AM, got up at 9:40AM, put in the laundry, showered, did morning skincare routine, and sitting on my desk at 10:30AM. That seems pretty productive, I guess? Though I'm really trying to wake up earlier and sleep earlier. But my body just doesn't fall asleep before midnight.

I start the morning with either a cup of tea or coffee, then I'll check my Supernote planner and see what's the agenda for the day, the tasks I need to finish. After which I go to Pomofocus.io, input my tasks, and set the timer and get to work. Usually, I have 50on/10off workflow (it used to be 25on/5off but found it too quick now). I work for about 4-6 hours, but anything longer than that, I am not as productive anymore. I sometimes get distracted by chores in between, but I try my best to work on the chores in the 10min rest time. 

Anyway, today I'll work on my significance section and a portion of my 6312 paper summary on propensity scores. I hope I get to finish the Significance paper today so tomorrow I can proceed with my Do Nothing Sundays. It's good for my mental health and well-being <3

Let's go!

Calories burned chart from Harvard

 I just want to put this link in my blog for future reference:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories-burned-in-30-minutes-for-people-of-three-different-weights

Different activities and age groups, with the corresponding burned calories. Good reference.

Quick post before starting work aka procrastinating

Well, we all have different ways of procrastinating. Mine is usually doing chores or writing a blog post prior to starting work. The reason in my head is, "Once I get this done, then I can concentrate on my work." It's not always the case. I sometimes get distracted in the middle of my Pomofocus session.

Anyway, I did say that this post will be short. 

Aujourdhui, je besoin finir le section de signification pour ma assignment dans la classe. I have been working on this since the weekend and I am STRUGGLING so much to pin this down. I need to read a lot of papers to get a good overview of how my research would fit in the bigger picture and how it can contribute to the already existing body of knowledge. Okay let's break it down in smaller steps:

1. Read journal article reviews on substance use, GxE interactions, and ADRD/aging. From here, identify three or four areas, usually they would be written as broad stroke statements. Home in on those.

2. After identifying these areas, look into each area more in-depth. Do this by looking for papers with the relevant keywords. Choose at least five papers to help support each area.

3. Then write your significance. 

I think that's it. I hope I'll be able to finish this today. The significance section need not be long; it should be detailed yet succinctly written. As Papa said, the ABCs of writing: Accuracy, Brevity, Clarity. 

We can do this!

One of the major challenges in my PhD studies: the Doctoral Candidacy Examination (aka quals/comps)

It's been an awfully long time since I wrote in here. I guess I was preoccupied with making up for lost time with Mico. Since his arrival last 18 December 2023, I had not written anything despite having lots of ideas and happenings that I wanted to write about. Such activities included spending Christmas 2023 and New Year 2024 with Mico's family in Perry Hall, MD; Mico's enrollment and orientation at UT Arlington for his MS in Mechanical Engineering; my upcoming MS in Public Health Sciences (Epidemiology) graduation; and just going through motions and daily activities of living together as husband and wife. Since our wedding in 2020 and me moving to the US in 2021, we have been living physically apart longer than we've been living physically together. It wasn't only until the end of 2023 we finally got to the point where we are living together again. Anyway, that was such a dreary explanation/justification of why I haven't been writing as of late. I shouldn't be giving such excuses to write because not writing means I lose the opportunity to hone my writing skills, lose the opportunity to document my memories. I lose a lot of things if I don't write my memories down. So I should be more aware and conscientious of writing in my blog. 

Anyway, let's move on. 

This post is all about my upcoming PhD Candidacy Examination which will take place in Summer 2024 (no exact dates yet). Another term used for the candidacy examination is either comprehensive exam/s or qualifying exam/s. There is also the term, preliminary exam or "prelims". Depending on the university you are in, this varies. For my school, we use comprehensive exam, shortened to "comps". But personally, I like using "quals". I guess I got used to this term when I first read Jorge Cham's PhD Comics way back 2007 and this was the term he used to describe the candidacy examination. My epi professor, who graduated from Boston University, would also use the term quals. So I guess it's just institution-specific which term to use, particularly here in the US. Moving forward, I will use quals/comps to mean the PhD Candidacy Examination.

Another thing I'd like to talk about before proceeding to my main point is, "What is a quals? Is quals a requisite to complete one's PhD studies?" 

To answer the first question, a quals/comps is a series/battery of exams given to a second or third year PhD student, which the student needs answer within a limited time frame. The goal of the quals is to test the student's knowledge and competency in the field s/he is pursuing. If one should pass the quals, the status of the PhD Student would now "ascend" or change to PhD Candidate. I say ascend because it is a step up from being "just" a PhD Student. When you encounter a PhD Candidate, you would immediately know that this person has already finished the required PhD coursework, has passed her/his quals/comps, and is already in the dissertation stage. A student only stays very briefly in the PhD Candidate phase as it is expected that the Candidate will be defending her/his proposal and dissertation within a year or two. PhD Candidates will also be seen or be in campus less than PhD students because they do not have classes to attend to anymore (or if there are, it'll just be one class in a semester compared to the usual three classes) and because they are busy writing their proposal/dissertation. Unless of course, the Candidate needs to stay in the lab to do data gathering, then they will mostly be found in the lab. But usually, PhD Candidates are left to their own device and would mostly interact with their advisers and less with their colleagues. This is because the dissertation stage would require a higher degree of concentration and focus to get into that flow state of thinking and writing. And this usually happens when one is undisturbed over extended periods.

To answer the second question, let me answer this with an annoying-because-it's-ambiguous response: it depends. Quals/comps is also country-specific in addition to it being institution-specific. Based on my limited experience and interactions with fellow PhD friends, there is no quals in countries like Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Netherlands, some UK universities, and mostly European universities. Countries that DO require quals include US, Canada, South Korea, Japan, and I think the Philippines also requires quals. So depending where you are pursuing your PhD, quals is or is not a requisite in one's PhD completion. 

Now let me get to my main point for this blog post: I have recently signified my intent to take my quals in the Summer Semester of this year. Below is the email I sent to the Department Chairs, and I CC-ed my adviser and the Director of MS and PhD Program:

Sending this email is part of the process to initiate the quals. According to our school's Handbook, an email must be sent to the Department Chair prior the semester when you would take your quals. In my case, I would sit my comps in summer so I need to email the Chair in the Spring semester. This is to give time for the Chair to form a Candidacy Examination Committee and that the committee members would have time to formulate your quals questions. As my concentration is epidemiology, I have two epidemiologists and one biostatistician in my committee. From what I have been told, my committee has already been formed and it's just a matter of informing me of the exact dates of my exam.

This email initiation is a huge deal for me. Why? First, it means that I have finished or close to finishing my PhD core coursework. Second, it means that I am already in my third year and would be entering my fourth and final year of PhD studies. Third, I should already prepare myself in doing my PhD dissertation - another major challenge in this PhD journey. And finally, it's one step closer to my dream of becoming a full-fledged scientist (how I define being a scientist can be explained in another post). The quals IS a big deal. Fail it once, you get another chance to retake. Fail it twice, you say goodbye to the PhD program. Yep. You get kicked out of the PhD program. So the quals is a make-or-break deal. Unlike in a dissertation, the defense itself is just a formality. You are able to consult and have multiple reviews and exchanges of the dissertation manuscript with your adviser thus, improving your manuscript as you further along the dissertation. Also, you will submit your dissertation manuscript to your committee, have them review it, and they can suggest minor or major revisions and comments on the paper before you can formally present and defend your dissertation. No one actually flunks and gets removed from the program because of the dissertation. Unless of course, it's due to some egregious error on your end that merits expulsion (i.e. plagiarism or data fabrication/falsification).

Bottom line is, taking the candidacy examination is no small matter as it can dictate whether you stay or leave the PhD program. And I just took the first step in realising my quals. I get nervous and anxious just thinking about it that my heart palpitates. Anyway, I have to make sure I nail the quals. Otherwise, all this PhD work will be for naught. 

Let's go!