It has been 13 years since my last research conference

 

I last submitted a research abstract for an international conference in 2010, when I was still a graduate student in UP. I did three/four oral presentations back then: one in Castellaneta Marina, one in Vienna, one in Bangkok, and one in Davao, all of which were partially subsidized by UP. A big chunk of financial support still came from the Benny&Edna Mendoza Scholarship Fund (aka my parents' pocket). 😂

And here we are again, 13 years later, I would submit an abstract in the field of PUBLIC HEALTH. Who the fuck would have thought I will be doing research in this field?!?! 😂 I don't think, even in my wildest dreams, I would be submitting an abstract (not yet presenting, my abstract has not been accepted yet) to a public health conference??? This is indeed a first! I chuckle as I write this blog entry, and most likely so will my former colleagues, because my shift from disaster risk/environmental science research to public health/epidemiology is one hell of a leap. I still struggle sometimes to wrap my head around concepts in epidemiology and biostatistics, much more about concepts in Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) research. Like, seriously? Disaster/environment now you're doing ADRD? I knowwww! It's unfathomable at times for me too. I'm still trying to find that research link between the two fields. I do strongly hope that someday, I can marry the two fields and be a niche researcher in that area. 

Until then,

A memory from my master's in UP Diliman

When I looked at my Facebook Memories today, photos of my master's lab notebook appeared. A flood of memories resurfaced in my mind. I started my master's in Environmental Science at UP Diliman in 2007. I technically did not finish the MS degree, but I obtained a postgraduate diploma in environmental science This means I finished all the required coursework for envi sci students, and more. It's because I extended my stay in UP up until 2016 and this required me to take two more subjects as penalty courses, wow. Hahaha. Then one time, I did an AWOL, I was unable to enroll my residency in UP, and I needed to go up to the Chancellor to reinstate my status as a graduate student, haha! 

Anyway, here are snippets of my lab notebook:

Such notetaking I learned from my undergraduate Biochemistry degree. In one term (we do a trimester per year), we have AT LEAST TWO CHEMISTRY LAB CLASSES. And in these classes, we needed to write and submit our lab journals prior to class. The sections are: Introduction, Materials and Method (glassware and equipment, drawing included if you're feeling diligent; reactants used, molecular formula and weight included, with drawing if organic chemistry lab; and of course the whole experimental method), Results (this is where you record everything), and Discussion section. After our experiments, we needed to submit a typed lab report where we discuss our findings prior the next experiment. And this went on for four years (for me. others graduated in three years), excluding my labs in biology. Including my labs in biology, my gad, half of my life in undergrad I really spent in the lab. If my math is correct, we have at least NINE chemistry lab classes per year, and we have three years for the whole degree, that's 27 lab classes! So you can just imagine how ingrained in us is the value of writing and keeping a lab journal/notebook. 

Chemistry was fucking difficult. But I really enjoyed it. Perhaps if the Chemistry Department isn't such a downer, a judger, and prejudiced against the underperformers (which I was at that time), I would have pursued a graduate degree in chemistry. 

Oh well. I'm glad to have proven myself otherwise. I have a master's degree in ANU, and I'm taking my PhD in the U.S.. I think I have come a long way since my bachelor's graduation in 2006. It took me quite a while, a bit longer compared to others, but hey, I'm here now in the US. 

Padayon!!!

Last day of Summer Term 2023

Finally, the end has come. In my final week of the Summer Semester, I did two presentations, one poster and one oral, and one final paper. It may sound simple, but the amount of work that was put into birthing these two class projects was enormous. I had to create a conducive environment for me to be able to work uninterruptedly, but at the same time accommodate my chores. I needed to establish a rhythm of on-work/off-work, without getting too distracted. It was tough as my rats were being cute most of the time, it was so hard to resist not to go to them and pet them.

I thank the Pomodoro Technique for my work rhythm. It helps me accomplish tasks at an organized and orderly way. Twenty-five minutes on, five minutes off. Although sometimes, I admit, I'm not able to follow the breaks. When you're just focusing on extended periods and you have those a-ha moments while working, the 5-min breaks can be a distraction. But I just pause my Pomofocus app, resume my work, and when I feel I hit a wall, I press the resume button on the app, and start my 5-min break. During breaks I stand up, walk around, do some quick exercises like squats, push ups, dumbbell exercises, bulgarian splits, and chair-assisted pistol squats. I like it. I get to raise my heart rate and by the time I go back to my seat, I'm able to focus more. It's really effective for me. 

Anyway, I still have a paper due by midnight but at least I can be more relaxed now. I know it'll be easier. Also, I still need to write an abstract for the APHA. But that wouldn't be until 31 July. And the abstract length is only 250 words. It'll be a cinch (I fucking hope so). 

By the way, here are some photos of myself presenting my poster in class:

Procrastinating... again

I feel like every time I come here prior to working, I'm procrastinating, haha! I was supposed to go to class this morning but I woke up with an eye stye, and it was hurting. I think it's best to rest this up first. Hopefully it wouldn't worsen anymore as I have two presentations coming up, one tomorrow and one on Thursday, ugh. 

Anyway, I just wanted to write in here and just share my thoughts and feelings. Will probably be writing again tomorrow (or not), depending on my procrastination. I still have no idea how to do my GIS project, but we can figure that out today. I need to nail this shit down. Otherwise, I'll be cramming tomorrow, Wednesday, and the presentation is on Thursday morning. Plus, I have the paper due on Friday midnight. I guess that's when I'll be completely liberated. I can hardly wait.

Meanwhile, putting this meme here:

I'm already fucked up during my PhD. I'll be fucked up more once I graduate. And I'll be fucked up most when I become faculty. Harhar. Joke's on me!

Today, I'm just so damn tired

 

Gusto ko lang matulog. Ayoko na magtrabaho.

Today's thoughts: PhD vs Master's

Well, hello! I didn't realise it's been 12 days since my last post. I thought it's been only a week. Time flies quickly when you're doing many things all at once and keeping up with deadlines. It's been hectic these past two months, but more so in the last two weeks of July when the summer semester is ending. There's barely room to take a break as assignments and projects just keep on coming and piling. This summer semester is indeed a sprint, but a 400-m sprint where a bloodhound is nipping at your heels. You fall, deadlines catch up on you, you cram your work, you don't understand anything what you're doing, you don't sleep, you get stressed and cranky, you turn in a mediocre work, and overall you'll just feel so crappy it fucking sucks. That's PhD life. Well, I could say that's graduate school, but there are some nuanced differences between a master's and a PhD. 

Someone asked me this recently, the difference between the two graduate degrees. Basing everything off on my experience, PhD is more intense as you compete with yourself --- yourself as defined by the beliefs and principles you've learned and upheld since childhood. For example, it is only now in PhD school that I realised I'm a perfectionist, meaning I don't easily submit anything that minimally satisfies the question; I am not satisfied if I think I have not fully elaborated on the answer. There's a perpetual weighing and debating in my head whether or not the answers I'm giving are substantial, if they make sense, and if I'm able to put forth the arguments coming from different angles. It sucks because I get stuck answering the questions, which in turn makes me stressed, and for what? This also applies true when writing manuscripts. There's so much processing going on in my head that I'm not able to write anything down because I'm already stopped by these arguments in my head. That's wrong. I can't move forward and accomplish anything with this. So I think I should really have more compassion towards myself, that if I'm not able to elaborate fully on a topic, then it's okay, just let go. I think a lot of PhD students fall in this trap. That's why many of PhD students as well suffer from Imposter Complex. We always think we're not good enough, so we need to always go beyond what is needed, and that is going to be detrimental for our growth. Ninety percent out the door is better than 100% on the desk. 

Compared to a master's, remembering my time at ANU, I didn't feel the HUGE need of going beyond what was needed. If anything, I had difficulty even meeting what's needed. So when I'm doing my assignments, my focus was just delivering what was needed, making it sound it's important, and satisfying the requirement of having at least one non-strawman argument. I wouldn't say that ANU was a walk in the park. It was challenging too, but perhaps it was so because I also had extra-curricular activities to juggle. Moreover, I had a social life in ANU and interacting with fellow students is very much encouraged. Here at UNTHSC, EVERYHING is CURRICULAR. Once I'm done with my coursework assignments, it's time to shift my attention to research work. Extra-curricular? WTH is that? Ain't nobody got time for that shit. Hahaha. It was really fun in ANU as there were a lot of mixers and get-togethers for graduate students. Overall, in a master's degree, your focus is to learn how to learn and get your feet wet in a particular field. 

PhD is a whole different animal. PhD REQUIRES you to become an independent researcher after you graduate. That means you establish yourself to be proficient in leading scientific projects. And, of course, for you to do that, you must know the ins and outs of your research topic. And you must have displayed a high level of competency in the field through your published works. In short, pursuing a PhD prepares you for career path of being a scientist. A master's degree prepares you to continue your present job with some additional knowledge gained. 

Again, this is all just based off from my experience, which is very limited. Other graduate students, of course, have different definitions and experiences of PhD vs Master's.

Anyway, time to get back to work. This was just a break for me in between working on my papers. 

Until then, 

(yes, that's a comma)

Imposter complex attacks again

Sometimes, I wonder if it's Imposter Complex that's attacking me, or my Dunning-Kruger Complex. Or maybe it attacks me both, depending on the situation. But I would be definitely attacked often by the IC, especially in an ultra competitive environment like academia. It's fucking debilitating. Often, I get paralyzed by IC. Destructive and denigrating thoughts about myself would ALWAYS crop up in my mind while doing something, and this will result in me overthinking and overworking, most often to my detriment. It's exhausting. 

Oh my, what uneven eyes you have! (ᗒ ᗨᗕ)

What's worse, my overly competitive personality is starting to affect my perception of other people. Just because someone else is accomplishing more (at face value) than you doesn't mean you are already underachieving, right? Each individual has their own strengths and weaknesses. But then I would feel so insecure and all these negative thoughts would take over me. Negative thoughts towards myself and the other person. That is BAD. It shouldn't be like that. I know it shouldn't but it happens. 

So what's the solution? Well, the panacea for everything seems to be: MINDFULNESS MEDITATION. And my friend, who's a psychiatry clinician, told me I need to train my thought pattern to eschew these negative thoughts about myself. I need to consciously NOT think of these negative thoughts. And Brene Brown also advocates compassion whenever we think ill of ourselves. 

I've been doing some meditation recently but I stopped. It's time to CONSCIOUSLY resume it. I should keep a tracker for me to be motivated.

Kamote nights with ArcGIS

It took me more than eight hours to complete these two maps, rests included. Rest means watching Death Note. Ang hirap, especially if it's my first foray into actually constructing such maps in ArcGIS. But I'm enjoying it. This reminds me of the time I used to do a lot of layouts in CorelDraw during my stint as a URA-1 in NIGS. It's just time-consuming though. In time, I'll be more proficient and efficient. :)

More kamote moments with R

 

Actually, it's not so much about bad handling in R. There's chatGPT (thank goodness) to ask for the right syntax and commands. But what's more important is the analyst's expertise in understanding the codebook contents and the cleaning/recoding of the data prior to analysis. That's what's making this difficult. Ugh.

My baby rat, Henry, turns 1yr10mos

 Last 29 June 2023, my baby boy Henry turned 1yr10mos old! For a rat, he's already considered a senior because rats only live up to two years on average. Three years for a rat is already a stretch. Here are some of our photos together. <3 

When I first got Harry and Henry, they were three months old at that time, both were scared and acclimatizing to their new environment. I would get a lot of scratches and hisses and bites (yes, finger bites that bleed) from them whenever I attempt to put my hand inside their cage. Clearly, I was wrongly handling their introduction into my home. I was a first-time rat parent so despite reading a lot of information online about rat handling, it was still different and more difficult to handle them in person.

It took them three months to trust me, and it was only then they would allow me to pet them over extended periods. But I still wasn't permitted to carry or take photos with them without being scratched or violently weaseling out of my grip. Until Harry's death, he still wouldn't allow me to handle him over extended periods, but would occasionally allow me to pick him up, stroke him for about a minute, then squirm his way out of my chokehold (I jest, of course). Nakakagigil kasi that's why I end up smooshing them.

This photoshoot with Henry is quite rare, as I don't usually have my phone near me when we play or I spend quality time with him. Plus, he was still a bit dazed from his nap here so he's still docile, haha! 

I'm glad I was able to take these photos. <3 Oh Henry, my Henry! I love you so! <3 my baby rat <3

p.s. You'll be getting a playmate soon!!!