Today's thoughts: Week 15 of Fall 2023

I'm down to Week 15 of  16 of my Fall 2023 semester. As I write this entry down, I'm listening to Berlin Philharmonic's rendition of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings Op. 11. It's a marvelous piece of classical music, one that I can listen to on a loop all day long. 

Anyway. 

Well, it has come down to this penultimate week, the week where everything comes crashing as final projects are due by Week 16. And I have four major things to do: 1) EPID final project; 2) EPID take home comps-style finals; 3) PHED teaching demo; and 4) BIOS final project. The pressing and most difficult of all are the EPID ones. My epi courses are the ones I find the most difficult, like really. Perhaps because all these concepts are new? Biostatistics, in a way, I've learned them since undergrad and throughout my master's. But epi... Omigosh super alien to me. And there are numerous nuances into it, it's ghastly. Ghastly because it requires you to learn and understand all these nuances to be able to have sensible and scientifically-sound answers to problems, which takes so much thinking and processing it's enough to make someone go crazy. Seriously. But this can be just me, most likely because I have no prior knowledge about epidemiology and everything is so new that my mind is having a stupendously arduous time comprehending higher level concepts. Ugh.

Nonetheless, I find epi interesting enough that I'm shifting gears from environmental science/DRRM to epidemiology. I can still marry both fields, but right now, I can't. Maybe in my post-doc there will be an opportunity.  

Out of the four pressing tasks to do, number one priority is the EPID final project, as it's both urgent and important. Second is the EPID finals, as it's deadline is on 5 December, followed by a teaching demo on 6 December for PHED, and finally the BIOS final project whose deadline is 8 December. 

After all this, I AM FREE!!! Woohoo! FREE TO DO RESEARCH WORK!!! Hahahaha! 😂😂😂 All these coursework assignments hinder me from writing papers and doing stats analysis, ugh. But I love research and the more time I get to spend writing, the better for me. Less distractions (from coursework shenanigans) mean more writing time, which I love. 

Okay, we can do this!!! Let's do this, woo!!! 🎉🎉🎉

p.s. Mico arrives by 18 December, I can't wait!!! 💓