A New & Splendid Life

don't worry, be jewish!

2011-06-01T12:47:00.000-04:00

is a slogan I saw on a t-shirt at the beach today- my second favorite next to a slight twist on the epic rock tee, "Guns & Moses." Tel Aviv so far has been kind to me: a bleached city full of sun and sand and friends. As always, I am endlessly amused by the tiny details of a foreign land: babies naked on the beach, strange signs warning "danger of death!" whose Hebrew explanations I cannot understand, and impassioned elderly women arguing loudly on the sidewalk. On the promenade, I take a deep breathe and inhale the at-once familiar and exotic smell of sunscreen, sweat, and the blooms of the purple Sigalon trees. I'm a little in love with the novelty of it all. And tonight promises to be wonderful: meeting up with an old friend from China, hopefully to have some hummus and falafel (although I have been warned not to eat it, given that the American version will be forever ruined).

So, after two years of perpetual anxiety, so begins a month in which my only goal is to stop worrying...and be Jewish. I think am up for the challenge.

a new and splendid life, take 5

2011-05-30T20:22:00.000-04:00

And so begins my new and splendid life, parts 4 and 5. Moved down to North Carolina this past week and, in typical haphazard fashion, am now in the airport awaiting my flight to Israel. Although I'm really bummed to leave all my friends in New Haven, honestly, I couldn't be happier about being in North Carolina. The last two years have been too cold for me, in every sense of the word. I need a little light in my life...which I got yesterday in the form of fireflies. Fireflies! I was so happy to see them. Those tiny little bugs always signaled the beginning of summer when I was a kid, but I haven't seen them since leaving Ohio. I couldn't help myself; I just started giggling spontaneously. I guess that's the good part about living alone; no one knows when you're acting like a weird. (Except Victor. Always watching, always judging).

Now, after 12 hours in the Atlanta airport, I'm about to catch a standby flight to Tel Aviv. My wise and ever-resourceful friend Max helped hook me up with a sweet standby gig, but it means that I arrived in Atlanta at 7am this morning. So far I've taken 2 naps, visited McDonald's twice (gotta keep a nutritional epidemiologist in business, y'all), and talked to a couple of army guys who are deploying to Afghanistan today. I feel gross and homeless, but talking to a couple of men my age who are about to leave for a year puts things in perspective awfully quickly. A timely reminder, given it's Memorial Day.

Quick note to anyone stuck in an airport for long periods of time: search out the chairs without armrests. They make nearly perfect beds! In the ATL airport: Gate E12. Glorious. And on that note...

Bon Voyage!

happy easter

2011-04-23T00:09:00.000-04:00

It's Easter weekend, and while I'm only sporadically spiritual-and even less religious- I find myself mulling over this simple line:

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough."

It strikes me that I spend far too much time thinking about myself. Too much time wallowing in self-pity and doubt. Far too many hours thinking about how I have failed or worse--how others have failed me. And not nearly enough time being grateful for all the incredible gifts, large and small, that appear in my life daily.

Today is also Earth Day. When I was little, my dad and I used to wade through the river behind our house on Earth Day and collect trash. I thought he was the coolest guy in the world, and I was gung-ho about environmental stuff for years after. Meanwhile, my friend's dad was one of the activists responsible for getting Earth Day started. How cool is that? I'm grateful for people whose passion makes the world a better place. And hoping someday I become one of them.

a new direction

2011-01-20T15:57:00.000-05:00

I'm not entirely sure anyone reads this anymore, given that I did a terrible job continuing posting as I traveled around China. In my defense, Internet was very limited and somehow it just didn't seem as exciting to post months later about the funky tofu I got from that street vendor or the ancient Tibetan cowboy who tried first to grope me and then feed me yogurt....

In any case, this blog is taking yet another new direction as I finish up my master's and make the transition to a doctoral program, wherever it is that I end up. One of the things I spent a great deal thinking about in China is the concept of amor fati, which is a Nietzchen concept meaning "love of fate." The essential idea is to find the beauty and truth in everything--the good, the bad, the ugly. To find a little joy even in the mundane. I realized: I don't need to travel around the world to find something beautiful meaningful. All I need to do is open my eyes now and then and see what is around me. So often we all run around from activity to activity without pausing to appreciate the the icicles on the awnings, the steaming mug of tea, the new stash of Post-Its in the office cupboard. So from here on out, I'm going to post a little something that makes me happy, if for no other reason than to...well, make me happy.

To begin, the poem that inspired it all:

Amor Fati

by Katha Pollitt

Everywhere I look I see my fate.
In the subway. In a stone.
On the curb where people wait for the bus in the rain.
In a cloud. In a glass of wine.

When I go for a walk in the park it's a sycamore leaf.
At the office, a dull pencil.
In the window of Woolworth's my fate looks back at me
through the shrewd eyes of a dusty parakeet.

Scrap of newspaper, dime in a handful of change,
down what busy street do you hurry this morning,
an overcoat among overcoats,

with a train to catch, a datebook full of appointments?
If I called you by my name would you turn around
or vanish round the corner,
leaving a faint odor of orange-flower water,
tobacco, twilight, snow?

I love Katha Pollit: her poetry is so simple, yet elegant and poignant. I wish I could write with such clarity! I love the possibility of this poem: the idea of finding joy in the grayness of a subway stop, of the humanity of people pressed together in the cold on their morning commute, of a solitary glass of wine, of a mysterious stranger passing by.

laos part three: the quarter-century mark

2010-08-27T00:17:00.000-04:00

I want to write about the most perfect day while it is still fresh in my mind. This morning, Ana and I grabbed a quick Lao coffee-to-go and hopped in a van through the rolling countryside to elephant camp. We cut through the fog blanketing the river in a motorized canoe before and suddenly, there they were. A small herd of elephants, just chomping away. After lots of photo-taking, I scrambled up one of them and took her to the river to bathe. Submerged in the water with Hambi, my elephant, with trunks flying and water spraying everywhere, I felt such unadulterated joy. Neither Ana nor I could stop laughing--we were like two little girls, chortling with delight. It's been a long time since I've been that happy.

The elephants are both mighty and strangely delicate. You can step and climb on them as you would a ladder or a (very large) stool; their hides are thick and each toenail the size of my foot. Their hair is course like wire and their trunks strong and curious. And yet their eyes are so soulful--expressive and fringed with long lashes--and their ears are soft and exquisite. Riding an bathing elephant with your legs enveloped by its ears is like having your entire lower body embraced by the softest, warmest blanket.

After the bath, we went to elephant camp, where the animals hungrily tossed back literal tons of grass and bamboo before heading out on a trek through the Lao jungle. We took turns riding in the "chair" atop the elephant and on its neck, with our friendly mahout explaining to us how to tell Hamong to hao (stop), bai bai (go), and san de lai (very good elephant!).

After our sojourn, we took another van ride to a series of waterfalls, which also strangely turned out to be home to a black bear rehabilitation center. After wolfing down a lunch of fried rice and veggies, we spent the remainder of th eafternoon swimming in a pool of crystalline water. There was a waterfall which I climbed halfway down and just sat in for a solid hour, shivering with pure joy. After about an hour of contemplation, I decided to jump off the falls...and by decided, I should say that two small Lao children tricked me into it because I was too frightened to go alone! Finally, as the sun sunk into its pre-twilight glow, we grabbed a hasty snack of fried coconut before heading off to a local Hmong village. Honestly, I wish we hadn't gone--I felt so touristy and awful traipsing through and snapping photos of napping babies, straw huts, and the public television set in the center of the village. It was so different than the Chinese villages we'd stayed where, although waigouren, we were able to converse and contribute in the local community--or at least to the income of the families we lived with, however briefly.

Otherwise, it was the perfect start to what hopefully will turn out to be a great year. Here's to a quarter-century!

Ana & I & our Mahout

One of many gorgeous waterfalls

These kids look cute but they were tricky!

Black Bear Stare!

Most adorable Hmong baby

Hmong Village

Finishing off the day with some Lao BBQ!

laos part two

2010-08-23T23:05:00.000-04:00

The countryside, from the admittedly limited yet spectacular window of the sleeper bus, is considerably poorer than China. Many houses sit on stilts, with roofs of straw, and in the dusty courtyards you can see very young mothers nursing babies or groups of older women, clad in black sarongs, clustered around a pump for bathing. Luang Prabang is very beautiful, but very touristy--in a "my parents would like this place" sort of way, which I haven't experienced much since arriving in China. It's disorienting to see so many waigouren (foreigners) in one place; to not be yelled at, "hello! hello!" by young and old men, like little parrots, all the time. The Lao people, from what I can tell, are friendly and soft-spoken; none of the strident tones, spitting, or near-shouting which pepper the language in Kunming.

This morning we strolled into a wat, or Buddhist monastery, where a group of young monks and a European couple invited us to sit and practice English with them. We swapped words for trading cards for awhile, learning that several of the monks had come to the monastery at a very young age--fifteen for some. Although sending one child to the monastery is customary for Lao families, I was astonished at the journey these monks--kids, really--had taken. Several were from villages a few hours' bus ride away, which in the Western world is nothing more than a slightly lengthy trip to the local Ikea. But for these young men, life in Luang Prabang is a world away from these tiny mountain villages, from which most of their families will never leave and to where they return but a handful of times. Talking with them, it dawns on me how utterly relative distance is when traveling. I'm reminded of a line from a favorite poem, "The distance is deeper in my heart than miles can show" and just how far away even a blocks can be when something separates you from the people you love.

Of course, technology can shrink distance...a lesson the monks apparently have learned as well, given they asked me for my name and email so they could "Facebook me." Guess I'd better be a bit more careful about which pictures to post...

laos part one: a banner year, a splendid day

2010-08-15T11:20:00.001-04:00

Here I am in Luang Prabang, about the celebrate the quarter-century mark with Ana, a Costa Rican girl I’ve only known a few weeks. I think it’s telling, the difference between my 24^th and 25^th birthdays. Last year, I was sitting around a make-shift bonfire at Lake Erie with my two best friends and our long-term boyfriends. We drank wine and played the kind of games you can only play when you’ve known each other for years; when you love each other like family. This year, I’m alone in Southeast Asia, gallivanting around places I’ve never heard of, riding elephants and drinking laolao, the local whiskey, with near strangers.

I may not be writing with glee at the moment, and quite frankly, knowing my perpetually (and hopelessly) romantic soul, may not until I make the inevitable mistake of falling in love again. But for the first time in a very long time, I am content. Perhaps my newfound sense of calm has a little—or a lot—to do with the fact that I am in Laos, a country of pristine mountains, gentle people, and Theravada Buddhism. This particular brand of Buddhism stresses three principle aspects of existence: dukkha (suffering, unsastifactoriness, disease), annica (impermanence, transience of all things), and annatta (non-substantiality or non-essentiality of reality; the idea that there is no permanent soul). Understanding annica reveals that no experience, no state of mind, no physical object lasts. Both joy and pain dissipate, and it is trying to hold onto these things—experiences, objects, people—that are constantly changing that creates dukkha. Anatta is the understanding that there is no apart of this ever-changing world that we can point to and declare, “This is me” or “This is God,” or “This is the soul.” The point of all of this is simple yet glorious: nibbana, or the extinction of all causes of pain and suffering.

It seems to me that the majority of my suffering has been a result of my inability to embrace annica. The transient nature of my life has left me lost and reeling in confusion. It dawns on me that although I feel so far from everyone here, even when I am “at home” I am still apart from those whom I love most. The realization hits me like a sack of bricks: I have grown to love New Haven, my life, my friends there—and yet, a year from now I may be across the country, never to see most of these people or places I treasure again. “I’ve lost two cities, lovely ones,” Bishop once wrote—and it’s hard not to sink into a self-pitying cocoon once you start thinking that way, missing people, missing things. Loving and embracing each experience and person in that very moment—appreciating its beauty in the present, and then letting it go; this practice is my goal for my 25^th year. As one Buddhist monk pointed out profoundly, “Patience is a practice. The only way to cultivate it is to remind yourself constantly that the only place your life is occurring is every moment.”

Even though I feel slightly treacherous for saying so, Luang Prabang is a refreshing change from China. While more expensive, the city’s calm nature, cleanliness, French-style architecture and Western-syle toilets are all a welcome change from the restless, vibrant, filthy Kunming. The people are friendly and sweet: brightly colored tuk tuk drivers line the streets, inquiring, “Where are you going, miss?” (The answer to which, of course, I do not know on so many levels.) Sandwich stands and pancake makers beckon from the sidewalks with their tantalizing smells and smiling faces. Monks, clad in simple orange robes, pace the dusty streets at dawn, moving silently and peacefully along each of the two rivers that ensconce the city. I think I’m going to like it here.

back in action

2010-08-13T19:39:00.000-04:00

After wandering through Southeast Asia without internet access (or, in China, access to non-censored internet, including this blog), I'm back in the US. I'm still a bit woozy from the nearly 30 hours of travel; a sense of disorientation that will not wear off anytime soon considering I'm flying out to Seattle tomorrow to visit my newly engaged sis. Strange, to be traveling in the States (toilet paper? air conditioning? no smoking?) and with my parents nonetheless, although I'm looking forward to it. My trip's not all pleasure though--meeting with some professors at U of Washington to discuss PhD options, so I'm actually quite nervous. It's hard to believe that after all that work and anxiety just two years ago, that I'm about to plunge right back in again. That I have no idea where I'll be living or doing this time next year, although I have my dreams. I've caught a bit of a travel bug, that's for sure--both literally and figuratively. Literally, as I'm still sick, after nearly 3 months of chronic GI infections (I never knew there were so many ways to be ill. Forget nutrition as a public health concern in China... I think perhaps they should get soap and sinks outside toilets and consider washing hands before meal preparation before getting to the contents of those meals!) Figuratively as in I've fallen in love with the itinerant lifestyle, and am already daydreaming about my next venture (Argentina next summer, con suerte). In any case, I'm going to backdate all my travel writing and photos on this blog before school starts again, so here goes...

feliz dia del padre

2010-06-20T00:43:00.019-04:00

I originally wrote this essay with the intention of submitting it Fremont News Messenger for publication today. Unfortunately, I’m an airhead (blame it on the blonde) and missed the deadline while I was gallivanting around the rice paddies. The good news is, I’m no longer limited to 250 words. Especially now, given the recent passing of my dad’s father, I just want him to know how much I love him and miss him. I’m not sure they know this, but there are a lot of times—even here, so far away—when I just can’t believe how I got so damn lucky to have the parents I do. I don’t know where I’d be without them. So here goes:

Lying under the summer sky, my sister and I shrieked with laughter, shattering the silence of the bay. “No way, Dad!” We’d yelp as we secretly clung to each other under our sleeping bags.

From the boat’s cuddy our father grinned, satisfied with his ghastly tale about the Headless Horseman haunting the Portage River drawbridge. His stories always included a rich history of the area: battles on the lake, noble Native Americans, valiant settlers. We didn’t realize it then, but our dad has always shared life’s lessons in a magical way.

As children, he taught us through his love for Lake Erie, as he revealed the beauty of the waves, the triumph of a fat perch on the line, and the importance of respecting nature and people alike. When we got older, his lessons moved to our driveway basketball court, where the sky darkened and dinner cooled as I practiced endless free throws. He taught me patience, persistence, and unconditional love as he waited out my poor shooting skills and surly teenage attitude. In college, he’d write letters. Homesick or heartbroken, I’d find a note in my mailbox, reminding me that, “this too shall pass.” Now, as I navigate the nebulous world of adulthood, he reminds me of one simple rule by which to live: help people. Be kind. Focus on family.

Today, half a world away on Father’s day, I smile and remember those summer days long-ago, knowing how just lucky I am to have such a wonderful father—and friend.

the hills are alive....

2010-06-18T10:42:00.004-04:00

After finishing data collection last week, a bunch of us decided to get out of the city for a few days and head
to Jian Shui, a small city in southern Yunnan, followed by theYuanyang rice terraces.

Now, I’m no stranger to traveling on a budget. I’m a grad student, I’m poor—I’ve learned not to expect much from my accommodations. Or so I thought. On Sunday night, my roommate and I took a bumpy busride to Jian Shui to meet the rest of our friends. We showed up at the hotel, which compensated for its namelessness with holographic wallpaper and disco music. The first room we went to was filthy: skid-mark wall stains, cigarette-burned comforters, and more mosquitoes than I’ve ever seen in a natural environment. We decided to check out a second room. Room#2 was slightly cleaner, but the clouds of smoke hovering above the beds were less than appetizing. We entered Room #3 to find it was already occupied—by a cockroach. Shit. Choosing between which insect with whom I would sleep is not a dilemma I thought I’d ever face. But, it was late and we were tired, so we rationalized: a roach in one, a roach in all. So we climbed into bed, praying for no bedbugs, and turned off the lights. Two seconds later, Hila turned the lights back on. Bad move: roaches scattered across the floor like shy kids on the dance floor.

After a relatively sleepless night, we woke up and explored the town. Jian Shui’s a neat little city, composed mostly of alleyways, shops, and tiny restaurants. Most of these places have only a table or two; eating in one is like sitting in someone’s kitchen while they prepare the food a few feet away. The food is always fresh, usually from the market just a few hours prior, and usually quite tasty: rice with stir-fried eggs, tomatoes, or vegetables with plenty of la jiao, a searing spice I dump on everything. The specialty in Jian Shui is cho dofu, or literally, “stinky tofu.” The place reeks of the stuff; I never knew beans could smell so bad. ‘Course, most dishes apparently arrive with a side of bacteria, which now have taken up residence inside my GI tract. I’m pretty sure a small Chinese dragon has been chilling in my gut for a few weeks now. Everyone here’s some stage of sick though, so you learn to get over it and keep on movin’.

One bus, one van, and one taxi ride later, we made it to the rice terraces in Yuanyang. Truly, these mountains and villages and people are indescribable. The terraces are over 2000 years old, and in many ways it seems as though not much has changed. The villages that pepper the mountainside are home to several of Yunnan’s ethnic minorities. The women wear these brightly colored headdresses and carry woven baskets full of fruits and vegetables as they trek over the mountains to the market. Food is so central to life here: harvesting it, finding it, eating it. Pigs, cows, and roosters roam everywhere; they are slaughtered and cooked right on the cobblestone streets. The couple whose home we stayed in cooked for us each day—vegetarian, per request. Never have simple greens and rice tasted so delicious.

We encountered one couple on the top of the mountain on their way home to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival. The man was carrying a live hen upside down in one hand; the woman had a giant basket full of leechy fruit and other goods strapped to her back. The irony of this situation is that we were all dressed to hike: backpacks, boots, snacks. The woman? She was carrying an oversized bedazzled handbag and was wearing heels. High heels on a mountain! Never again will I complain about uncomfortable footwear, that’s for sure. Later, we were treated to an impromptu concert on a cliff when a group of men, also returning home, stopped to play their recorders for us. There’s truly nothing like the sound of music with villagers and cows and roosters on a cliff overlooking ancient farmland.

We had great weather during the day, but the nights were chilly and rainy. Even so, I hiked alone to the overlook one evening to watch the fog reach its cold grey fingers down the mountains. Never have I seen something so haunting and beautiful. The next morning, we got up before the sun to watch it rise over the paddies. With the wind rippling through the rice and the clouds swirling around us, we watched in silence as the sun rose and crested over the peaks. Breathtaking.

So yes, I slept on dirty cots with Mickey Mouse comforters and cigarette burns. I shared a room with a small army of cockroaches. I got violently ill while standing inside a cloud. I took more than one shower literally standing on top of the toilet. But it was worth it. Incredibly worth it.

Kind of pretty, I suppose...

Might have had a lil' Sound of Music moment at the top....

The world's cutest kid....until you notice HE'S GOT A GUN!

runnin' down the road, tryin' to loosen my load

2010-06-13T03:34:00.001-04:00

I’ve started running again. Well, by running, I mean a pathetic combination of running and walking, or as I used to call it when I’d go with my dad- slogging (slow jogging) (sorry Dad!). I think it’d be fair to say that most Chinese grandmothers could outrun me at this point. That is, if Chinese people ran. So far I haven’t seen anyone exercising outside-and usually, the hordes that are walking are moving at a snail’s pace…which means I look even more out of place with my blonde ponytail and glasses as I bound through the streets.

Running in Kunming is like an obstacle course. I don’t use an iPod for fear of certain death from motorbike, bicycle-and-cart, stray dog, stray child, or one of a million other moving targets flooding the sidewalks. The worst would be running into one of the human toilets: parents forming a makeshift potty with their arms as their toddler pees on the street (made all the easier by the well-placed hole in the baby’s bottoms).

I try to be attentive, especially in the circles-of-death, or the enormous tunnel-like crossings where motorcycles and bicycles and pedestrians stray through the shadows and chances of survival hover around 50 percent. Still, I find myself daydreaming, mostly about other routes I used to run. When I need energy, I think of New Haven: nothing motivates like the omnipresent threat of muggers. When I need calm, I remember my Arizona path. Running through the empty streets at twilight, I’d come into view of another sun-lit mountain range every time I turned a corner. Bliss.

Mostly, though, I daydream of Chicago. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I left. Perhaps it’s being in a city again—a real one, with people and sidewalk shops and movement—that makes me miss it. Perhaps I’ll always be a bit homesick for the city I loved for so long. In any case, I like to imagine myself running a familiar path. Down the tree-lined sidewalks of North Orchard. Left at Fullerton—sprint through the Clark intersection before the stoplight timer ticks out. Jog through the park. Cruise down Lakeshore, occasionally racing the next runner ahead of me, more often cranking up the Sufjan Stephens and zoning out. Hit my stride as the blue of Lake Michigan stretches endlessly to my left and the skyline teases from the right. Spit out a few gnats. Pause for a stretch on North Avenue beach. Ogle the volleyball players. Turn around. Cool down through Boystown, dodging waitresses serving summer brews at Wilde’s and stray Cubs fans fresh from Wrigley Field. Sprint the homestretch back on Orchard. Take a breather on the bench in the garden in front of my apartment. Watch a butterfly or two. Go home.

Home. Where is that now? Where the heart is? Or, more likely, where my internet connection is? In any case, I'm off to explore some rice paddies for a few days, and then maybe on to do some hiking in Dali and Lijiang. Vamos a ver!

it's the end of the rrrrrrrrrrrroad

2010-06-11T07:16:00.000-04:00

I did something sorta bad. Well, before I explain, answer me this: is it wrong to go out with someone for purely anthropological reasons? I asked this myself, and then started to worry about the guys who may or may not have gone out with me for similar reasons—then I said naw, no way—I’m far too comfortable in my blonde, Midwestern genericity (yes, I just made that word up. Whatevs). I’m sure any guy going out with me for less than honorable reasons was in it for other reasons. Probably, my car. Who wouldn’t want a free ride in a beat-up ’99 Cavalier with a hood that’s attached with a string and only a 90% chance of starting?

Anyway, so I went out with this guy I met a few weeks ago, only because he is Chinese and I thought it would make for an interesting story. And yes, as I was sitting in his car last night, I thought to myself: “Wow, you really are an asshole.” I admit, going out with someone only so I could tell people about it later made me feel guilty. But, like any good former Catholic school girl, I did it anyway.

So he picks me up and takes me to this restaurant by Dianchi Lake for dinner. Because my Chinese is limited to food-and-drink words (the important stuff, obviously), and his English is rusty, our conversation hovered around a pre-school level. Like, less than 5 syllables per sentence. No problem, since I spent my days with Chinese 5 year olds (one of whom today looked at me and started singing “Ra ra oh Ga-Ga! I wanna a bad romance”….did he actually think, perhaps, that I am Lady Gaga? Shit, I thought, I really need to start brushing my hair before work!). So our conversation went something like this:

“Do you have a pet?” (My Suitor)
“Yes, I have a pet. I have a cat. His name is Victor. He is very mean.” (me)

“Do you know they eat cats sometimes in Guangzhou (southern Chinese city)?” [Insert 10 minute conversation about “special” animals some people eat: mice, snake, cat, dog (only certain breeds, lest you worry), monkey, etc]

“Wow. That is gross! …But maybe it is very tasty depending on how you cook it?”(me, first being judgmental than attempting to appear culturally enlightened)

The convo continues:

“Do you have a sister or brother?” (Suitor)
“Yes, I have a sister. She is in law school. She lives very far away from me…. Do you have any siblings?”

Then I cringe.

WHY DO I ALWAYS ASK THIS?! Per the one-child policy, most people my age (or a decade older as my delightful suitor turned out to be), very few people have siblings unless their parents 1) paid a fine, which sounds cheap by American standards but would probably bankrupt most Chinese 2) are farmers or 3) belong to a minority group (2 and 3 are both permitted to have additional children). Still, it understandably saddens many people and they (like My Suitor), launch into a sad story about how lonely they are, how bad they feel for their parents who are now old and alone and need taken care of, and how they long for a big happy family, Steve-Martin-is-my-dad-in-Cheaper-By-The-Dozen-Style style (ok I just made that last part up…maybe only my own personal fantasy? whoops).

So after we hashed through this scenario, we finally made it to the restaurant. My Suitor (it sounds so gallant when in caps, right?) was generous enough to order vegetarian to me—for which I was exceedingly grateful , considering that the dishes du jour included larvae and half-hatched eggs. We shared some really excellent mushroom dishes- Yunnan is famous for them, and a lot of silence. This will come to a shock to anyone who knows me, because normally I will babble on about just about anything to fill a void in conversation, but I’ve gotten really comfortable with silence here. I feel no need to talk. I just eat or daydream in peace. It’s quite nice, actually, not hearing myself chatter all the time. Makes me wonder—how many people feel the same way?! Don’t answer that.

After dinner, My Suitor and I took a pleasant evening stroll around Dianchi Lake, a body of water nestled up against an impressive mountain range (which, as I learned, is named “Sleeping Beauty.” You know you haven’t lived until you’ve watched a pollution-laced sunset with a dude who’s pointing out the “breasts” on a mountain in broken English). Honestly, Dianchi Lake is far the most disgusting, vile water I’ve ever seen. It’s tragic, really: it would be so beautiful but it’s literally coated with a layer of green slime. I kept waiting for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—or frogs or snakes or fish- to crawl out of the oily liquid and kill us all. I don’t know why everyone was so impressed by this Jesus character—if you’ve ever visited Dianchi you know that just about anyone could walk on the water. If you want instant cancer, that is.

Anyway, we continued our stroll, and My Suitor tried to convince me to move to China permanently (because near-engagement is normal after 2/3 of a date). To sweeten the deal, he serenaded me. First with a little Chinese love song about “Sweaty Mice.” I’m think he actually meant “sweet mice,” but I’m not really sure how that’s better.

But then came the clincher. My Suitor told me that he also likes English music.

“Like what?” I asked, painfully unaware of the performance about to ensue.

“You know. Boys II Men.” He replied.

….and then proceeded to launch into a full-blown version of “So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.” We’re talking top-of-the lungs falsetto. I was stunned

“You know, you’re right. It really is hard to say goodbye to yesterday,” I told him, clapping enthusiastically.

But, sadly, not hard to say good-bye to him. I mean, if I’m gonna go out with a Chinese guy I might as well hold out for one who can sing me N’Sync…right?

dontcha know that i'm toxic?

2010-06-10T05:31:00.002-04:00

Last weekend was an interesting experience: my first time participating in the time-honored tradition of KTV…or as it’s known in the States, karaoke. Although both KTV and karaoke begin with k and often involve copious amounts of cheap booze, the similarity ends there. Invited by my roommate’s teacher, we taxied through several deserted neighborhoods until suddenly we were confronted by this garish, neon-lit building. Once inside, the guards promptly shuffled us off to a lounge area to wait. Of course, being the oblivious tourist that I am, I was fiddling with my camera until my roommates implored me to put it away—fast. I turned around in time to see about half a dozen women in barely-there bedazzled dresses and pancake makeup parading through the halls. Prostitutes? This was definitely going to be a good night.

A few minutes later, Sally’s teacher led us to a private room. KTV, as it turns out, is actually a fancy event here- far from the tequila-fueled shit-show that is Gypscy (or any other student bar in America) on Friday nights. The room was lined with plush couches with people reclining lazily, sipping wine and eating fruit. A huge flatscreen on the wall played Chinese music videos; a jukebox in the corner offered a variety of selections ranging from cheesy love songs to children’s dance videos. One by one, people would grab the microphone and loudly belt out whatever tune they’d picked. Usually the songs were slow and melodramatic—my favorites were the duets sung by couples who would gaze into each others’ eyes as the others waltzed around the room. It really killed me: these people, so earnest, singing their hearts out, and not a single one of them seemed to give a damn that they were heinously off key.

Towards the end of the night, my other roommate’s boyfriend, Ricardo, decided it would be a good idea for us to pay homage to that goddess of American pop culture, Brittney Spears. Typically, I don’t even broach the idea of karaoke unless I’m well under the influence. As I’ve learned, however, Chinese red wine --the only beverage of choice in this fine establishment—tastes like a rancid Capri Sun and is the fastest way to end up in the fetal position.

So, completely sober, we got up there and belted out a rendition of “Toxic” that was…less than intoxicating. Actually, it sounded eerily similar to Alvin and the Chipmunks--if said chipmunks had their little paws rammed into an electric socket.

laowai got back

2010-06-04T09:58:00.001-04:00

It's been a rainy few days in Kunming. The sky and the city are grey, with only the bright turquoise of the taxis and the rainbow-colored plastic ponchos of the bikers disrupting the monotony. My favorite are thepanchos, usually in a neon pink or yellow, with two holes cut out for the heads dual-riders. Hilarious, cute, and functional- who can go wrong with that?

Today was also my first day teaching English in the kindergarten. The first class, one of the youngest levels (3-year olds), was nothing short of adorable. Amazing how quickly these kids absorb English! I taught them the words for “sick” and “cold,” which they picked up in mere minutes. This was ironic on several levels: one, because each child undergoes a brief (less than 15 second) medical exam before entering the school. I’m not sure how effective this can be, although apparently enough children became ill in one of my classes that I had to drop the whole class from my study, destroying any attempt at randomization. So much for the scientific method! Second, I had to chuckle as an entire classroom full of three year olds stared at me and chanted “cold! cold! cold!”…let’s put it this way: it wouldn’t be the first (or last) time I’ve been told I’ve been cold. Perhaps I should have taught them the more suitable term, “ice queen,” instead? Or maybe just “Catholic” would be more fitting…so many synonyms, so little time.

The second classroom, consisting of 4-5 year olds, was a bit more…interesting. As the other teacher prepared for the class, one boisterous little boy started hitting me. I have no idea why, but to stop the onslaught I gave him my hand as a high-five. He started hitting that too, and then a mob of screaming boys and girls descended on me. I was a little confused in the blur of arms and legs, but I’m pretty sure one of the little boys was audacious enough to feel me up! I swatted him away only to have my ass grabbed by an even more daring little boy about two seconds later. This little daredevil just looked me in the eyes and laughed as Igently but firmly removed his hands from my rump. Who are these children?! All I can figure is they were getting some kind of major kick out of having a lao shi (teacher) with junk in the trunk. In any case, I had no idea a year ago, when I was quitting my tidy little career in hospital administration that I was heading for what seems to be a lifetime of weighing people’s leftover food…and apparently, getting groped by Chinese pre-schoolers!

a shrine to buddhism...and also, consumerism

2010-06-03T08:23:00.002-04:00

“Waiting with patience means actively accepting the current circumstances and giving up the illusion that you can control the world. Actually, patience is a practice. The best way to cultivate it is to remind yourself constantly that every moment is the only place your life is occurring. The point is to train yourself to live completely in the present, in peace, even if you’re sitting in the middle of a traffic jam.”

[Geoffrey Arnold, Buddhist monk]

This quotation, which has adorned my notebooks and walls and now my desk in China, is my omnipresent reminder to live in the present. Not easy for me, but I’m getting there. At the very least, I’ve got the “remind yourself constantly” part down cold—it’s just actual peacefulness part that still eludes me.

On that note, my roommate and I set off the other day to Yuantong Temple, a Buddhist temple in Kunming which is roughly 1,200 years old. We entered the temple through a path of cypress trees and a sign welcoming you, in Chinese, to the “yuantong wonderland.” An early morning fog hung over the gardens and ponds, as if you could inhale the palpable peacefulness or feel its coolness upon your skin. The temples themselves were ornate, overflowing with colorful cushions and banners and flowers. And the Buddha(s?): these enormous gold statues shining from within. Silently, and one by one, worshippers would come forward to kneel and say a brief prayer. I felt much like an intruder, with my fast-talking and photo-taking and inability to ascend stairs without falling. But I’ve been a proponent of Buddhism, however much a novice, for a little over a year now, and this was my first visit to a real place of practice. The grounds truly emanated this sense of calm; I wanted to lie down in the shallow, sunny water with one of the hundreds of turtles and snooze for awhile, or maybe more.

But, being an avid practitioner of a different form of religion—namely, capitalism—my roommate and I eventually left and met some other friends at the Kunming second-hand market. The second-hand market is, quite frankly, like Goodwill done Chinese style: mountains upon mountains of cheap clothes, heaps of used undergarments (uh, gross!), racks of furs and shoes and dresses, all of it radiating some sort of synthetic stench. Even so, we had fun combing through the various goods and haggling with the vendors….and by haggling, I mean making sad-puppy dog eyes and asking “Duō shǎo qián?” (how much?) over and over until they lowered the price. [Sidenote: my Chinese is so terrible that sometimes I find it amusing to speak with a different accent--usually some sort of British/Scottish/drunken-slur-sounding hybrid. Somehow this is less embarrassing? And why I find myself wiggling my eyebrows excessively when attempting to order food or drinks from kindly waitresses, I do not know. Apparently I’m well on my way to becoming some sort of faux alcoholic British/Chinese womanizer?…] I ended up with four cardigans (I’m in grad school in New England, cut me a break!) and a funky 70-ish rainbow-stripe dress that I may never wear but was fun to buy. Exhausted from our day, we headed back to the flat, where we were confronted with more strenuous decision making: to watch Precious or The Blindside…or, ok, ok, I’ll admit it: maybe just more bootleg copies of Ugly Betty. Tough life.

sidenote: i can't post pictures on this blog b/c the internet is far too slow. if you want to see pics, check out my album on facebook called "china y'all"...and if we're not friends already, add me!

pickin' flowers

2010-05-29T08:44:00.001-04:00

My research is not taking as much time as I thought, leaving me restless and wandering most of the day. My whole life, I’ve dealt with problems by pouring myself into sports or school or work , as if achieving the next big thing will help me achieve peace—or revenge—or whatever it is I seem to be seeking. It doesn’t. In fact, it never does. And as I’ve learned this year, running away does nothing for assuaging anxiety either: first Chicago, then Charlotte, Seattle, Georgia, Costa Rica, and now China. The problems are the same; only the landscape changes.

And here I’ve been given this gift—this incredible summer of time- and I can’t sit still long enough to enjoy it. So I walk. I walk for hours, meandering through the streets, getting lost, getting un-lost, and getting lost again. I buy stinky candies in small shops and honey from street vendors and cheap plastic flip-flops in the Chinese Wal-mart. I sit in cafes. I sit in restaurants. I sit on a sunny bench next to the lily-padded pond. I take bad photos of sunflowers and willow trees. I read. I talk to myself. I talk to strangers. They rarely understand me. I walk some more.

Today’s excursion led me to what was advertised as an English “bookstore.” Turns out, it’s just a bookshelf full of used books tucked in the back of a restaurant—a delightful little secret. I adore used books, and discovering this little sun-lit, glass-ceilinged room was like discovering a hidden treasure. I sat there for hours, curled up alone on the little couch, reading Pollyanna and rediscovering Peter Hessler, who led me to China in the first place.

Eventually, it started to pour. The rain blew in, spraying me and my piles of books with a gentle mist. I’d forgotten about that 12-year-old spitfire, Pollyanna, namesake of the “Pollyanna principle” as well as "pollyanna-ish," an adjective describing people who always find something to be “glad” about regardless of the circumstances. The term is sometimes used pejoratively to describe people whose excessive optimism leads to naivete. As someone who was once described as “relentlessly optimistic,” I’ve wondered about that tendency myself and my ability to move on; I’m not always sure such optimism is a help so much as a hindrance. Spending most of your life with your head in the clouds means that sometimes you can’t read the warning signs on the ground, I’ve learned the hard way

But reading Pollyanna was like getting reacquainted with a childhood friend: refreshing and wonderful. Tucked away in this secret little bookshop in China, rain billowing from all sides, I found such joy. If my Pollyanna proclivity is the source of my anxiety and restlessness, than I suppose that’s okay. As another childhood favorite once said:

"I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one!" (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Note: said rain is a product of “cloud-seeding,” or the Chinese government’s attempt to end droughts by injecting the sky with sodium iodide and dry ice…only a lil’ creepy, no?

heart disease and the chinese health system

2010-05-28T08:02:00.003-04:00

Today I had my first encounter with the Chinese healthcare system. In order to get my visa extended, and in order for China to exert its endless bureaucracy and make a quick buck, I had to get a medical examination at this international health center. I was pretty annoyed about the distraction from my work (namely, watching a bootleg version of some f-ed up Spanish film…rough life, I know). However, since I’ve quickly learned that everything in China needs between 1-100 red stamps, off I went.

First of all, according to the center’s giant map of the world, China is apparently free from all infectious disease, including malaria, yellow fever, SARs, dengue, the works! Funny, that’s not what the CDC says.

Secondly, this medical exam was strangely more thorough than any US medical visit I’ve had in years. As I passed from room to room, I got the works: urine test, blood draw, eye exam, ultrasound (?), x-ray (?!), EKG (?!?!). The place was bizarre: entirely deserted, with a white-clad nurse silently sitting in each room. Each one would perform her procedure wordlessly, stamp a big red stamp on my form, and then point to the next door. It felt a little Alice and Wonderland-esque. Because my imagination tends towards the twisted, each time I passed through a door, I wondered what kind of bizarre, macabre scene lay within: jars of pickled brains, shrunken skulls, bloody carcasses?

Oh wait, no…that’s just the local grocery.

Actually, the blood draw was actually quite upsetting. Much to my parent’s chagrin, I’ve had a vasovagal reaction to getting blood drawn since I was about twelve. Namely, I sweat and pant and pass out. Not a pretty sight. I tried to warn the nurse what she was about to witness, but of course the meaning was lost in translation. Since we were both panicking, she called in a well-meaning “English-speaking” doctor. He held my hand as I lay there, reassuring me that “It is not a problem! We only use the needles once! One time use!” In my mind I was screaming: THIS IS NOT HELPING!

After surviving that debacle, it was time for the ECG.

“Expose your heart,” the nurse told me solemnly.
Um, I just met you- let’s not be hasty, I thought.
“OK,” I said.

And as I was lying in this tiny room in this deserted hospital, with a dozen electrodes clamped to my chest, I started thinking about all the things I’ve done since I’ve been in China that could possibly get me in trouble. Taking photos of the Mao statue? VPN-ing into YouTube and Facebook on a semi-regular basis? Googling the crap out of everything? Why am I such an idiot?! I started to sweat as I waited for the electricity to surge through my veins. I was sure I was going to die. Good-bye world, I thought, melodramatically—and what a way to die, half-naked on a lumpy bed in a Chinese exam room waiting---

“Your heart…,” the nurse said, pulling off the electrodes.
“What?” I asked incredulously. “Is it bad?”
“No. It’s slow. Your heart is slow.”

Amen sister. Tell me something I don't know.

dance like...the chairman is watching?

2010-05-26T05:49:00.001-04:00

I’ve been dancing. There’s this Swedish art gallery/café downtown where many of my girlfriends take class on Wednesday nights. Most of them are talented, and I watch with envy as the music transforms their lithe bodies. I am not. I haven’t taken a dance class since third grade, when I gave up on ballet because, although the shoes were pretty, my pathetic attempts at a pirouette were not. I am heinously uncoordinated, and have almost no memory for dance steps. Luckily for me, this class is more of a modern/freestyle class, and there’s no scary instructor giving me the evil eye as I topple over time and time again. In China, I’ve been making a concerted effort to do things that I’m terrible at: if not here, then where? I am awkard and ungaingly.But increasingly, I am okay with that.

Yesterday’s class was an experience I won’t forget. We gathered in the studio around 7:00, this group of girls who share little in common except temporary residence in Kunming and a flare for movement. Though, there’s something about people who live in foreign places, I’ve realized. Perhaps by virtue of choosing to leave their lives and move halfway around the world, most everyone I’ve met has been warm and welcoming. They almost always have an interesting story: how did you get here? No one has the same answer, and many of these tales are far richer and wonderful than something I could ever create. In any case, these girls have taken me in, despite my paltry Chinese, utter uncoordination…and, at best, unsavory appearance.

See, we dance barefoot. My feet, unfortunately, are absolutely hideous. First of all, Kunming is a dirty city, and we’re forever weaving our way through grimy alleys and leaping over puddles. Secondly, the Chinese have tiny feet. In an attempt to prevent the layer of dirt that has sprouted over my feet like a second skin, I decided to purchase a pair of sneakers. They’re cheap here, and shoe stores abundant, so no big deal I thought. Wrong. As it turns out, very few stores carry my size (an 8 in the States, nothing unusual), and when I ask for my size in women’s shoes, the clerks usually laugh uproariously and steer me towards the men’s section. The other day, however, I discovered a pair of cute purple Converse for about 60 RMB, or about $10 USD—a steal, I thought. But of course, they only have the shoes in a size 7. Tired of the dirt, and also of feeling enormous, I decided to buy them anyway. Wrong move. This is not the first time I’ve gone to war with a pair of shoes—like any woman, I’ve spent weeks battling precarious stilettos or unrelenting sandals. But these Converse are made of rubber, and after wearing them for one day, I limped home from Chinese class certain that their purple canvass would be stained red from the bloody stumps that were now attached to my ankles. So anyway, I show up to class with no fewer than five Band-aids on each foot, already dismissing any illusion of grace I might have conjured.

But we danced for hours, and as the night wore on, I was able to forget more and more the inhibitions that weigh so heavily: the foot wounds, my clumsiness, the perpetual anxiety that’s wracked my brain and body since early last September. After a few hours, a few friends joined us. They wheeled out a piano, some bongos, and someone brought a saxophone. As their music filled the gallery, we danced- both sound and music improvised to some unspoken theme. Dancing on that light-filled stage, in a gallery filled with beautiful paintings of the Kunming skyline, giving and taking with friends I’ve known for two weeks and also a lifetime: catharsis. Suddenly, there’s nothing but me, and music, and movement.

Although, as it turns out, that’s not entirely true. Just below the stage, under a glass cover, lay a starkly white sculpture of an old, naked man, his disproportionately small penis glinting under the lights. The scene was eerily reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty: expectant somehow in his repose, I kept expecting someone to bend down, kiss him, and awaken him to the music. Yet, after class, reading the tag underneath the sculpture, I’m glad no one did. The man, as it turns out, was Chairman Mao. I left unsure of whether his strangely small man-parts were an artistic error or a comment on communism, but certain of one thing: though I finally learned to “dance like no one is watching” as the cliché goes, often, in China, someone is.

raindrops keep fallin' on my head...

2010-05-24T09:30:00.001-04:00

Or some kind of mysterious liquid, that is. For some reason, walking on the sidewalks here is an invitation to get splashed -- water, toothbrush juice, urine, who knows—falling from an unidentified location above. Also, Chinese babies pee in the streets—in fact, they have a hole cut out in their bottoms for easy access—so I have become wary of even the most innocuous looking puddles.

As it turns out, the Chinese find Westerners’ obsession with hygiene totally bizarre. Of course, this hygiene issue—or lack thereof—leads to some interesting, albeit sometimes disgusting, dining scenarios. For one thing, knives are nonexistent-chopsticks only- so people just grab large chunks of anything and cram them into their mouths. Since my chopstick use is mediocre at best—I’m way far too clumsy/shaky to get a good grasp on those things—I spill food everywhere (yes, more than usual). But it’s cool, because I’ve found that meals here frequently involve bits of rice and noodles flying everywhere as everyone eats in a flurry of chopsticks and chatter. Also, people use their chopsticks to eat common food: everything is shared, which as a public health student and the daughter of an infection control nurse, makes me secretly cringe with every bite. No one has a problem with bringing their bowl to their mouths and sucking up noodles or rice like a human Hoover. Also, subject is too personal or bizarre for conversation. This weekend, I was chatting with a biostatistician at the Chinese CDC, and he asked me friendly but strange questions like how much I “prioritized money.” This question, I’ve found is a common one, as all Chinese people seem to think Americans are loaded. When I told him I had a cat, he asked me if my cat had had “its genitalia removed;” we proceeded to have a five minute conversation about the pro’s and con’s of removing Victor’s junk. He segued right into a more philosophical realm with next question: “Are you a Christian?” (my response: uh…..)

Actually, much to my personal delight, I’ve been exploiting my so-called Christianity here. At home, where my Catholicism consists of little more than church attendance for the rare wedding, the memory of 12 years of hideous plaid jumpers, and a lingering sense of guilt, I can hardly claim the religion as my own. In China, I find myself employing my so-called faith to get out of things I don’t feel like doing. This works well with Chinese people or Westerners of the non-American variety, because they either don’t understand what Catholicism is (Chinese) or they are somewhat afraid of it (Europeans). The excuse is handy because of its versatility: I can use it to get out of eating meat, doing things on Sunday, or just about anything I like, as my recent encounter with one feisty Scot exemplifies. We were at a bar around closing time, when he invited me under dubious pretenses to share an after-hours hot pot. (dear family: FYI, hot pot is a type of food, not a type of illegal herb).

“I totally would, but it’s Saturday night, and I have to get up early for Church tomorrow. You know, the Catholic thing…” I said by way of explanation.

“Are all Catholic girls this difficult?” he asked, disgruntled.

“Only ones who are studying to become nuns,” I said, before grabbing my roomies and hailing a cab, laughing all the way out the door. My Israeli roommates, by the way, find my Catholic excuses hilarious—the next step is to get them to try it out.

I’ve also been telling a disproportionate number of nun stories lately, mostly to horrify my UK peers, who apparently view Catholicism as some sort of draconian torture. Of course I have to perpetuate this belief by regaling them with tales of the time Sr. Adele punished me for poor reading skills by pinching clothespins to my ears, bruising me for weeks, or how, every time an ambulance passed, Sr. Mary Norberta would pray that the victims were not Catholic. These stories are not only untrue, they’re stolen from Pat Conroy, who has a far more imaginative and distorted view of a Catholic childhood than do I. I’m not sure why I find this so amusing, when I should be grateful simply to have some undiluted English conversation. In fact, the tiny fraction of my soul which has been forever imprinted with twice-a-week Masses and endless confessionals recoils in horror—I know I’m gonna pay for this someday. But in the meantime, since I highly suspect that the Chinese are laughing at my own poor dining etiquette (in fact I know they are—I finally learned the word for chopsticks, and can hear them saying something about kuai zi as they stare and laugh), and the Israelis gab away in Hebrew, I’ll take my mischief where I can get it—even if I’m the only one laughing.

el supermercado

2010-05-22T01:52:00.001-04:00

The title of this post is in reference to the fact that, given my lack of Chinese, I find myself trying to speak broken Spanish to everyone here. I guess it's my default travel language in the Western world, but honestly, explaining to a Chinese fruit vendor that yo quiero seis manzanas por favor is about as useful as speaking in haiku. Good thing I can always resort to my other tried-and-true technique: sign language and a smile. Good thing I have no shame- or at least, not anymore. Here are some pics of the neighborhood market on my fancy new camera, which I (again, shamelessly) wear slung around my neck at all hours of the day. (Edit: I'm far too lazy to wait for this spotty, stolen internet to upload all my pics, but sooner or later I'll have a Shutterfly account for anyone interested in my amateurish attempts at photogrpahy)

The picture below is my favorite of the market, where we shop every day for fruits and vegetables, some familiar, some exotic: waxberries and leechees, mangoes and bananas, eggplants and chinese cabbage and the most delicious peas I've ever tasted. In China, everything is fresh- sometimes, alarmingly so. I was startled to walk through the beautiful market of colorful produce to find buckets of live snakes, rows of hanging ducks, live chickens stuffed into cages, pools of live fish, and buckets of live prawns, squirming insidiously inside a giant orange vat. So much for preferring my food without a face!

Notice the people snoozing in the background--napping is the norm here, a cultural rite I wish we could export to America, where no one stops for even a second, let alone in the middle of the day. The Chinese people have made an art form of napping in the most boisterous of circumstances is impressive: on crowded buses, in the middle of meetings, or even in wheelbarrows in the middle the street. (Here's where a picture could speak a thousand words if my internet didn't suck)

donde el crepusculo corre borrando estatuas

2010-05-21T07:59:00.003-04:00

My favorite time of day here is twilight. The streets awash in a buttery light, the sidewalks and shops bustle with parents and children returning home. In my apartment complex, a calm missing from the rest of the day settles over the courtyard: grey-haired women line up to dance, waving red fans and gently swaying to the music floating from a nearby boom-box. The old men- most of them toothless, or soon-to-be- are finishing up their games of cards or dominoes, their voices often rising and pitching in angry outbursts over the din of children playing on the sidewalks.

Freshly showered, I move through the dusty streets silently, spinning stories in my head from the day just past or repeating some fragment of Chinese over and over like an impromptu mantra. (Hong shan nan lu, for example, is the name of my street, which I so badly mispronounced to a taxi driver the other day that I ended up in a strange suburb before “phoning-a-friend” for help). I can’t help but grinning nearly constantly. How is it possible that I am here, in a Chinese market, haggling over eggplant for tonight’s dinner, when a year ago I was in a cube counting down each agonizing minute until my 5 o’clock escape? Everything delights me: the men brushing their teeth in the streets, the sudden burst of sparks from a second story construction site, the smoky scent of sidewalk barbeque. I seem to evoke a similar effect; although the Chinese are fairly discrete, I catch both men and women secretly staring. Dressed in a summer top and flowy skirt, “yellow” hair falling around my shoulders, I’m not sure if they think I’m Pamela Anderson or a blonde Godzilla. “Nihao,” I say as I walk past, smiling brightly into their curious faces.

Ironically, the only thing tainting my twilight zen is the residual anxiety of life in New Haven. Walking along some dusty railroad tracks with my roommate the other evening, we were approached from behind by a menacing figure.

“There’s someone behind us,” my roommate warned, well aware of my Dwight-Street paranoia. I shrieked and spun around to confront our attacker: a four-foot-five Chinese woman, balancing on her hip a watermelon that may have outweighed her. I laugh sheepishly and let her pass.

Except for these minor aberrations, evening in Kunming is a laid-back affair. It’s refreshing for the sky ‘s darkening to signal the end of the day as opposed to the start of another endless night of studying, for a change. So I go back inside and stir-fry my vegetables, read a little, write a little, and finally, after a year of perpetual motion, relax.

joyful, joyful we adore thee

2010-05-19T05:49:00.000-04:00

   Today was my first day visiting one of the kindergartens (read: glorified daycare centers) where I will be doing my research. First of all, let me say that I'd kind of like to live in one of these places. Far larger and more magical than any American preschool I've been to (although that's admittedly a sample size of one), Kindergarten #1 was like a little oasis of sunshine and color inside of a crowded city of concrete.
   We walked into a courtyard where two dozen children were lined up, playing the tiniest accordions I've ever seen to the tune of "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee," or whatever the name of that song is. About half of them broke rank to point and stare at me--living in China makes me feel like a celebrity or a total freak of nature, although I haven't quite decided which. We were then led on a tour of the school, which enrolls 360 children (a small school, by Chinese standards), which included a sleeping room, a computer room, and my personal favorite--a room with a giant pool of plastic balls and slides, kind of like the best McPlayground you've ever seen. I was tempted to jump in. Thankfully, I ignored the urge and was taken to one of the more creepy things I've seen in China: the "Science Room." The Science Room, I learned, is a place where animals live in taxidermy eternity in small glass cages. I saw a stuffed rooster, rabbit, mama duck and baby ducks--and believe it or not, what appeared to be a small albino hedgehog. I made some polite "ooh ahh" sounds and sighed a breathe of relief when we left to attend the nutrition class.
   Apparently, because of the one-child policy, Chinese parents are especially attentive to their children's health. These kindergartens, where my preceptor does her research, have received well her nutrition and physical activity program. Today's lesson was about the Chinese Food "Pagoda," which resembles the American food pyramid in all its misguided glory-- heavy on the grains and meat, not enough fruits and veggies. I was treated to a couple dozen children entering the classroom by waving laminated fruits above their heads and singing a song about going to the market. Ironically, the lessons have a double purpose: the kids get to learn about nutrition, and I get to learn the Chinese words for apple, cucumber, and eggplant. Turns out that sharing a classroom with a bunch of three-year olds may be the most educational lecture I've attended all year....

every day you play with the light of the universe

2010-05-17T17:49:00.003-04:00

Juegas todos los dias con la luz del universe.

This line, which I have always loved, speaks to me of my mornings here in Kunming. I don’t sleep well here, which is no surprise, after a year of little sleep and even less rest. My sleeplessness is different here, however—my nights are not tormented and ruthless the way they were in New Haven. Perhaps because of the time change, or more likely because my mattress leaves me stiff and sore after only a few minutes, I wake early. (Is this what getting old is like, I question, as my knees and back protest in pain?). I sleep next to a window the length of my bed, and am often awakened by the morning light streaming in (How many mornings has the sun kissed our eyes? Neruda wondered, as do I). Or, just as likely, by the cheap Chinese curtain billowing out my open window, or the roosters crowing, or the bugles blaring their morning song fifteen stories below.

In any case, I rise early, and begin my days with a cup of black tea, with “fresh milk,” as the Chinese say. I love this concept of “fresh milk”: as opposed to rancid milk? Vintage milk? I sip my tea and read some Neruda each morning, which sometimes leaves me sad but more often leaves me hopeful. He is like an old friend, a reminder of the beauty of words in any language: a comfort when I am surrounded by the sounds of a foreign tongue. I read for awhile, or practice my Chinese, before trying to sleep—typically unsuccessfully—again. My dreams here are strange, a mixture of residual New Haven anxiety (still dreaming about SAS coding and data management, weeks after exams) and the new sights and smells which bombard me each day. Eventually, I rise for good, and select one of three possible outfits: my Chinese uniform of jeans, tank, and cardigan. Simplicity in all things, I’ve found, is a refreshing change. Admittedly, even if said simplicity is forced, to some degree, by my missing luggage and foreign locale.

The mornings here are beautiful. Imagine the most perfect mid-summer day: sunny, dry, and seventy degrees. Already the streets are bustling, and the markets churning with vendors yelling in their strange tonality about things I can only imagine. My research hasn’t started yet—and might not in earnest for awhile—so I walk. I walk until my heels bleed. When I can no longer stand it, I find a café where I can access the internet and maybe call home. So far, I’ve spent my days reading and writing and learning Chinese. The luxury of endless time spent to indulge in my old favorites has brought me endless pleasure, although it is a bit strange and a little agonizing to relinquish my American habit of endless multi-tasking. Slowly, I’m learning. I’ve been reading an anthology of writers, most of whom have spend their own endless days and nights alone, writing, and I find hope in this—that maybe this summer will force me to drop the pretense of endless activity and finally do the thing I’ve been wanting to since age seven: write something worthwhile.

slip and fall down slowly

2010-05-16T05:04:00.005-04:00

I’m even clumsier in China than I am at home. Shocking, I know. Uneven surfaces, ancient sandals, and an inherent lack of grace have conspired to leave me stumbling or flat-out falling every few hundred yards or so. Luckily, China has removed any shred of dignity I had left: in a land where you’re a complete anomaly, you can get away with almost anything. I look so strange, so utterly foreign, that people expect me to be odd. So I am. I just smile and make a funny face, as if I toppled face-first into that statue on purpose, and keep walking. By my calculations, it’s a suitable trade-off for all the ogling I do myself: at the midnight barbeques, smoke filling the street corners with the scent of some unmentionable meat; at the families piled four deep on one precarious-looking bicycle; at the wizened elderly couples strolling arm-in-arm at twilight. I may fall down— perhaps not slowly, or carefully, as the Chinese say—but it’s a price I’m more than happy to pay.

China has also stripped me of my vices: chocolate, cheese, wine—and with it, the occasional drunken cigarette—hair straighteners, my beloved morning coffee….

And men. Perhaps the most challenging and suitable vice to give up after a year of having my heart batted around like a soccer ball in a muddy field. It’s not as though I was expecting to meet someone here—jokes about Chinese sugar daddies aside—but after last night’s excursion, it’s clear that the closest I’ll get to the opposite sex is probably with the toothless old man at the market who sells me leechee and mangos each morning.

Case in point: Last night, my roommates and I went to a concert at a hostel/bar called “The Hump” (another Chinese malapropism? Or just an ironic twist on my current predicament?). The band, endearingly named “The Sea-loving Mammals” (apparently “Dolphins” was taken), was mediocre at best, the beer warm, and I found myself physically propping my eyelids open with my fingers. The men-- the first Western guys I’ve seen since I’ve arrived—were all sporting some form of strange uniform: Wayne’s World-style hair-do/ponytail, sleeveless t-shirt, and (optional) sunglasses-at-night. What god of fashion decided this was a good idea? I wondered, before ironically adjusting on my own ridiculous skinny jeans and trendy little top.

Thankfully, my roommates wanted to leave rather early. On our way out, I was approached by a man whose hair resembles mine now that I am sans-straightener: an uneven mop of blonde frizz. He must have thought I liked him, given the way I was staring and giggling—but he misinterpreted my gaze for a not-unkindly snicker at his ridiculous rose-colored sunglasses and 90’s style hemp necklace.

“Why are you leaving?” He asked in some unknown accent, sidling up to me with an arrogant grin.

“I’m jetlagged, and she’s tired,” I replied, gesturing at my roommate, who was slowly creeping towards the door.

“This is why girls suck!” He complained, sucking noisily on his cigarette (at which I secretly stared with envy).

“Well,” I retorted, “Perhaps if men were capable of making more interesting conversation, we wouldn’t be so bored and tired!” Triumphant, I turned on my heels, delighted at the facile of English words and my ability to manipulate a language at my will. Chinese, I’ve found, is a slippery language. It lacks the rough weight of English, heavy like marbles, or the sweet melody of Spanish. Beautiful in its own right, at the moment Chinese words are like snakes to me: difficult to catch, and impossible to hold. It was nice, if even for a moment, to feel in control of words again.

In any case, I went home to my room and settled in for a night with a long-lost literary love, Dave Eggers. This looks like it may turn out to be a man-less summer, but I think that I am more than okay with that. I need to learn to be alone again—even in this country of a billion people—and to savor the luxury of silence for a change. To learn Chinese, and Buddhism, and yoga. To listen more, and talk less. And maybe to slip and fall a little more slowly :)

nihao, kunming

2010-05-14T05:09:00.003-04:00

Well, I’ve only been in China a few hours and yet there’s so much to tell I don’t know where to start. Traveling was an absolute nightmare, starting with my trip in Cleveland, which was delayed b/c of fog at JFK. Imagine this scene: once I finally arrived in JFK, I sprinted-- huffing and puffing and sweating—across the airport, nose-diving once into the tile floor in front of an entire crowd, scraping up my hands and my face a little—to Air China, where I was informed I’d missed my flight by 15 minutes. In a storm of rage and tears that recalled my old corporate airline battleground days, I got American to put me on the next flight to San Fran—which, serendipitously, I only got on because it was also delayed. I had to sprint to that flight again, just barely making it before the doors closed (note to self: work out more!).

The guy sitting next to me on the HK flight blatantly ignored my no-eye-contact, no-talking rule on flights (created explicitly because it’s much easier to drool in anonymity than it is when you’ve actually held a conversation with someone). Anyway, this dude turned out to be a radio-frequency engineer from Singapore, staying in HK for a few days. Once we landed in HK, since I had six hours to kill, he helped me negotiate the final leg of my flight (note to self #2: learn Mandarin-stat!) and we headed into Hong Kong. It was really cool that I got to see the city, if only for a few hours. The only way to describe Hong Kong-and China- is that it is so utterly foreign to me. In comparison, Costa Rica seemed more like home than a field of corn on the Fourth of July. There is just so much I do not recognize: the language, the letters, the food, the way the cars and buses and bikes and pedestrians all seem to mix and merge into one giant river of commotion. I love it though—for the first time, it feels like a real adventure!

I finally got to Kunming, 2 full days after I left Cleveland, and of course my luggage is nowhere to be found. Met my Chinese interpreter, Hongmei- and my fears are confirmed. I cannot understand her. She cannot understand me. This could make for a loooooooooooong summer. We may have to resort to sign language…or the progressive face, I’m not sure which yet. Also, it’s incredibly ironic that I’m here to study obesity- I am by far the largest human I’ve seen here so far. I tower over all of the women and loom over most of the men as well—and I’m the only blonde in the entire city, I think. I definitely got racial profiled in line for immigration- these scary looking dudes in green uniforms with hedge-like haircuts pulled me out of line from everyone else just to inspect me. I actually think it will be interesting from an anthropological perspective to see what it feels like to live as such an extreme minority for the summer. Honestly, it might be the most important lesson I get out of this entire trip—we’ll see.

The good news: my roommates are awesome! I am going to learn a ton from them, both in terms of Chinese, Israeli culture, and general life in Kunming. Shelly’s going to be tons of fun- we hit it off upon meeting; Hila’s slightly more quiet, but I like her quite a bit as well. She yelled out “FUCK!” when we were in the supermarket (you’ll see why in just a minute), and after that she earned high marks in my book. It’s a little strange because sometimes they speak Hebrew or Chinese to each other, so I’m just in my own little world. Honestly, I’m very much like a blind person here- I don’t know how I’d get by without them already. Today we went to a Wal-mart type place and oh my god, I have never seen so many kinds of disgusting meats. I saw chicken feet prepared at least half a dozen different ways. I saw a five year old fingering fish heads. I saw what appeared to be bloody eel stew. Aaaand, I’m pretty sure I saw a dead baby cow. Disgusting. But we all came back and made dinner together, with Hila’s British boyfriend, Richard, who’s smart and quite hilarious in that droll British way. Both my apartment and my neighborhood are nicer than New Haven, ironically. So far, the only negative are the beds: apparently, Chinese people like to sleep on beds as hard as boards. My roommates even bought nicer, "softer" mattresses, but still--each morning I wake up feeling stiff and as though I am emerging from a few years inside a coffin. Ouch.

Otherwise, I’m feeling a bit anxious about my luggage, my project, and quite honestly, what to do with all this free time. I’m not sure how to live in a city where I am illiterate and essentially mute. Time for exploring, I think!

nothing ventured, nothing won

2010-05-10T22:39:00.006-04:00

"And then supposing the Spirit has conquered and you have done this impossible thing, do you find afterwards that you possess yourself in a sense that you never had before? That there is more of you?…So it is throughout life…you know ‘nothing ventured nothing won’ is true in every hour, it is the fibre of every experience that signs itself into the memory.”
- J.N. Figgis

   The first time I encountered this quote was as a fresh-faced fourteen year old, about to embark on my first trip alone: sailing on the Chesapeake Bay as part of an Outward Bound excursion. An introverted bookworm, just the act of leaving home was nothing less than a major voyage for me. I remember feeling as though the anxiety radiating from my chest must have been palpable to the other tweens paddling away on our thirty-foot boat. But that trip-- rowing through the rain, the sweet freedom of finally sailing, the glow of hundreds of jellyfish hovering just below the waves--the first time I fell in love with a curly-haired boy with an impish grin (if one could call a week of nervous smiles love, of course)--opened up something new in me. I was still afraid--that hadn't changed. But suddenly, I felt less afraid to feel that way.

   I re-read this quotation again before another trip into the wilderness- a freshmen orientation excursion the week before I started at Northwestern. Again, nervous as hell, and without a clue about the whirlwind that was about to engulf my life. While my four years there can't be summarized so succinctly, again Figgis was right: there was somehow more of me than there had been before. And always, the fear. Fear that accompanied me long after that first week--fear that became my near constant companion for the better part of two years, in fact. But, more intimately acquainted with it, the emotion became more of a compass, telling me I was doing something right--taking chances, making moves--rather than the warning sign I once thought it to be.

   In the years since, Figgis' quote has adorned my walls and journals in some form. This year, my first in grad school, he spoke to me from directly from a Post-it above my desk, where I'd read him during lonely four a.m nights or restless days studying. It's never easy to start a new life--or a new journey--and then, even as now, it's not easy to distill my experiences into life lessons as comforting or as true as his words.

   But now, I turn to him again, a day before I leave for what may be my biggest--or at least, longest--journey yet: to China, for the summer. My first time abroad. My first real research project. My first time being illiterate! (Hello, Chinese characters). So, "A New and Splendid Life," it truly is--and this time, an entirely foreign one. I can't wait.

settled in

2009-08-28T21:25:00.001-04:00

Today's my last day as a free woman before school starts on Monday. A couple quick thoughts on New Haven, Yale, and grad school so far:

* everything at Yale seems like it's in a castle. The gym? In a castle. The bar? In a castle. With all these gothic structures around, I keep expecting a knight to gallop out on a horse, but instead, all I see are drunken students stumbling.
* the distinction of the ivory tower and the poverty of the city is physical and startling. While the campus itself is like something out of a fairy tale, it also seems like a physical fortress against the poverty and crime that is the rest of New Haven. Unfortunately, I live in the "rest of New Haven;" in particular, across from a pawn shop and a Western Union. There are nefarious characters loitering on the sidewalks at all hours of the day, seemingly undeterred by the "No Standing" signs that are posted at every corner. That's right, standing is illegal here...ok, not really. But maybe it should be?
* new grad students act the same was as new undergrads, minus the fake ids and twice the anxiety. They drink a lot (school sponsored, interestingly enough), rely heavily on prosaic conversations to break the ice (program/location/undergrad/blah blah blah), exchange numbers with everyone, even the people they'll never speak with again, and subtly-or not so subtly- try to feel out where they stand in the social hierarchy. Me, I just like to spill on people as a way of introduction. Leaving a beer-stain impression is better than none at all, right?

Even before classes start, a couple of my fellow students remind me of the over-eager beavers that so annoyed me at Northwestern. Chill out already! No one wants to hear your random pontifications on progressive taxation and health reform. But to my surprise, many are friendly and laid-back, definitely a reassurance to a decidedly non-serious person like me. On the other hand, we'll see how non-serious I can be after school starts on Monday. Here's to one last weekend without guilt or anxiety...let the games begin!

"all good things are wild and free"

2009-08-03T23:19:00.001-04:00

It's been awhile since I posted anything about grad school, or anything at all, for that matter, as I've been so immersed in soaking up my vacation. It's been a real joy to stop for a few weeks, probably for the first time since high school, and just enjoy being in the moment. I've spent the last few weeks at my parent's place on Lake Erie, kayaking in the grottoes and lagoons around Catawba and Green Island. My dad's been teaching a little bit about bird watching, which has been enlightening on a few levels. Usually I'm so caught up in the rush of life that it's painful for me to sit still with my own thoughts for more than a minute or two, but being on the lake relieves that pressure somehow. Suddenly, the details spring to life- the purple wildflowers blooming from the bluff, the deep green moss, optimistic lily pads, the mysterious and enticing caves. It's so clean and simple and refreshing.

And how have I gone my whole life neglecting the beauty and wildness of the birds? The eagles gliding fierce and regal, arrogant in their royalty. The herons elegant and with admirable patience; the coomerans swift and clever as they dive for fish. My favorite, I think, are the kildeer, amusing entertainers who drag their wings and play injured in a show to lure predators away from their nests. Sitting low and silent in the water, paddling whirlwinds through the warm green water, I feel part of nature in a way that, for all the hustle and bustle I love, I never quite manage in a city.

I'm growing increasingly excited as my move approaches, and I crave the chaos of student life- it's part of what drew me to grad school. In fact, it's been a challenge to suppress my anxiety and guilt about not using my time more "effectively," to travel to some exotic locale, or do some internship or other career-enhancing activity we all scramble to do so much of the time. I'd be lying if I said I don't thrive on that...most of the time.

For the time being, however, it's been sheer bliss to spend my days idly reading, hiking and kayaking, and finding a kind of peace I didn't know existed. The storm will begin soon enough.

sojourn to seattle, good-bye chicago

2009-07-29T13:15:00.000-04:00

After a delicious four week hiatus from all things computer, I'm back!

Seattle was absolutely wonderful. The gorgeous natural surroundings- multiple mountain ranges and lakes- combined with the laid-back intimacy of the city itself are right up my ally. Each time I visit the west coast, I find myself increasingly drawn to it. I'm looking forward to exploring New England, but the charm and easy-going, quirky attitude of Seattle definitely got to me- if only I had had the forsight to apply to U Wash!

We did a bunch of fun stuff during our brief stint in Seattle, but the most memorable was "climbing" Mt. Rainier:

We were shocked to find it was still snow-covered in mid-July, but that didn't stop us from slipping and sliding in our shorts & sneakers up the base of the mountain. Check out the beautiful view of our little lunchspot:

It was wonderful to get away for a few days, and of course to see my little sister, who suddenly seems very adult in her quaint, law book-filled apartment in the hills of Seattle!

It was a bit sad coming home, though, since it meant the end of my six years in the Chicago area. Even though I grew up in Ohio, I've dreamed of living in Chicago since I was ten. I'll never forget that first visit to the city- I was starstruck by the House of Blues and enchanted by Michael Jordan's restaurant. I felt then, and still feel, like anything could happen at any moment.

My sharpest memory of that first visit was my first Starbucks cappuccino. We only had the gas-station variety growing up, and as I sipped that frothy and exotic beverage, I felt the glamour and excitement of the city pressing up and around me in a way I never had before. Driving home on Lakeshore Drive, I fell in love with the glimmering beauty of Lake Michigan and the impossibility of the skyline.

Yes, I'll confess. My choice of college was mostly based on its proximity to the Windy City and to the now-ubiquitous Starbucks (whose $4 lattes seemed much less glamorous as my pocketbook thinned). And let's get real- my years here have not been all espresso and daydreams.My love affair with Chicago has been fraught with miserable weather and endless parking tickets, and my fair share of painful growing up.Yet, like all first loves, this cold and capricious city will always hold a dear place in my heart.

So yes, Chi-city, I may cheat on you for the next year- or ten. But please don't take it personally. To quote the esteemed Ross Geller, we're just "on a break." I'll be back.

signing off

2009-06-26T17:55:00.000-04:00

About to turn in my laptop, which is like having a limb amputated! I will be computer-less for an entire week before I retrieve my old, dusty laptop from my parent's house in Ohio. Here's to hoping withdrawal symptoms subside with a little bit of vino....

good-bye, working world

2009-06-26T16:05:00.000-04:00

Dear Corporate,

It's been an interesting ride. To be honest, I wasn't too fond of you at first. You were a little bit stifling, with all your rules, and pressed blazers, and strict hours. It just didn't feel like you saw me for me....and quite honestly, at the very beginning, it seemed as though you'd stop at nothing to embarrass me and expose me for the charlatan I was (and am).

And then there was the neediness. The late night phone calls and emails that would disrupt my life with family and friends...that irrepressible urge to check Outlook at all hours of the night. For years, I flew around the country, chasing you down in airports and small towns only to see you slip through my fingers once more. You had such little consideration for my life outside of you!

Of course, I'll never forget your numerous attempts to poison me. Finally I grew wise to your wily ways and learned to steer clear of anything labeled "White Christmas" and/or lying "innocuously" on the kitchen tables.

We did have a few good times. You were generous in treating me to dinner and paying my rent. You helped me grow from a silly, impetuous college student to a still-silly, slightly less impetuous "adult" who is capable of wearing suit jackets with only minor discomfort.

Most of all, you introduced me to a number of good colleagues and great friends, and for that I am grateful.

I'm really going to miss you....until Monday morning, that is

Let the adventures begin!

XOXO,
babysuit

selling out

2009-06-23T18:25:00.000-04:00

So it’s official:

I am self-employed!

Last week, in spite of my sweaty palms and embarrassingly shaky voice, I succeeded in landing my first contract as an independent contractor. Now, this sounds significantly less impressive considering my contract is with the organization with whom I’ve been employed for the last years but it’s still great news.

This contract means I won’t have to resort to nefarious activities to fund my grad school experience, such as selling organs on the black market. Or worse, private loans.

It also means that, while I’ll have to be significantly more frugal than I’ve been, I won’t have to live soley on ramen noodles and stale coffee during my grad school years…Now and then, I may even be able to splurge on a slice of famous new haven pizza.

For the most part, I’ll be working on health industry trend and policy research and analysis, which is ideal, of course, since that’s what I’m going to school to study. I’ll be trading in my buttoned up, coffee-fueled 5am mornings for PJ-clad, coffee-fueled 3am nights in front of my computer. Inspired by music and the caprice of the moment, which is how I work best.

The best part? I get to remain, while not an employee, a contributor to an organization which, for all its flaws, does and will play a significant role in continued progress towards a patient-centric healthcare system. With all the chatter about healthcare reform, it’s still the patient's voice that matters most- and is at the greatest risk of being lost. I’m glad that I don’t have to sacrifice my participation in such critical movement while I’m in school.

Still, my negotiation skills need some major work. As the exec to whom I pitched my proposal pithily remarked, “This contract is crap.”

“But,” he continued (ah, this little conjunction upon which my future so precariously hung!), “we know you.” You know what?! I wondered. You know that I’m a selfish Gen Y-er trying to squeeze the system to meet my own needs? That I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too, like the gluttonous slob I am? That I have a better shot at winning American Idol with my sub-par pseudo-soprano and seizure-like dance moves? I waited to hear, dread boiling in my stomach.

Turns out, my expensive education has provided at least a little return on investment. His proceeded to explain that while the contract can be fixed, and at the end of the day, they’d like to “keep my brain with the organization.” Which, to any nerd, did feel a little bit like winning the lotto.

And so I proceeded to sell my brain. (Or at least the non-dysfunctional part of it, which by comparison is microscopic!) I feel incredibly grateful and lucky, and a little bit less nervous about ditching my job and climbing a mountain of debt to follow my dreams.

Ok, ok- that last part sounded a little “Sound of Music-esque.” Cue Simon Cowell and a chorus of self-criticism, but I don't care! My piggy bank is happy, and so am I.

goin' to the fair, grad-school style

2009-06-16T11:16:00.004-04:00

So last fall, when I was first scouting out grad schools, I went to the Idealist.org grad school fair in Philly. Idealist.org's grad school fairs aren't limited to public health- they have representatives from a wide range of social impact graduate programs, plus plent of admissions counselors etc. who helped me start to navigate the scary world of admissions and financial aid.

I highly recommend anyone considering grad school for next year to check out your local fair. It's a low-key event, you can stay as long as you'd like, and it's a great opportunity to get some face time in with admissions counselors without having to travel to the respective schools.

This week the grad schools fairs are being hosted in DC (on the 17th) and NYC (on the 18th). Click below for more details:

i was born a travelin' (wo)man

2009-06-16T00:01:00.003-04:00

Writing this post from a hotel room in Arizona on what seems to be my last business trip! Not ever, of course, but after two years of near constant travel, it's sad to think it's all coming to an end.

I'm guessing I'll feel differently at 5:30 am tomorrow morning, when I head back to the airport for another 6 back-pain filled hours of sitting in a tiny plane seat...not to mention the airlines ditched their pillows and blankies in this ultra-sterile post-swine flu era we're living in. My hand does not make a comfy pillow, that's for sure.

Gotta love Southwest, though- at least I have plane snacks to look forward to! Plus, since I lose two hours heading back east, the work day is delightfully short.

public healthy: parental eating habits don't mean squat

2009-06-15T16:18:00.003-04:00

Interestingly, parents' eating habits dont' influence kids' eating behaviors nearly as much as one would think, according to some epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins. and that other factors- such as TV or advertising- may play a larger role in the kind of diets kids eat. This study made me a little sad, first because I think it's kinda depressing to think that the influence of TV might outweigh parents, who are actually giving the kids food. (Although this also makes me wonder- how do parents' TV watching habits impact kids? Maybe there's some relationship there, too, since parents are the ones spending the cash in the grocery store).

The study also says that very few parents actually did have healthy diets, and that their kids were more likely to eat healthy too. This makes sense: after all, what's the point of teaching kids about the food pyramid if Mom and Dad are chowing down on Mickey D's?

Lately I just keep wondering, why is it so complicated for adults (and in turn, their kids) to eat healthily? For all our good intentions, it just seems like we make this unnecessarily hard on ourselves. Someone needs to apply Occam's razor to this situach, and instead of bombarding us with endless conflicting studies, literature, education, and magazines, simplify the problem....so we can find, if not an easy solution, a livable and effective one. A person shouldn't have to have an advanced degree in nutrition or a loaded wallet to eat well each day.

(image from http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/ )

ugly saturday

2009-06-13T23:11:00.001-04:00

Alright, I'll be honest. I just spent my entire Saturday night watching Ugly Betty reruns and the season finale on http://www.abc.com/ and even though I recognize how undeniably lame this makes me, I loved

every

single

second

of it!

happy happy hour

2009-06-12T23:06:00.002-04:00

I got to enjoy one of my very first happy hours since joining the workforce tonight! For the past couple of years, I've either been sitting on a plane sipping nothing more than complimentary tomato juice or stuck on the Kennedy fighting rush hour traffic, probably drinking day-old diet coke from the console. Tonight, since I had to be in the city for Victor H's vet appointment, I got to join my friends at Sheffields, a classic Wrigleyville establishment with a great outdoor patio. The weather's been so weird this June we weren't sure it would be a go, but lo and behold, the weather held out and I finally got to indulge in one of the few wonderful weekly rituals of adulthood: happy hour!

Here's GD and I, enjoying our elusive post-work week cocktails with friends:

(Sadly, my happiness quickly turned into sleepiness, and I fell asleep sitting upright a few hours later. Hey, at least I gave it the ol' 'college try!')

fish stick-it-to-me

2009-06-10T12:14:00.009-04:00

Although I've been claiming to be a vegetarian for a few months now, I've gotta fess up. I'm actually what's known as a pescatarian, or as my Ohio relatives insist, a "fishatarian." I was going easy on myself because the pretext for my vegetarianism, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, focused only on the nutritional and ethical dangers of corn-fed beef and chicken....

....and more honestly, I really, really like fish. So I continued to obliviously- and happily- eat salmon or tuna once a week or so until I read a piece in today's NY Times dining section, when Mark Bittman, author of Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking cruelly burst my bubble.

A self-proclaimed fish-lover, Mark gloomily recounts the rise of large-fleet fishing, which has depleted the oceans of many types of commonly consumed fish, and the prevalance of dubious fishing tactics. Because buying fresh fish has become such an "ethical and logistical nightmare," not to mention, less-than-cheap. Mark offers his thoughts on what was once thought of as an alternative panacea, farm-raised fish:

"...With the exception of mollusks, which have been farmed forever with little environmental impact and sometimes with as much flavor as wild, most of the products of aquaculture are not only not worth cooking but are also environmentally challenged. In fact, farm-raised fin fish are really the cage-raised chickens of the sea: in many instances wild fish are harvested to produce feed for farmed fish (nearly 90 percent of the world’s fish oil goes into fish food), and it takes three pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed salmon (other farmed species require even more). Aquaculture is also a local pollutant and a major consumer of antibiotics, and it has long been thought that escaped farmed fish will interbreed with and weaken wild fish."

I'm sad....for the fish, and for me! Who knew that fishing could be so cruel to the fish, to the environment, and to the consumer. What do you think? Is it posssible to eat sustainably raised fish on a meager grad school budget?

Meanwhile, thanks to Bittman's article and the judgmental eyes of this guy:
I am going to go fish-free!

sartorially smart- and swine-flu free

2009-06-09T18:33:00.007-04:00

I was so excited to find this article in the New York Times today devoted to two of my loves: public health and fashion!

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/masks-theres-something-in-the-air/?ref=fashion

Seems like the newest Fall trends include plenty of artfully draped masks, scarves, and headgear...one of the World Health Organization's recommendations for preventing the swine flu. Considering epidemiologists are worried that the swine flue make an even more virulent resurgence this fall and winter, I think this could be the perfect combo of preventative medicine and fashion saavy. Who know fashion could be so functional?

Although, I don't know about you, but I find this particular fashion statement even scarier than the swine flu:

Yikes!

grievances

2009-06-08T19:08:00.008-04:00

[Unfortunately, my formerly objective healthcare experiences have taken a turn towards the personal, so from now on I'll also be blogging about my own experiences in & out of the doc's]

So how’s this for irony? The last few weeks, I’ve been working on conducting patient focus groups at all of our hospitals to get patients’ responses to the following question:

Have you ever left a visit with your medical oncologist or other care provider wishing you had more information?

What kinds of questions do you wish you would have asked?

Based on the results of this survey, we’re creating visual aids and notepads for patients so they can keep track of all the questions they want to ask during their appointments. Oftentimes, new (and returning) patients feel overwhelmed with information…and because the doctor is the “authority figure,” it’s so easy to nod your head and accept what they tell you…and forget to ask the questions nearest and dearest to your heart!

Last week, I was diagnosed with a relatively common, yet serious, women’s health condition that puts me at risk for a whole host of potentially serious health issues (infertility, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease being the heavy hitters) as well as more superficial problems (hair loss, weight gain, acne…you know, every woman’s worst nightmare!). Obviously, I was pretty upset about this information. I did my research online, checked out a bunch of useful forums, and was prepped to go with all my questions for my follow-up visit whereupon the doc would confirm my lab results.

Except that visit never came! The doc called me on Sat. morning to confirm that I might have this “kind of syndrome thing” (her words!) and then told me to call the office on Monday to get a prescription. No time for important questions like: Why this drug and not another? How do I prevent myself from getting diabetes? What kind of lifestyle changes can I make to help decrease my risk of health complications? Where can I get more information?

All things I need to know so that I can help myself prevent future painful and costly issues, placing more burden on me and our healthcare system. Instead, she just wanted to talk about how the office’s adjacent spa was running specials on facials. Then today, she wasn’t even in the office, so I got the message from a nurse from yet another doc that I would be put on one particular kind of med- no questions asked.

And now my only remaining question is:

WTF?!

Every year my (former) roommate and I throw a Seinfeld-esque Festivus party, and this sorry doc and her spa-pandering office definitely deserve a top spot on the Wall of Grievances!

(PS Yes, for all you fellow One Tree Hill fans, that is Haley James Scott at the top of the list- she is way too much of a goody-two-shoes/pancho-wearing has-been for our liking)

(Aren't our dresses fab? Takes ugly sweater parties to a whole new level)

summer is coming! finally...maybe...sort of

2009-06-07T20:59:00.007-04:00

The last two days were spent in leisurely pursuit of the perfect summer weekend: baseball, good food, cold beer, fireworks, and a nice long stroll in the woods. Even though it was rainy and cold here in Chicagoland, we didn't let that dampen our fun (pardon the super-lame pun). I'm trying to fully savor each free moment and lazy Sunday afternoon, since I know they will be few and far between before long!

I went with GD and his fam last night to a Kane County Cougars team, the local feeder team for the Oakland A's. GD's dad was generous enough to buy a box for the whole crew, which was incredibly nice, especially since it cold and rainy...and all you can eat and drink food and bevs didn't hurt either. I have to say, though, the highlight of the night wasn't the baseball but the Zooperstars!, a motley crew of mascots including Harry Canary and Beary Bonds. I was a little disappointed tho- woulda loved to have seen this guy when GD and I were at the Phoenix Suns a few months back:

http://www.zooperstars.com/Characters/Shaquille_OSeal.asp

Even though the suburbs usually elicit an irrepressible groan and eye-roll, GD's parent's place in Wayne, Illinois is both peaceful and beautiful. It's a tiny town on the outskirts of suburbia, and instead of Walgreens and cookie-cutter homes, the neighborhood is replete with prairies, creeks, and forests.

GD and I spend this afternon hiking along the marshes. It was beautiful, but I made the bad choice of wearing my new ann taylor sandals, which badly need broken in. By the end of the hike I was hobbling barefood on my tippy toes since my heels were covered with blisters. I always have to fight new sandals to break them in, however...and while they may have won the battle, I will (I must!) win the war.

Sadly, due to my fashion fau pax, we had to take the road more traveled by...

But it was still quite pretty!

book it!

2009-06-06T16:09:00.010-04:00

Today, GD and I headed to the loop to check out the Printer's Row Lit Fest, the largest book fair in the midwest this summer. (GD standing for human Garbage Disposal, since at any given meal, he consumes most of my food food & leftovers).

Although the book fair is any grad student's dream come true, GD and I are trying to practice fiscal restraint, since he's recently unemployed and we're both heading into loads of debt this fall. So, we walked around and gazed at all the pretty books and posters, but collected free bookmarks instead of books:

Plus, for me, shopping in used bookstores is a skill and an art, requiring shelves upon shelves of deliciously musty books, as well as ample space to sit and to sort tales of loves lost from cookbooks and poetry so I can figure out which of my newfound friends are keepers. At the bookfair, people crowded around the tables like pigs at a trough, making it difficult to fully enjoy a good browse.

Heading out of the fair, though, I discovered a tent filled with a book-lover's dream come true: books of all types for $1 apeice!

I was even more delighted to discover that this magical station was being run by a local non-profit organization, Open Books, which uses all profits from its sales to fund its various literacy programs around Chicago. Who could pass up such a win-win?

Sadly, however, I had a couple of beauties picked out, but only 4 quarters to spare...until this kindly gentleman came along to the rescue

Thanks to GD, I purchased Cider House Rules by one of my favorite authors, John Irving, as well as classic The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. I don't personally consider myself a feminist, but I do think it's important to understand the remarkable women, sociological context, and movement that enabled me to do things I take for granted, like go to grad school and have a career.

(You can't see it, but the original pricetag on Feminine Mystique is only $1.50...this book is truly an American classic!)

Also, hopefully, in addition to volunteering for the annual Newberry Library Booksale, I will get a chance to volunteer for Open Books...what an incredible organization!

http://www.open-books.org/programs.php

how sweet it is

2009-06-05T18:17:00.006-04:00

Well, today was a wonderful way to end the week, to say the least. Today my hospital celebrated all its patients who have survived cancer for five years. The majority of these patients came to our hospital with stage III and stage IV disease and, for the most part, had been told by previous care providers that they should go home and prepare to die.

Instead, they said "no." They chose hope instead of dispair. They took matters into their own hands and decided to fight the ugly, protracted, and downright scary disease that is cancer. And although they faced the slimmest of odds, these patients are here, five years later, to tell their tales and inspire others.

Today, watching these courageous patients and their families proudly display pictures of their kids, their gardens, and their lives, I was reminded of why I got into the healthcare business. At the end of the day, it's not about the government, or the insurance companies, or the hospitals: it's about making people well. About giving them their lives back. Days like these renew my faith that a patient-centric model can work: give people control over their health, support them in making their decisions, and let the free market go to work.

draggin'

2009-06-05T09:01:00.008-04:00

I’m really dragging today, to the point where I am feeling a little bit hopeless about slogging through my remaining month here.

One thing I’ve learned about myself in the past two years is that I’m often enchanted by new ideas, but that my enthusiasm is ephemeral and easily lost. I really like the concepts behind big projects, but I hate the tediousness of executing the details and will pretty much find any excuse to wiggle my way out of them. I’ve learned this the hard way at work. I’m rapidly drawn into new projects, get excited about them, and love to bounce around strategy and concepts. But, since I’m more often than not the lowest man on the totem pole, the mundane work of execution primarily falls to me.

And I hate it. Which is why I employ an army of procrastination techniques meant to ward off the inevitable boredom: news, med blogs, fashion blogs, facebook, gossip websites. It’s junk food for the brain. Honestly, if my gluttonous consumption of random websites actually did entail calories, I’d be catastrophically obese right now.

In no way do I think I’m above the kind of entry-level work I’m expected to do. I understand you spend years in the trenches in order to get to the top. It’s just that I’m alternately bored and lethargic…and so have serious difficulty forcing myself to execute.

This is a major reason why I decided to go back to graduate school. I’ve missed the challenge and stimulating debate of the academic environment, where intellect is the most valuable commodity, rather than my ability to book a meeting or write a memo.

Yet, I’ve got to steer clear of thinking of grad school as an intellectual playground of sorts, where I can just gleefully leap around a rhetorical jungle gym. I will have to write a thesis, and then someday (hopefully) a dissertation.

And while there will be plenty of the interesting discussion and research, the only way I’ll motor through is to shut off the web and wade through the tedious tasks, one at a time. It's true: I've got to grow up and actually do stuff I don't like.

So here’s to checking things off the to-do-list! But in the meantime, let me check Facebook just...once....more….

Oh, and just for kicks, here's a picture of the most handsomeof my three male roommates:

(Victor "Victorious" Hugo)

According to this recent article, http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/05/28/caught-in-the-net-the-internet-compulsion/ , my internet addiction may be soon recognized as a legitimate mental illness-guess I am crazy, after all!

new url

2009-05-29T11:01:00.002-04:00

Switched to a new url: newandsplendidlife.blogspot.com

Not sure if that matters or not, but I'll throw it out there!

good-bye, mando!

2009-05-29T10:14:00.006-04:00

Today my lil sister packs up her bags and begins her days-long journey to Seattle, Washington, where she will begin law school at Seattle University this summer. I'm proud of her, for graduating at the top of her class from DePaul University, and for taking the leap to embark on such a big adventure.

Perhaps most of all, though, I am scared for her. Scared because she's about to spend 4 days in a Uhaul with this guy:

(Nels, Mandy)

That's our dad, who apparently thinks he is Madonna and is also attempting to rock a new fashion trend by stringing more than one pair of specs around his neck (his record is three). He may be goofy, but the man's a saint. Between Mandy and I, he and my mom will have moved us over 15 times in the past 5 years, crossing the entire country thriceover in the process. The two of them are packing up and taking off this afternoon and taking 90 west until they reach Mandy's new city, and her new life as a law student.

I have no doubt that my sister will be tremendously successful in law school. Her energy, passion and intelligence will make her a formidable lawyer, and I feel sorry for any sorry schmuck who has to come up against her in court!I hope her years in law school are filled with adventures and learning...as long as she doesn't learn how to out-argue me!

It's been really wonderful having Mandy so close to me in Chicago the last four years, and I feel like our relationship has finally evolved from the love-hate immaturity of high school to the deep friendship it was truly meant to be. Sadly, our combined moves means the distance between us will jump from 1 mile to 2,928 miles, but I am sure we will remain as close as ever!

Good luck, Mando. I'll miss you, but I can't wait to hear all about your new adventure!

newsflash: giving presents to people influences them

2009-05-26T12:12:00.007-04:00

Today, the New York Times released an article showing that medical students' preference for a certain drug was influenced when they received even small promotional gifts displaying the name of said drug:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/health/research/19beha.html?_r=1&ref=research

What I find more interesting than the study itself is why this comes as a surprise to anyone. We already know that giving meals and gifts to doctors makes them more likely to prescribe medications. Otherwise, the pharmaeceutical companies, who surely have done their research, wouldn't waste so much time or money producing logo-ridden pens, mugs, and clipboards. I think part of the reason why this issue is still so debated is because physicians think that, with their extensive training, presumable intelligence, and stringenet moral code, can rise above the influence marketing. Yet, according to Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Business School professor, 95% of cognition occurs in the subconscious mind. In fact, according to Zaltman, "(Studies) often reveal that what consumers actually believe or think, as measured by unconscious physical reactions, contradicts what they say when asked directly."

So of course docs are influenced--without knowing it--by the seemingly harmless "flare" pushed in their faces. Even the highest level of education can't, unfortunately, trump the subconscious. If it didn't work, Big Pharma wouldn't do it.

So if doctors are prescribing more expensive drugs for any other reason than efficacy, even unconsciously, might this drive up costs? Massachussetts law makers seemed to think so when they banned all gifts from pharmaceutical companies in an attempt to curb healthcare spending:

http://news.bostonherald.com/business/healthcare/view.bg?articleid=1088148&srvc=home&position=also

What I'm really curious to learn is whether or not this shift in legislation actually changed physician prescribing behavior. Did prescribing patterns change? Did cost decrease? Are people better or worse off for it?

I know I'm not a physician, but if anyone is looking to give me a gift anyway, here's something on my wishlist:

Ok, Ok, I know it's a shameless plug, but I'm turning 24 in a month and I need something to ease the pain!

take me down to paradise city

2009-05-21T14:52:00.003-04:00

Also known as Port Clinton, Ohio. Skeptical?

View from my parent's lakeside condo:

Ok, I'll fess up. I didn't take this photo, but it is Lake Erie, the most beautiful place on earth (through my rose-colored lenses, anyway) and the place where I am gladdest (is that a word? dunno but it's how I feel).

I am heading home tomorrow to spend my holiday weekend there. It's my last weekend with my baby sis before she moves to Seattle to law school, so we better make it good!

rockin out

2009-05-21T11:37:00.006-04:00

This is what I feel like today:

Work and life have been kind of stressful the last few days: got in a minor fender bender over lunch hour the other day when I was rushing to get to the pond to read my book in the sun. The man I bumped was the ideal person to run into, however- he just kept saying, "No worries, it's just plastic and metal." If only everyone could be that easy-going! But of course, my cell phone broke and my rearview mirror fell off on the commute home last night, so it's been a one-two (and three) punch.

Not to mention, I'm currently working on a project at work that is stirring up a political s*storm. It's fascinating from an objective point of view: business administrators attempting to drive physician behavior change. Not an easy task. Honestly, I doubt it will be effective. Everyone's heart is in the right place, but that doesn't make this less messy. Physicians learn best from other physicians, and although marketing is attempting to construct a facade that shows otherwise, it is my unsettling suspicion that all this effort will be for nought when the docs perceive this educational effort as an attept by marketing to increase patient acquisition. Hopefully my pessimism is unfounded, but who knows!

I'm trying to be patient, though. Like all businesses, be they hospitals, universities, or othewrise, this is a flawed organization, made up of flawed individuals. After two years, I do believe that everyone is trying to do their best by the patients. In spite of financial and business constraints (and honestly, a smidge of avarice for some) most people deeply care about patients and each other. I have to remember that when it feels like everything is crashing down around me. It may not be the pretty picture I once envisioned it, but after you wipe away the grime, the beauty of the effort still shines through.

And so, the rock-out picture. This is what I do on my way to and from work every day: my battle cry of sorts. I cruise in after my commute, sun streaming through the open window, crank up the jams, and play a little air guitar. It makes me feel more alive- and so much more me- before I enter the storm.

to my coworkers: may i ask a favor

2009-05-19T14:08:00.003-04:00

to my kind coworkers:

after a few years of knowing you, i feel like we've achieved a certain level of intimacy: long past the formal email salutations, we've shared countless birthday cakes, the occasional eye-roll during long-winded meetings, and awkward hellos in bathrooms and hallways. i've learned far too much about your elective cosmetic surgeries, reproductive cycles, and digestive tracts, and you've probably grown tired of my incessant spilling, indie itunes mixes, and caustic quips. by now, i feel comfortable with you--too comfortable, in fact. and so i'd like to ask just a couple of favors. Just minor things, really:

- i know my cube is right outside the bathroom. i know your desk is 20 long yards away. but really, must you use my desk as a holding spot for your laptop/lunch/cell phone while you use the restroom? truly, I don't mind. just as, I assume, you don't mind when I help myself to a bite of your Portobello Mushroom Linguine or to a quick international call on your mobile. yes, it really is unfortunate your wife stumbled across those adult websites while rifling through your internet history, but hey

- bathroom etiquette: i can hear you. smell you. see you. please close the bathroom door. and while you're at it, when you come out of the bathroom with a toothbrush perpetually behind your ear I start to wonder if there's something more going on in the men's room than simple dental hygiene.

- it's wrong to lie. it's even more wrong to force your coworkers to lie when you shove your smelly, wrinkly baby in their faces and insist they tell you how cute "she" is. guess what? she's not.

- the freezer. It’s packed with lean cuisines. the conundrum: if your cuisine is so lean, why aren’t you? Let’s face the facts: you bypass your Frozen Chicken Parts on Pasta each day in favor of the irresistible panera/portillos/name-your-poison-fast-food-joint a mile down the road. Stop fooling yourself! Leave the Lean to me (and the freezer space, too).

thanks in advance...your consideration is so appreciated.
sincerely,
babysuit

(End note)

Anyways, it’s a beautiful day here, so I used my lunch hour to read “A History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss by the pond near the office. The book (not chick lit like it sounds, but beautifully written, poignant prose) and the company (baby geese) were wonderful, and it was so refreshing to see and feel spring for a change. Hopefully that continues tonight at the White Sox game- here's to beating the traffic from the far north to the south side of the city in time for the first inning!

return from the figurative dead

2009-05-18T19:26:00.003-04:00

Well, I've taken quite a hiatus from this blog, which is unfortunate, considering it is supposed to be about my grad school process and most of my activity on that front has occurred in the last month. For me, it got to be an overwhelming balance of thinking/talking about the decision all the time (and probably driving everyone, including myself, insane) and not being comfortable with sharing the details of such a personal choice with the anonymous viewership. (Partially because of my acute sensitivity of anyone from work reading or misinterpreting this blog). In any case, here's a quick rundown:

- It was a tough choice. At the end of the day, I was deciding between Brown, who has an amazingly fluid, multi-disciplinary degree but whose program seemed very inchoate in terms of the overall picture; Columbia, which is a public health powerhouse (but I was afraid it was a bit of an MPH-mill...not to mention the hefty pricetag), and Yale, who had the right balance of class size, research opportunity, and faculty interests that I was looking for. Plus, I really liked their approach of tackling social/behavioral health issues through the lens of epidemiology, something that the other programs just didn't have. So, off to Yale it is.

- I will be studying chronic disease epidemiology and social/behavioral sciences. Basically what that means is that I will be learning about and researching the confluence of behavioral, societal/cultural, organizational, and physicological factors on health. For anyone who knows my academic interests, this is a dream come true: a real combination of my passion for healthcare and my profound curiousity about what makes people act (and interact) the way they do. Why public health? Not only because of its interdisciplinary nature, as I just noted, but because more so than other disciplines (in my humble opinion), public health research is dynamic, relevent to the real world in real time (swine flu, anyone?), and the results can and are translated into programs that actually help people...not just bound in leather and stuffed into a remote library corner. Not to say other disciplines don't do these things as well, of course, it's just that for me, public health has just the right mix of pedagogy and practice).

Anyway, I'm sure I'm being overly idealistic about this, as I am with everything, and I'm trying to temper my excitement to avoid the inevitable bubble-bursting, but let's face it: I. am. pumped!

So the nature of this blog will be changing a bit. I want to blog about grad school, still, since that is and will become even more so a bigger part of my life, but I don't want to the focus to revolve around that...I'ts tiresome to constantly think about it on this blog when it consumes so much of my waking time otherwise! Instead, I'm going to aim for a combo of relevant health-related news, off-the-cuff thoughts about work, and the process of transitioning from the full-time workplace into the land of horn-rimmed glasses and over-used library cards....and walks of shame (more to come!)

This is a hasitly-scribbled, pretty boring post to start off my foray back into the blogging world, but I hope to be back with more and better material in the near future!

the angst of indecision

2009-03-24T00:45:00.001-04:00

So I've been absent from this blog for awhile, and it's not for lack of updates in the grad school world. In fact, my absence stems mostly from the fact that, in the overwhelming rapids of information that have come churning through my own narrow river of life, I have been paralyzed with indecision. (Although, as my friends can attest, it's not for lack of lipservice--here's a note of apology to all of you who've listened to me agonize endlessly the last month).

In summary:

- I've been accepted to three great programs, all of which have their own unique qualities which I will rehash at a later date (hey baby, I've got until April 15th to decide and you cant bet on it that I will take every last moment)
- I've kind of sort of worked out an arrangement with my work to stay on part-time remotely, which makes me feel relieved and frightened. Relieved, because I've finally come clean and copped to my grad school plans. Relieved, because the thought of going jobless in this economy is scarier than seeing Jessica Simpson in yet another pair of Daisy Dukes, and because I, quite frankly, feel safer doing something to "advance my career" than to take a random job serving whiskey to locals (although I'm sure that would spawn some interesting stories). On the other hand, I worry that my commitment to work might compromise my ability to fully participate in the world of gradschool and all its unforseen opportunities. I do feel like I have more to contribute to my current company, and don't want to end on bad terms after they've invested so much, so we'll see how it works out.
-I'm confronting 3 moves in less than 6 months: one back to Chi-town from Arizona, which is not without its conflict (workwise and luggage-wise), one into my boyfriend's place when my lease expires, and one to the East coast, wherever I end up....ugh, apartment search #239823 here I come
-Financial woes: financial aid, loans, economy, credit crunch? I think we've all heard enough of that these days so I'll stop there.

I'm ecstatic to be starting my new grad school life, and so ready for it. I think I realized just how ready when I was excited to do my biostats homework since it meant a change of pace from the countless process maps/excel sheets I'm required to produce on any given day...wow. That might have been the single most depressing sentence I've ever written.

Anyway, there's a lot going on--and even more sleepless nights. I think I've gone through an entire bottle of Tums in the last 3 weeks of 3am wakeups. It's pretty pathetic when the highlight of your day is imaging half a dozen small disks of chalk absorbing the gallons of acid writhing in your stomach.

Also, it occurred to me that I may have to change the url to this blog...what will I be when I go back to grad school? Not babysuit anymore...maybe babyblazer? babyelbowpatch? baby-gotta-wear-sweatpants-cuz-my-diet-consists-soley-of-ramen-noodles-and-cheetos? Suggestions are welcome.

*Edit: The previous name of this blog was "Babysuit," a nod to my awkardness in my new work wardrobe immediately post college graduation

peaceful, easy feeling

2009-03-23T00:23:00.001-04:00

In Phoenix, I live in a far west, burgeoning suburb called Goodyear. It's just now developing, so there isn't much where I live other than empty fields, endless sky, and mountains.

As I was running in the darkness the other night, beneath more stars than I've seen since I left Ohio years ago, it struck me, in all that vastness, how far away I was from everyone and everything I know and love. How disconnected, detached...and free. It's hard not to feel a bit wild and free when there's nothing for miles besides you, a couple stray cacti, and oceans of sky. Puffing away on my run, it felt like I could be swept up in a moment and simply disappear.

Yet, more than not, I never feel that way. Even in this town, which is a temporary home, where I have few attachments and little connection to anything outside of work, it's so easy to sink into a nice, easy rhythm of daily life. I don't even have anything here to "settle for," yet that's what I've done. It was a refreshing reminder of how easy it can be to feel tied down, and how easy it is to sink into the quicksand of complacency. That I can't depend on any outside stimulus--any sudden change of events-- to make me feel alive. I can't count on going to grad school, to changing my life and location once again, to disrupt me and inspire me into becoming a new and better person...or into feeling alive. That's up to me.

Part of my absence from this blog has been my inability to get outside my head even for a moment, to put down the spreadsheet, email, and endless stream of data that confronts me at every turn (be it grad school or otherwise) and take a moment to breathe, look around, and remember how beautiful this world is and to take advantage of living in it. I am embarrassed to be writing the stereotypical "carpe diem" post (which I penned many a time in my highschool Xanga days), but I guess for what it's worth, that's what I have to remember- that regardless of what decision I make, or where I go, it's not the choice itself that will make me, but the daily decision to be part of that world that will make the difference in the long run. I guess I better get started now.

the end of an affair

2009-02-16T22:50:00.005-05:00

Getting up at 2:30am Phoenix time,flying across the country, then working a full day is sheer torture...After four interminable hours of contorting into a pretzel in an attempt not to touch the large folks on either side of you who are so rudely encroaching into your personal space, you "wake up" from a rocky plane ride feeling hungover, slimy, and let's be honest, drool-encrusted. Of course, US Airways exacerbates the ordeal by accusing its customers of stealing pillows from the first class cabin (uh hello! does it look like the scarf-covered textbook I'm using is a pillow?), guilt tripping them into paying $2.00 for a bottle of water (oh, you want the free stuff, do you? the stewardess taunts when you ask for tap), and ensuring that regardless of plane mechanics or weather conditions, you always depart at least 30 minutes late.

While there are lots of reasons why I enjoy traveling for work, I'm looking forward to the adventure that lies ahead in exploring new places in grad school. Since I'm pretty certain I'll be somewhere on the east coast, I will be fortunate that I should be able to take less painful forms of transportation...thank God.

So, US Air, it's over. Together, we've gone to places I've never been. We've flown faster and farther than I could have imagined. It took a long time for me to get my head out of the clouds and realize that you hurt me in so many ways. Physically, when you couldn't give me what I needed (typical guy! kidding...but really, couldn't you have spared even one blanket or half can of soda?). Emotionally, when you kept me waiting for hours and then canceled with no notice. Psychologically, when you wreaked havoc on my emotions by making promises you knew could never keep. Granted, I should have known better than to believe your unkept vows of on-time departures, but yet I turned a blind eye again and again. And spiritually, when you taunted me over and over, urging me to "Enjoy my flight" while I silently writhed in pain.

Let me speak frankly, US Air. It's not me- it's YOU. And so, to quote the poetic genius that is REO Speedwagon, "Although it hurts to say goodbye, it's time for me to flyyyyyyyy).

Or more likely, drive.

merrily we roll along

2009-02-02T21:33:00.005-05:00

Well, sadly, there's nothing new to report on the grad school front, just the waiting that has encroached every aspect of my life: upon waking, in the shower, during meetings, while sleeping (often at the same time as the aforementioned meeting!). Ah waiting waiting is no fun, it makes me want to hurt someone! (More likely, myself as I stumble around blindly after another night of tossing and turning).

Things are rolling along at the hospital as well. It's an interesting and precarious balance, just a month after startup, because some departments are dragging while others are already slammed, yet without quite the volume to justify additions to staff. Although the hospital is mostly outpatient based, because of the acuity of ilness of most of our patients, our inpatients are quite ill, and several have already passed away. It's sad, moving, and inspiring to have a constant reminder of the preciousness of life, and also interesting to see how this professional kind of grief tempers the 'feel-good' nature of the motto that we preach. When an organization is founded around the central tenet of hope, what happens when hope is gone?

The other week, I heard our chief of staff describe hope in a way that really resonated with me. As opposed to the cliches we toss around about this oft over-used term, he talked about how nuanced hope can be, and how it can take on many different forms. Hope can mean fighting for a cure. Hope can mean increasing quality of life and/or prolonging life so that a person can have a bit more precious time with his or her loved ones. Hope can even mean a peaceful, dignified death.

I love the fluidity of this definition -ow beautiful (and necessary) for hope to change along with our circumstances. How else could we maintain courage and peace in spite of life's unpredictable twists and turns? If it's an all or nothing thing, you either win or lose and then you have no choice but to give up. Anyway, I am not even going to attempt to draw a tenuous analogy between grad school and these cancer patients. I can only to say that in a life where I am so blessed but yet still perpetually hoping for the ever-elusive "more", I am fortunate and humbled to work in a place that continues to put life into perspective every single day.

***Edit- I wrote this post last week and forgot to actually publish it. There is (good) news on the grad school front, which brings to light a whole new batch of decisions to be made, discussions to be had, and melodramatic crises to stress about...stay tuned!

waiting waiting is no fun

2009-01-27T23:18:00.006-05:00

waiting waiting is no fun
it makes me want to hurt someone!
why dont you just email or call
it seems like you don't care at all!

i submitted my app months ago
but still i have nothing to show
for the suffering and the pain
that slowly erodes my puny brain !

there's always time for a splash of irony

2009-01-26T23:02:00.082-05:00

Finally, my latte the other day was worth the four bucks I paid for it. I noticed this quotation on my Starbucks cup and was pleasantly surprised:

"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, inplay, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade aroundas rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as thebarrier to your life." - Ann Morris

I a master commitment escape artist. Over a decade, I have perfected the skill: in high school, doing five billion extracurriculars instead of trying to be really good at just one; in college, doing pre-med and liberal arts to "keep my options open;" and as an adult, selecting a job whose most appealing benefit was a two-year smorgasboard of mini-jobs, rotating locations, and postponed commitment. I won't go into my love life on this blog, but the story's much the same: deep down, I do know what I want, but I ...just...can't...quite...commit. (Sidebar: Here's a pic of me and the object of my commitophobia, who ironically was also the recipient of yesterday's dental-school rant...doesn't he look like a good future dentist?!)

Truth be told, I was lazy. In college, I just waited for the epiphany I believed would smack me awake and incite complete conviction. Pretty narcissistic actually- I don't know if I thought Moses was going to come down from his mountain with a burning tablet of dictums or what.

Even more than sheer sloth, I think it's the the cross-dressing fear that Morris writes of that has been silently stalking me for years, whispering insidious little doubts in my ear. I don't like commitment because I fear closing off options-- and let's face it, isn't the unexplored always so much more romantic than reality? If I'm really honest, I'm even more afraid that if I truly commit to something with everything I've got and fail, it'll tear me to shreds. It's so much easier living life with an air of detachment, knowing that real life will begin someday, but this just can't be it.

But it is. It's now. And I've finally realized that closing off options is indeed a sacrifice. By choosing grad school, I am forgoing (or at least seriously postponing) my supposedly accelerated path in healthcare admin, a career that has some serious perks: the occasional triumph of feeling like you're really helping someone, the fascinating social/psych experiment that is management, and if we're really going to be honest, a much fatter paycheck. But sacrifice isn't necessarily a bad thing. In this case, the old adage rings true: Nothing in life worth having is free (Except for maybe Free Cone day at Ben & Jerry's, that's pretty sweet, actually)

And since age 7, when I "published" a massive tome on my gerbil's mental

health, I've wanted to be two things: a writer or a psychiatrist. I've chosen not to become a physician, but I still have the chance to combine my love of the written word, and all things social sciences/healthcare by pursuing grad school, and eventually academia. When I recently started experiencing finals envy and fantasizing about the musty smell of NU's library, I realized that I'm finally ready to take the plunge. It may give me the shakes, kind of like these folks after a pleasant January dip in Lake Michigan, but they're the excited kind of shakes, and after all this time, it's truly exhilerating.

ROAR!

he's just not that into you- the grad school version

2009-01-25T12:40:00.006-05:00

Sitting by the phone- or in this age of mobile connectivity, walking with the phone- and waiting.

Waiting.

Staring at the computer screem, hoping that pressing "Refresh" once more will somehow evoke a magic wand and-Poof!-all your wishes will be granted.

Scurrying out to the post after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, waiting to unwrap, like Charlie and his Chocolate, your very own Golden Ticket.

Yet far worse than the three agonizing days of waiting for that cute-eyed boy from the bar last Saturday to call like he promised is the admissions process for dental (and presumably medical) school. Seven months later, one of my nearest and dearest is spending all of his free time (and much of mine) staring willfully at his phone and inbox, hoping to telepathically elicit a voice uttering the magic words: You're in.

These schools are teases. Like a debonair gentleman with a mischevious grin, the school invites you in for an interview in the autumn. The leaves are falling, the air is crisp, and you stride onto campus with a glean in your eye and sa spring in your step. The interview was much like a first date: palms sweaty, you spoke quickly and tried to fill the awkward silences with jovial pleasantries. Your interviewer, posessing all the rules to The Game and boasting the upper hand, looks slightly bored and blase. In interviews as in love, the one who cares less has the upper hand. Unfair, but true.

Yet, you were clever- you were. You verbally tangoed with the best of them, and you could see that your interviewer was finally wowed. Sparks flew, and as you departed with a cheerful smile and a wave, you just knew he would call.

2 days later, nothing. It's the standard 48 rule, though, so you brush it off as formality. Don't hate the player, hate the game, right?

2 weeks later- nothing.

2 months. Big. Fat. Nothing.

Your hopes all but dashed, you scan the AADSASwebsite like so many Facebook pages, scouring for any sign that he's moved on without you.

Nothing. Nothing but a meaningless update: "Under review," which is quite cruel, actually, because it delays a jarring but necessary realization for moving on with your life:

He's (and they're) Just Not That Into You.

The difference, of course, is that the prospective dental student can't simply shovel in loads of Ben & Jerry's or work it out in a sangria-fueled dance with a bunch of supportive girlfriends. It's their life, and their vocation on the line. In my humble opinion, seven months of putting life on hold is nothing less than ridiculous. Are these people sadists? Heartless? Simply slow-moving? After seven months, if you're just not that into me- just say it already!

But the truth is, there's still a significant chance that these anxiety-ridden wanna-be dentists could still get an acceptance. Hope is not yet lost, at least not until April 1st. But really, to all my friends out there still awaiting letters from law, grad, dent, and med schools-- let's all put down the cells and close Gmail for just a moment. Try to remember who we were before we got into this grad school cycle that's taken over our lives and turned us into a twentysomething equivalent of boy-crazed seventh graders. Time to say to those omnipotent, faceless admissions councils across the country that we're just not that into you!

(Ok that's not even remotely close to being true...but still, a girl's gotta try, right? Bring on the mint chocolate chip!)

a beautiful mess

2009-01-13T20:59:00.002-05:00

When you travel as much as I do, you begin to experience profound moments in unexpected places.

Tonight, as I was preparing to board my latest flight to Chicago on Southwest Airlines, a sweet, confused teen asked me out how to line up for Southwest’s cattle-call style boarding process. I looked at his boarding pass and showed him where to stand, assuring him that Southwest’s process can be really messy and confusing.

His quiet and poignant response: “Isn’t life?”

Indeed.

Today I received my first letter of acceptance from an MPH program, and one of my top choices.

While overjoyed, it was only after great hesitation that I called my mother. After a cursory “congratulations,” she posed the inevitable merriment-ending question “Are they going to pay you to go there?” And then, like an automatic machine gun, told me in succession that the economy sucks (duh), and that none of her fellow MPH grads got jobs. Perched on an airport Starbucks’ chair, tears streamed down my face and I rapidly devised a pathetic exit route.

Until boarding, I sat in a stunned stupor. Rationally, I know that my parents are simply…being parents. Having spent years working phlebotomy night shifts to make ends meet, driving a car with a hole rotted through the floor, and viewing frozen pizzas as a delicacy, their interest in what’s best for me understandably takes the form of financial security. It’s a deeply personal version of a very historic battle: security (them) vs. freedom (me). Conservative (them) vs. liberal (me). And while I’ve always nurtured this literary notion of the fiery-eyed child running off against her parents wishes to fulfill her dreams, for all my wishful rebelliousness it still upsets me deeply when I don’t have parental support.

I understand their fears- I do. So much so that I am desperately repressing and rejecting constant news sources that tell me that this might be the worst time in history to risk my job, take out a loan, and wing it all in the sake of passion. Yet I know what makes me tick, and although this job has provided me with a great learning experience, it’s not it. After an excruciating period of self-examination over the past 1.5 years, I know this is what I want, and am ready to assume a few (edit: many) years of indebtedness to get it. I am willing to pay to pursue my passion.

And let’s face it: I’m not getting any younger. There’s not too much time left whence I will be free to capitalize upon my youthful idealism and go flitting off into the sunset like a capricious butterfly.

But since life isn’t all idealism and fluttery pastel insects, I do have a belated New Year’s resolution. Goal 2008: Get in. Goal 2009: Get money. (Legally of course: loans, grants, maybe an organ or two posted on the black market.....kidding!)

Someone at work recently told me, “It all just depends on whether or not you have the courage to be happy.”

So here’s to making my life messier than a Southwest boarding process, but all the more rewarding…

hungry lions in heat

2008-12-30T00:21:00.000-05:00

It’s been quite a break from school stuff, although it’s never far from my mind. Last week was the Arizona Dept. of Health state inspection of the new hospital, which we passed, although there was quite a bit of chaos behind the scenes. The hospital had only received its temporary certificate of occupancy the week prior, which meant that there were only about 4 days between the time when we could start moving people, equipment, etc. in and the state coming. Of course, there was more than a year’s worth of work that went into the opening, but from a purely physical perspective, it was amazing to see how much was accomplished in a mere 96 hours. Today we received our first patients- a grand total of 3- which was actually relatively anticlimactic. In fact, I felt kind of sorry for the poor patients, who probably got more attention than they wanted, given the current staff to patient ratio of 50:1.

The holidays were lovely and relaxing, as always. For some reason, home has a powerful soporific effect on me, and it’s wonderful to sink into a sugar-and-trash-tv stupor for a couple of days. I even made it back to Ohio without incident, which was a pleasant surprise was given that O’Hare is like the Venus flytrap of airports, waiting to suck you in upon landing and gobble you down. It was lovely to be back home in the frosty white cold. As much as it seems ludicrous to complain when it’s 60 and sunny all the time, there’s something unnatural about skipping winter. As much as I complain, and as miserable as it can be not seeing the sun for almost five months, it has always seemed like winter forces a certain kind of introspection that seems vital to the human spirit (not to mention increased productivity- what else are you supposed to do?). Without it, I just seem to kind of merrily bounce along without giving pause or second thought to just about anything.

What is wrong with these jolly Arizona folk? They’re just so uncannily….happy! Still, I do believe they’re missing something. Perhaps it’s the strength of spirit that develops when it’s still blizzarding in April or the desperate cynicism that evolves when, after years of nursery rhymes, you learn the cruel lesson that March comes in like a lion…and out like one too. A hungry lion in heat, in fact. Although interestingly enough, Phoenicians still manage to weave the weather into every conversation: “What? What’s that you say? It’s going to drop to 55 degrees tomorrow?! Cripes, I’ve got to run- I’ve gotta pick up some down jackets and space heaters, stat- this is (insert expletive) unbelievable!”

Oh how I miss my windy, frozen city!

finals envy?!

2008-12-16T00:15:00.000-05:00

I just finished my latest online class, but it doesn't feel that way. I'm watching all my friends who are in graduate, law, or medical school kick and scream as they enter into weeks-long hibernation periods as they scramble to prepare for their finals, and strangely I feel.....jealous. As stressful as it was, I miss the feeling of holing up for days and applying so much brain-power and energy that you feel as though your brain is scrambled, and emerging from that period exhausted yet somehow triumphant. I miss the sense of creativity of writing papers, and the adrenaline rush of exam-taking. Somehow, the long hours I put in at work don't give me the same rush. At the end of the day, I mostly feel....exhausted. I think this is in part because although work is challenging, it doesn't require the same scholastic intellectual horsepower, and implementing change in such a massive bureaucratic system often feels akin to a never-ending sprint on a QVC treadmill. Perhaps selfishly, I had hoped that my job would endow me with a sense of meaning—with that rush that arrives in knowing that you’ve really helped someone. Instead, I have to settle for a very abstract hope that my process models, control charts, and Pareto diagrams might someday make someone’s life a bit easier, if and when my recommendations are ever implemented.

Ironically, is that I never felt so stymied as an undergrad, even though all my effort was channeled merely towards completion of the academic endeavor, without any expectation of change. I’m hoping that since I’m applying to MPH programs that will allow me to explore my academic area of interest (socio-behavioral health sciences) and also emphasize the application of research, that I’ll get to fuel both of my passions-- learning simply for the joy of it, but actually helping people as well.

Starting in January, I'll be taking Biostatistics as well as doing my Six Sigma Black Belt at U of M online this upcoming semester, so I'll be swimming in stats, which won't be fun, but at least it will be challenging. While I've enjoyed both my work and my online public health leadership classes, I am looking forward to that triumphant moment--however fleeting--when an obstinate equation is finally solved and a problem set completed.

Even more so, I'm looking forward to getting back to school. To whining about finals but secretly loving them. This time around, I will treasure the learning….but hopefully, I’ll also be equipped with the tools to actually help someone as a result of those finals (instead of just the profit margin at the late night coffee shop where I buy my pre-exam espresso!)

(somewhat) successful!

2008-11-30T23:47:00.002-05:00

Nothing much new to report other than the SOPHAS application deadline is tomorrow (the centralized application system for public health schools), and my apps are complete and submitted! I was a little nervous for awhile because one of my profs, while assuring that she'd write me a good recommendation, was drawing out her submittal to the last minute and driving me crazy. It was all I could do not to continually pester her, but I held back for the most part (except for a couple emails I had to let fly--I couldn't help it!) and she did submit on time. I'm in the home stretch now, and just need to finish tying up some loose ends on a couple others, and I'll be all set, at least in terms of applying....obviously there will still be the whole acceptance/financial aid/enrollment aspect to figure out! But at least stage 1 will have come to an end.

This week it will be incredibly difficult to focus and allocate enough time to wrapping up this process, as I am helping out with the general orientation of all the new employees for the Phoenix hospital. The real goal of the week, other than distributing all the policies & procedures, HR benefits, and all the other paperworky-stuff, is to enculturate all the new employees. I'm really curious to see how this process unfolds, and to see how a group of strangers evolves from just that- a diverse group of individuals with little in common- to a unified organization of teams who must rely on each other to complete (in some cases) life-saving actions. All the hospitals have a little different flavor, and since we're openng up with 30% transfers, I'm also curious to see what the unique culture of this organization will be. Tougher around the edges but secret softies, like Philly? Slow-moving but incredibly warm and kind, like Tulsa? In the next month I'll get to witness firsthand how concepts and philosophies we've been tossing around for months in a tiny office down the road morph into a tangible culture and daily processes.

That is, of course, if any of these folks survive to see opening day....I've spent the last 5 hours baking loads of sugar cookies for my Team-building workshop, during which we'll be decorating holiday cookies in addition to all the normal, obscure-question-laced icebreaker games. Little do these poor souls know that within 48 hours of their employment, they'll be forced to suffer the disasterous results of my baking, something even my own mother won't willingly do without copious amounts of vino. Good thing I've got several dozen of the store-made variety as my secret backup. Ironically, the employees will probably bond as a team over their disgust over the burnt, sugary lumps I'm calling "snowment" and "Christmas trees." The good news is, if these new employees can survive my baking, they can certainly handle any conflict or situation that might be thrown their way....which is my intent, right?

wild wild west

2008-11-21T21:34:00.003-05:00

As of Wednesday, I am temporarily living in Phoenix, AZ (well, technically Goodyear, AZ) for the next 6 months in order to help open our newest hospital here. I'm excited for multiple reasons, not least of which is the much warmer weather--I've set my iGoogle to show me the temps in Chicago and in Phoenix, and delight several times a day when I notice that the Phoenix temperature is 2x or3x as much as Chicago's.

The hospital opens at the end of December, which will make this holiday season even crazier than usual, as we will have only a few days to prepare for and pass state inspections, train the entire staff, and tie up all the loose ends required to get the place up and running. As for me, my "unofficial, official" task is to help get the Lean/Six Sigma department up and running. Lean and Six Sigma are two process improvement methodologies we use to eliminate waste (waiting time, etc), reduce defects (increase pt. safety), save money, and improve service delivery/quality of care. My responsibilities, besides setting up the various processes, programs, and training all employees, will include the implementation of several tools required to staff nurses based on patient acuity. For non-HC people, this essentially means understanding how much RN work is associated with a given patient condition, and then structuring staffing around assigned acuity levels so that patients get the best care and nurses are utilized most efficiently. Patient-based nurse staffing is mandated by Arizona state law and will require a tremendous amount of clinical knowledge and IT skill that I simply do not have....yet. I love the challenge of working on something that is completely foreign to me, and will help acquaint me with all the order sets, documentation, etc. that an electronic health record requires. Plus I'll get to hang out on the inpatient/ICU unit, and there's not much more I like than being around patients (as opposed to spreadsheets!)

Even more appealing to my creatively-inclined brain is the start-up atmosphere: the feeling of actually envisioning something and then creating it...as opposed to most of what I've experienced in the corporate world, when implementing anything feels like a battle. It's an opportunity to help establish a culture that embraces process improvement and equips employees with the tools they need to create change, rather than just providing lipservice to the notion of employee empowerment. After spending years studying culture as a concept and the last year observing organizational culture in particular, I still have no clue...but I'm excited to find out!

a little bit of medicine....

2008-11-11T21:05:00.006-05:00

In terms of grad school, there are a few more applications I have yet to complete. I've been a bit distracted lately (as evidenced by my lack of attention to this blog), by schoolwork, the election, a cold, wrapping up my finance stint in Philly, and getting ready to "move" to Phoenix (more on that later...)

My cold was minor: a little cough and a slight sore throat, accompanied by the requisite whining to my mother via throaty, whispered cell phone calls. I couldn't sleep a couple of nights, when it felt like there were several dozen hyperactive Boy Scouts attempting to build fires in my throat, and as I writhed in agony, I quickly lost my grip on reality and plunged into the depths of self-despair.

That is, until the next morning when I was traipsing around the hospital affixing asset tags to capital equipment (read: the most mind-numbing job ever), I stopped to chat with a kindly-looking elderly man wearing an Ohio State cap. As we chatted enthusiastically about the impending Northwestern vs. Ohio State football game, I noticed him grimace in pain several times, although he wasn't moving in the slightest, and his face blanch as whatever was bothering him grew increasingly worse. We finished our friendly conversation, and as I trotted away he quietly offered me the traditional Ohio parting words of "OH," to which I gleefully replied, "IO," secretly delighted to find a small piece of home in a faraway city.

What struck me more than our easy Midwestern camaraderie, however, was the chronic pain my newfound friend was clearly experiencing that day, and most likely every day. (Assuming, of course, that his pain could not have been in response to my pitiful predictions of an NU victory.) I thought about my cold and how annoying it was, and the gulf between the sick and the healthy opened in my mind. I have always taken my health for granted. Except for minor illnesses and surgeries, I have never experienced protracted or dehibilitating pain. If I ever did encounter such a misfortune, I could go to a number of specialists, get a few scrips, and be done with it by day's end. I think about all those with no or insufficient insurance, who have no choice but to live with the pain, the discomfort, and much worse than the occasional sore throat until it gets better...

or until it forces them into the ER.

After experiencing life from the student and provider's perspective, I understand the implications of this country's paltry emphasis on preventative medicine & primary care from a conceptual (and financial) perspective: predispositions, poor health behaviors, or chronic illnesses left unadressed until more costly, time and labor-intensive acute care is the only available alternative. What I forget--or simply can't imagine-- is what it must feel like to be that individual with high blood pressure who can't buy their medication or to have strep throat without access to antibiotics. I can't imagine living in constant pain, rendered unable to participate in my own life, a helpless bystander watching as my body betrays me. Once again, I am grateful for the opportunity to work with patients who distill the articles, theories, and philosophical pontification in which I so often lose myself, and illimunate real life. I hope that grad school--and especially public health internships--will help expose me further, because I know I must understand before I can help.

And on that note, back to applications!....

stop the bickering, children

2008-11-06T18:52:00.008-05:00

I would be remiss not to mention the most historic election day I've experienced (and probably will experience again....until, that is a woman becomes president!). In the midst of these troubled times, I can't help but delight in that little trill of hope that is radiating throughout the nation, and I am excited to see how "change," a term that is in my opinion overused as it is elusive, will be embodied and enacted by the Obama administration. Lord knows we need it.

...and perhaps this makes me a bit of an apolitcal anomoly, but I'm also relieved that the election is over. While I'm looking forward to watching and experiencing the dynamic shift in policy-making we're all hoping this administration brings, I'm so tired of reading about the election. I'm tired of hearing about Sarah Palin's jacket collection (if I wanted to read about fashion, I'd be reading Vogue not the New York Times, thank you very much), or psuedo-Marxist comments made by Obama's pastor's fifth cousin twice-removed, or what a sexy silver fox Joe Biden is (OK, I just made that one up!). I'm excited and proud that this election finally engaged and provoked Americans--and my apathetic generation, in particular-- but I despise the moment when thoughtful arguments about important issues regress into petty bickering and an endless tirade of "he said, she said." It seems as though, during a particularly heated and protracted election cycle that included hard-fought primary races, that moment occured eons ago.

Indeed, a recent article in the Washington Post, while admitting a liberal bias that came as a shock to no one, also shed some light on the media's sensationalization of bickering and diminishment of issues:

(By Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell, commenting on the frequency and kinds of stories published since Obama's candidacy was finalized in early June)

"The count was lopsided, with 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories. The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts' views. There were no broad stories on energy or science policy, and there were few on religion issues."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110702895.html

Thus the public were forced to search to find straight-forward and reliable information about the issues at hand, unadultered by scathing barbs or catty remarks uttered by one candidate or another. Maybe I'm just a wuss. Admittedly, I refuse to watch Olympic ice skating because it pains me to see the athletes stumble or fall on a jump- I hate watching failure or humiliation, however minor and in whatever form. I'm not non-confrontational (as anyone who was around me from ages 15-19 would tell you in a heartbeat!), but I think this country and our problems are messy enough without exacerbating the issues by meaningless bickering. Productive, constructive conflict I am all for. Name-calling and rumor-spreading, I am not. Kindgergarten recess time is over, and it's time stop pointing our sticky, jam-coated fingers and move on.

Now that the election's over, I'm glad there's a ceasefire, however temporarily, between our rivaling parties. I'm even more hopeful that my morning paper will begin to illuminate what "change" really means for us as a nation as we move past the bickering and begin to witness the policies, actions, and political climate this new administration will create.

I am less hopeful about one thing, however: that SNL will continue to be as entertaining as it has been in recent months. Buh-bye, "Sarah!"

sticks and stones

2008-10-29T20:57:00.001-04:00

I learned a lesson this week- one that was long in the making. Like many recent college grads, I tumbled headlong into my first real job and the lines between work and personal life rapidly blurred, obscured by workplace camaraderie, too many hours spent in the office, a hectic travel schedule, and plenty of wine-infused dinners. This perspective is reinforced by a culture that values hard work above all else, and often frowns upon any encroachment of personal life.

Furthermore, I happen to work for a company that consistently reminds us that we are a "family," and that we should support each other, work as a united team, and all the mushy-feel good stuff you believe when you're 22 and your brain is still intoxicated with youthful idealism.

If this is starting to sound cynical, that's because it is, to some degree. Because, to quote an old adage (as ancient as last week’s episode of The Office), “The office is not a family….it’s a workplace.” Despite all the soul-warming lip service we give to being a team united in one mission, at the end of the day, it is still a workplace. Now, I don’t want to totally disparage my organization, because the majority of employees do strongly believe in our mission of providing compassionate patient care. Still, there isn’t going to be anyone there to hold your hand or wipe your face when you mess up, and the prodigal son won’t be welcomed with banners and stuffed pigs (thank God-how gross!).

In fact, at times, it more resembles a high school, albeit one with an extraordinary number of students with potbellies and receding hairlines. I’m not sure why I’m surprised by this, but I still am. I spent the vast majority of my years growing up longing to get out of a small town of small minds, rife with petty chatter and vindictive rumor-spreading. In the city, I thought, surely people would be more open-minded, and would have better things to do than chatter mindlessly and mendaciously about everyone around them. But I quickly realized college, a place where liberal minds and free spirits supposedly run free, was much the same. It’s human nature, and it’s not limited to a small town or school: people gossip. In fact, we’re biologically predisposed to it: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-gossip

And I’m no exception. While I don’t think I’ve ever been malicious, I’m sure my gregariousness and facetious tendencies have had me working that same regrettable rumor mill more than once. I’m just pissed because I got bitten by the rumor bug the other day. Something I said, offhandedly and in my mind, innocuously, somehow got passed around the organization like a grown-up game of Telephone. And unfortunately, unlike in kindergarten, the phrase in question wasn’t something along the lines of “Johnny picks his nose” or “Sally has a wedgie,” and after being skewed and inflated several times over, my statement was no longer so innocuous. In fact, the incendiary version could have had serious consequences at work, and the merely dealing with the (untrue!) rumor itself forced me to choose between fighting an uphill battle or compromising my integrity.

So I learned my lesson: Yes, as a workplace, we do work together- most days as a team- to achieve a mission that hopeful does make a positive impact on humankind. However, as I embark upon a career in public health, I can’t make the mistake again of thinking that a non-profit or service-oriented organization, however kind-spirited, will be any different. Like the humans they’re composed of, organizations are flawed. And most certainly are not a family- anything I say can and will be held against me. That doesn't denigrate the goodness of what we try to accomplish, it just means reigning in a little bit and remembering- it's work for a reason.

As for me, since I tend to speak much too freely and too frequently, a good rule of thumb would be to begin to ask myself the question posed in an article I recently read about servant leadership:

“In saying what I have in mind, will I really improve on the silence?"

(notably, my post stops here!)

word count, character count...count me out!

2008-10-26T17:00:00.007-04:00

For the past month or so, I have been composing, deconstructing, and recomposing my personal statement(s). Because I am a perfectionist when it comes to writing--just about the only thing over which I'm incredibly detail-oriented-I have been spending hours upon hours scrutinizing each sentence. And since I'm not so detail oriented in other areas, I overlooked a key instruction- word and character requirements. I had most of my word limitations down, and as much as it pains me to "kill" my own sentences, if chopping adjectives and slaying extraneous phrases were a crime, I'd be a serial killer of Ted Bundy proportions.

(Sidenote: This recent article about my beloved city is truly depressing....Use words, not guns, people! http://cbs2chicago.com/local/chicago.homicide.rate.2.847736.html )

Anyway, I was merrily typing along when I noticed some tiny text near the corner of the application, visible only to eagles and the occasional superhero, indicating that in fact, essay length is based upon character count, not word count, includes spaces, and is based on an average word length of six characters. SIX CHARACTERS?!?!?! Who do they think are writing these essays, preschoolers on steroids?

This was a minor nightmare, and I contemplating hurling my laptop out the window. Of course, I thought better of it when I realized that such the only benefit of such an impetuous would be the creation of an expensive if unsightly lawn ornament for the condemned house next door.

So, I brewed another pot of coffee, plugged the computer back in, and geared up for another round of sentence-slaying. I've learned my lesson- pay attention to details, and in a nutshell, SHUT UP. I love words (and especially my words) more than those who read them, and I shouldn't subject the admissions counselors to page upon page of my ramblings. Oh, if only I could learn the art of concision! Sadly, I think that lesson may be a long time in the making.

I will leave you with one of my favorites by Pablo Neruda, a true master of brevity in its finest form:

In A Station of The Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Idealist.org Grad School Blogging Project

2008-10-15T07:55:00.000-04:00

My little blog is growing up! Baby Suit is becoming part of a graduate school blogging project hosted by as a way to provide graduate students and prospective grad students with resources and a little personal touch as they (and we) navigate our way through the process. I'm excited to be part of the project, especially because Idealist.org has such a strong non-profit and service-oriented mission. Since I currently work in a for-profit environment (albeit, a hospital with a patient-focused mission), the vocal little idealist in me is itching to get out and play. Hopefully, my ramblings might help (or at least entertain) someone who is going through something similar.
Just a quick background on this blog and on me:

I graduated with a BA in sociology from Northwestern University in June of 2007, and after quite a bit of reflection and research, decided not to pursue medical school. Instead, I have been working full time as part of a hospital administration fellowship program, since July of 2008, and have been bouncing around the US working in various hospitals. I started this blog in winter of last year as a way to vocalize frustrations and anecdotes as I adjusted to adulthood and a corporate world in which suits, ties, and overusage of the word "strategic" are a way of life. I realized quickly how much I missed academia and found that sitting in the back office crunching numbers didn't quite satiate my curiosity or my passion to help people work through issues relating to healthcare quality and access. My passion is the study of how social, cultural, and behavioral factors impact individuals' and society's health decisions, behaviors, and access, so I am applying for an MPH (concentration in social/behavioral health) for enrollment in 2009. I'm particularly interested in programs that will allow me a high degree of flexibility in exploring my interests, and also programs that offer focus on applied research. I love learning and academic exploration just for the sake of it, but I'd really like to ultimately translate research into action.

In the past, this blog has been a catchall for just about anything I felt like posting, and my submissions have been inconsistent. As the Idealist Blogger program launches, more of my posts will focus on reflection about current health/public health issues, graduate school, and the application process...although I am certain there will still be a fair amount of my typical sarcastic humor mixed in.

fall frenzy

2008-10-13T14:59:00.001-04:00

Five and a Half Reasons Why I love Fall

1. CANDY CORN.
Orange triangles of pure bliss. I can't get enough!

2. Chai tea lattes and pumpkin spice nut mix.
As I have only recently discovered, I have a penchant for almost anything that is pumpkin-flavored: coffee, weird but delicious pumpkin-coated pretzels & popcorn, cream cheese, pumpkin dip. My most recent obsession is this pumpkin spice nut mix I discovered at Target, with sugar-coated walnuts, graham cracker chunks, and pumpkin-coated raisins. It can't be good for me to be consuming such copious quantities of fake-fruit flavored"foods," but I'm addicted. Hard-core. Seriously. It's quite gross. I'm going to pay the price someday when I turn a sallow shade of orange, have no teeth intact (hello, free dental care!), and suffer from diabetes, but it is worth it, I tell you!

3. Northwestern Football Games.
It's really more about getting to visit the alma mater's campus, which is gorgeous in the fall (lots of leafy trees and beautiful lakeside scenery), spending time with old friends, and enjoying the occasional NU win. NU is better than usual this year (5-1), but I always expect heartbreak at Northwestern games--we always lose just when I think it's in the bag! Hence the reason why most students yell ridiculous imprecations about the opposing team's future employment prospects (usually some outdated reference to pumping gas or parking cars and involving obnoxious key jingling). To be honest, it's alwasy embarrassed me, since in my opinion academic snobbery has no place on a football field (or anywhere, for that matter) but the strangley sarcastic school spirit matches my own predilection toward self-deprecation quite nicely.

4. Halloween
I'm actually not a huge fan of dressing up, surprisingly. Maybe this is just the type-A side of me, but I always feel like there is so much pressure to come up with a costume that is appropriately obscure, clever, funny, and if you're a woman, slutty (a stereotype which I have no intention of fulfilling!) Plus, since I'm kind of a class-clown, I feel like I should be extra-funny, and I always fail. But I still love the decorations, crisp air, scary movies, and in Chicago, the raging debauchery that floods the streets during Halloween weekend. So many freaks, so little time! I love it.

5. New beginnings
While it feels sadly less so in the working world, autumn usually marks a new beginning in academic life: a change to reinvent yourself, re-establish yourself in a dynamic social and academic hierarchy, and re-dedicate yourself to all the things you love. There's such a sense of possibility, like anything could happen (and sometimes does!). Reaching back even further, I still miss the smell of new crayons, Elmer's glue and construction paper, and all of those blank notebooks, waiting to be filled. Hitting up the supply closet at work for a new set of Post-it notes doesn't have nearly the appeal. Maybe this is why I overcompensate with so many of #1 and #2 on this list?

5.5 Applying

This only gets a .5 because it's part of the aforementioned "new beginnings." I don't love the application process itself (see yesterday's post), but it's still exciting to entertain visions of the wonderful things I could be doing this time next year, wherever that may be. Ah, the possibilities.

I could go on and on: the cold mornings, warm days, my new golden-russet-colored leather jacket (yes I did just compare my outerwear to an apple, and yes, I look badass in it!), hot toddies, simmering pots of chili, the color of lake Erie....even the trash-filled streets of Philly start to take on a certain charm (no offense to you Philly-fanatics out there!).

If only the end of fall in Chicago didn't mean the beginning of a winter that will inevitably last 6 months. Good-bye, sun....see ya in May!

2008-10-12T19:17:00.000-04:00

This week, I began the daunting process of filling out applications. Unfortunately, schools of public health haven’t completely converted to a centralized application forum like other graduate schools. Thus, while most of my friends who are applying to dental school or law school are zipping through their apps ( I’m sure they wouldn’t describe it that way, but you get the point!), I’m slaving away over a billion dull application pages, filling in information about my city of birth, my extracurricular activities for the past two decades, my maternal great-grandmother’s blood type, and how old I was the first time I rode a bike without training wheels.

Seriously, though, it’s quite an intimidating process. For someone like me, who isn’t inclined check if all the t’s are crossed and the i’s dotted, especially when filling out piles of tedious forms, it’s an agonizing process. More than anything, it’s nerve-wracking, because etching out my name over and over again on those forms makes this process suddenly real. I haven’t put myself out there in this way in a long time. I don’t consider myself conservative, but when I think about the choices I’ve made over the years, most of them have been cautious, calculated, and undertaken only if I was fairly certain I would succeed. Interestingly enough, I’m taking the opposite tactic with my graduate school applications. Because I do love my job, I’m applying to only my “dream” schools—because if I were to give up working full time, it would only be worth it for an equally exciting academic opportunity. It’s still not an completely wild risk, since I have my job to fall back on, but it’s strange and scary to think of the realistic possibility that I might not get in anywhere. I'm not all that accustomed to failure, but I hope that in the case that I don't get admitted anywhere, that I make like an overplayed pop song and brush my shoulders off and try again.

On the bright side, at least I don’t have to answer any incredibly cheesy questions about what kind of mural would I paint on the side of a skyscraper in Chicago or who my real-life hero is (a hot-dog themed amusement park, and my grandmother, respectively) like in the undergrad admissions apps. I guess that just means I can keep my BS juices flowing here on this blog instead, then!

2008-09-09T22:53:00.001-04:00

As my girl Dorothy Parker once wrote:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Rumania.
--Dorothy Parker

I feel sure of the first two lines at least. As I keep reminding myself: whatever happens this year, it is bound to be some sort of adventure!

I feel compelled to post about Dorothy, one of my favorite poets, because I visited New York City for the first time this weekend, and sipped a (very expensive) "Parker" martini in the Algonquin Hotel, where she used to hang out with the 1920's literati. How I wish I could have sat next to her in that lounge! I imagine she would be brilliantly cynical and at times caustic, but a wonderful, entertaining bar buddy. I hope my own life is filled with the sort of adventures worthy of her pithy poems and whimsical stories...although I suppose it's up to me to make it so!

Not to mention the fact that over eighty years ago, Dorothy described better than I ever could exactly how I feel about the billions of poorly-run, mind-numbingly boring meetings I must sit through on a weekly basis:

Resume (Should be called "Death By Meeting!")

Razors pain you

Rivers are damp

Acids stain you

And drugs cause cramp

Guns aren't lawful

Nooses give

Gas smell awful

You might as well live.

-D. Parker, 1926

Brilliant!!!!!!!

Who's on Jury Duty Today?

2008-09-09T22:21:00.001-04:00

"It has been my experience to put aside a decision for future pondering. Then one day, fencing in a piece of time to face the problem, I have found it already completed, solved, and the verdeict taken. This must happen to everyone, but I have no way of knowing that. It's as though, in the dark and desolate caves of the mind, a faceless jury had met and decided. This secret and sleepless area in me I have always thought of as black, deep, waveless water, a spawning place from wihc only a few forms ever rise to the surface. Or maybe it's a great library where is recorded everything that has ever happened to living matter back to the first moment when it began to live."
- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

About five years ago, without knowing it, I began to rely upon my own faceless jury to make my decisions for me. I issued them an order: find me an epiphany! Tell me what to do with my life, and do be quick about it! and then I quickly resumed my mundane pattern of tv-watching, gossiping with friends, and surfing the net, pausing only every year or so to check in on them and see what kind of progress they were making on my request. Imagine my displeasure when now, half a decade later, I've discovered that the slackers have abandoned their post and returned to the business of their daily lives. Jerks!

While I appreciate Steinbeck's imagery, I do think that this concept is such a passive approach. To me, it's like absentmindedly wandering the beach, picking up whichever life-altering decision happens to have washed up upon the shore of life first. I know now that things don't happen that serendipitously except in books, and that you might have to search long and hard before you find the best option, which may be hidden under layers of beach trash and seagull shit. For me, indecision --and the passivity required by indecision--are certainly a few of my most prominent and most despised vices. I am often boggled by the options, and want to do a little bit of everything without committing to anything: the true professional at "keeping my options open."

At least I know now at least that I have to do my own work, that John's aforementioned jury won't come galloping out of the caves of my mind to issue a verdict.

And I'm working on it. I've finally narrowed down my school choices, and I've begun to apply criteria to my decisions which will make or break them: I will not go to a program without these kinds of internship options; I must receive some sort of financial aid; I must be able to study exactly what I want (public health with a concentration on social and behavioral sciences and an emphasis on translating such research into interventional programs that can actually help people. As much as I love the prospect of research in this field, of the gathering of data and the telling of stories, I want to do something. That's one of my primary complaints about working in administration, or at least at this level...let me DO something, please! I want to help people and be intellectually challenged, not stare at a spreadsheet all day while my brain cells jump ship in protest). And if I am to stay with my organization, my criteria are much the same: I must be in a position where I can interact with clinical staff and patients, use my creativity to make and do rather than analyze, sit, wait, and analyze some more, and be intellectually stimulated on a daily basis. Of course, there are plenty of other hairy situations to sort out: location (East or West Coast?), money issues (ew!), and relationships (yikes!). This may not be much, but it's more than I had a year ago even.

It's a start. One of the leaders in my company, in a discussion over a book by John C. Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, encouraged me to find and write my "life sentence," a sort of mission statement laying out the main themes and goals of my life, from personal to professional. Everything I should do should somehow relate back to this sentence: enhance it, improve upon it. It should be my compass guiding me through the kinds of decisions I'll be making in the next year. I've written it, revised it, erased it, and began again a million times, but at least it's my sentence.

My life sentence. It may be not be pretty, but with any luck, it's going to be a long one, and I'd rather write it myself than wait for Steinbeck's nameless, faceless jury to do it for me.

I guess I'd better get started.

Now I Ain't Sayin' She's a Gold Digger

2008-09-03T09:19:00.001-04:00

A random thought occurred to me as I was driving to work this morning, listening to a crappy British novel on CD:

I really appreciate the British colloquialism, "Sort it out." As in, "Charlie, why don't you go sort it out," or "What a poor sod! She really just needs to sort herself out." (Mostly I just wanted to use the word "sod" there... yet another wonderful quirky British linguistic creation. It always makes me think of humans as a giant, grassy hunk of dirt and soil, which quite frankly, they sometimes are)

Anyway, it's not something you hear that often in American conversation, or at least not in that sense. I really like it because it brings to mind images of the aforementioned "poor sod" sitting in a corner, attempting to sift through all the clutter, panning to find a glimpse or two of herself amongst all the mess that is life. Perhaps this is particularly poignant for me, since this is what I've spent a great deal of my time doing lately....without much success, I might add. I feel as though I'm digging through loads and loads of crap: of tv shows, novels, gossip rags, real friends, facebook friends, distorted emotions, the jagged edges of opinions from my parents, and layer upon layer of amorphous memories in a vain attempt to spot the gleam of some small, authentic shard of...me.

Perhaps this is the task of most twentysomethings: to sort through the massive mine of stuff that has composed our lives thus far and find the precious pieces of whatever that will make it all worthwhile. I guess that's what I am for now: a metaphorical gold-digger. Hopefully soon I will find the small fleck amongst the debris that will make it worth the risk for me to venture out and seize whatever adventure lies ahead.

They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't slay the beast!

2008-08-26T13:39:00.000-04:00

So I'm currently working in the finance department.

"Working."

A more honest statement would be that I am desperately trying to avoid anything remotely finance related, to no avail. It's not that I'm not bad at numbers--in fact, I'm not--it's just that it's not at all my style. I was the kid in calc class with a novel under the table, surreptitiously trying to hang out with the Bronte sisters while the teacher scribbled nonsense about derivatives and integrals all over the chalkboard. I do think there is some real beauty to be found in a geniously crafted formula, but I have always preferred to coast along upon the backs of beautifully written sentences as opposed to carefully calculated equations. For me, words transcend; numbers drag my light heart and head out of the clouds and down to the dreary world of Excel.

I know that in order for me to grow in my understanding of health care and health systems, my ability to analyze and make decisions based on financial policies is critical. It's such a complex labrynth that I must learn to navigate: Medicare, fee schedules, percent of charges, contractuals, allowances, expenses, deductions, and so on and so forth.

Qualitatively, I know what the final sum of all these numbers: the kind of care a patient can receive. Are they going to wait until their appendix explodes before showing up at the ER in agony at 3am, or are they going to have access to a myriad of preventative care docs and specialists who can monitor each sniffle and mis-shapen mole? Will they see their physician for five minutes or for half an hour? Will they get psychotherapy and psychopharms or a only quickly scrawled prescription?

Can they come to our hospital, or not?

It's a heartwrenching equation, really, and one that healthcare professionals across the country--across the world, really-- must agonize over daily. Patients, physicians, health providers, and (dare I say it!) politicians alike have all heard or (worse) experienced the horror stories and the nightmare of our current health system. What's more, we've all seen the beast of the bottom line for what it really is: an inability to provide quality access to all individuals while staying in the black, even marginally.

There are so many variables in this complex equation that I am only beginning to comprehend, even after years of work and study. The good news, however, is that I am at least aware of my own ignorance. I know that I cannot hope to slay this beast if I can't even recognize it when stares me down with its beady, insidious eyes.

So I will slowly begin to navigate this tortuous path through financial statements and cost reports, even if it makes me want to drive a steely knife through my own forehead every twenty minutes. After a few months, I will probably have edged only deeper into the tangled maze, but at least I will be a step or two closer to understanding. Hopefully my pained efforts will help me launch my own spear into the battle someday, and together we can take the steps to overcome the monstrous challenges facing us in healthcare.

(And until then, let's hope that copious quantities of Diet Coke and Junior Mints can get me through!)

Ain't Nothin' Gonna Hold Me Down!

2008-08-24T21:45:00.000-04:00

"The worst thing you can say about someone in a society like ours is that they can't hold down a job. It conjures images of unshaven losers with weak grips watching sadly as the jobs slip free and float away. There's nothing we respect more than work, and there's nothing we denigrate more than the eunwillingness to work, and if someone wants to dedicate himself to painting or writing poetry, he'd better be holding down a job at a hamburger restaurant if he knows what's good for him." - A Fraction of the Whole, by Steve Tolz

First of all, I am about 300 pages into A Fraction of the Whole and it has already made my top ten list of all-time favorite books...rather a selective list, I might add! It's one of those novels you read with a pen in hand, scribbling in the margins, because you can't help but want to have a conversation with the author whom you will never meet but seems to understand you better than legions of your friends and acquaintances combined. I have spent the majority of the weekend holed up in my apartment in Philly with this book, and I wouldn't have rather spent it any other way. It's deliciously cynical, hilarious, and most importantly, describes the human experience in a way that leaves you whispering, "yes, yes that's it! I'm glad someone finally noticed" as you quickly flip the pages.

Anyway, my apologies for that departure. What I really mean to comment on is the concept of "holding down a job." Where did this phrase come from? To me, it conjures images of a weasel-like creature trying to wriggle its slippery, greasey self out from under your fingers and scramble into a hole in the wall where it can spend the remainder of its days gnawing away on all your electrical lines.

"Someone grab that damn job and put it back in its cage where it belongs! And while you're at it, clean out all the shit it's piled in the corner--it's really starting to reek in there!"

Whereupon the squirming, squeeking job would be tossed back into its cage and dutifully return to its important task of turning the little hamster wheel around and around and around and around until it can make its next escape into the hole in the wall.

Anyway, perhaps my cynicism results from my voracious consumption of A Fraction of the Whole, in which most of the characters are perenially unemployed, but it seems to me like a job holds you down, not the other way around. I don't mean that to sound as negative as I know it does, but it seems like the truth. If you've got a job, you are unable to give into that capricious urge to watch 24 hours of consecutive trashy reality TV or lie about in the park watching elderly couples in matching berets or simply do nothing at all except eat an occasional ice cream sandwich. Of course, without a job you can't really do these things either, since you technically have no money. Bloody Catch-22!

I guess that's what weekends are for. And until the next one, I'm off to my little cage in the corner, hoping someone slips me a bit of ice cream sandwich as I run about on my wheel....

Messy Marva Strikes Back!

2008-08-21T15:11:00.001-04:00

As part of a Public Health Leadership course I am taking online through the University of North Carolina, I recently completed an assignment based on Edward Murrow's "I Believe" essays. The "I Believe" series, which began in the early 1950s and still continue on http://www.npr.org/ , asks writers of all ages and professions to profess their personal philosophies. Authors compose short essays illuminating their beliefs on anything of personal importance, from recycling soda cans to receiving heart transplants. My particular essay was assigned as a way of introducing myself to my fellow students by way of espousing my beliefs on leadership, particularly in health care.

As Murrow wrote, "It would be easier to enumerate the items I do not believe in, than the other way around." As someone who still has so much to learn about both leadership and life, my core principles and beliefs are just beginning to emerge and become clear. I am sure that over the years, some of these philosophies will change and evolve as I collect experiences and mistakes, but I sincerely hope that the following will always be true:

I believe in clumsiness.

I believe in clumsiness in its finest form: the kind that leaves your newly pressed suit stained with coffee before you even pull into the office parking lot, the kind that ruins your carefully decorated cupcakes as they tumble to the floor, the kind that results in too many awkward handshakes and near-miss kisses at cocktail parties (see post below!).

My entire life I have groomed an inborn talent for clumsiness. I have always been a spiller, tripper, and all around dropper, deemed “Messy Marva” by my parents in my toddler-hood and achieving a sterling reputation for being the most scuffed-up, knee-bandaged kid on the playground by first grade. If my version of tumbling—tripping over an imaginary rock and plummeting to the ground—were considered an Olympic event, I would easily win more gold medals than Michael Phelps.

However, it wasn’t until I strapped on my three-inch heels and skirt suit a year ago that my predilection towards clumsiness flourished into a full-blown affliction. Plunged into a world of health care executives, I felt uncomfortable and awkward in my new clothes and new role, like a kid playing dress-up who suddenly finds herself itching to ditch the corset and slip into a T-shirt and ratty shorts. My first job out of college in a management fellowship at a network of private cancer hospitals required me to interact with the most senior individuals and undertake projects where, quite frankly, I had no clue how to even begin, let alone execute successfully. My anxiety, combined with such high-pressure situations and my inherent inability to control my limbs left me a literal mess. At the very moment I was struggling to fit in the most, I was spilling on myself (and worse, on others), tripping, and uttering awkward gaffes at every turn. In short, I looked like a coffee-saturated clown with a goofy smile wavering precipitously towards tears.

And so one day I cracked. I had just finished a conference call with the senior executive team, and in fumbling with the unfamiliar phone system, had inadvertently placed the call on hold, plunging the entire meeting into a loud, canned version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Worse, I didn’t realize my mistake until minutes later, when I received a scathing email informing me that the dozen most important members of the organization were still sitting on the call, seething and gritting their teeth against the strident tune. Mortified, tears instantly sprang up in my eyes and a small squeak welled up in my throat. To my surprise, however, the croak turned into a giggle which soon blossomed into a full-blown belly laugh.

Five minutes later, I wiped the tears from my eyes and the anxiety from my mind. There is so much pain, angst, and suffering in the world, it occurred to me, and suddenly it seemed both ludicrous and narcissistic to spend so much time worrying about the pen marks dotting my shirt or the pencil smudge above my nose. In a cancer hospital, you are constantly surrounded by patients in pain, terrified caregivers, and employees who are over-worked and under-appreciated. It was at that moment I chose to embrace my clumsiness. I learned to laugh at myself when the inevitable misfortune occurred (and still does, frequently), and I learned to share that laugher with those around me. I figured, if I’m going to scrape my knees or dirty my jacket, I might as well get a smile out of it.

In fact, just a few weeks later, I cracked a joke about the aforementioned phone mishap during another leadership team meeting, and ended up striking a jovial relationship with one vice president who is now a frequent mentor of mine. As weeks passed and I grew more comfortable in my own skin, I learned to joke with, smile at, and gently jest with patients and their families. For some, a slight smile or smallest of giggles might be one of the few uplifting moments of their day, when they can forget their pain, anxiety, and fear, and simply celebrate the small joys of life, if only for a second.

As I have come to assume more responsibility and leadership, I have found that there is no ice-breaker quite like a good chuckle. By inciting a group to laughter, you establish a tacit understanding of the group’s culture; you create a common touchstone to which all individual members can connect. As I’ve become more at ease with myself, I’ve noticed others following suit: the laughs come more easily, faces light up, people are more upbeat and energetic. If someone laughs with you, they are much more inclined to open up, expose their vulnerabilities and tear down the barriers which may have stood between you moments before. For me, this past year has taught me one critical lesson: the absolute importance of taking my work seriously, but never taking myself too seriously.

And so I believe in leadership through laughter. I believe in the power of sharing a moment of joy with those around me, be they patients, caregivers, frontline employees, or senior-most executives, and walking away from that moment feeling re-energized. After a hearty chuckle, we can move on filled with what Deming calls a constancy of purpose, ready to relinquish our own sense of victimization, of burden, and of weariness, and with a renewed sense of compassion and humanity, work towards making a difference in the lives of our patients, colleagues, and families. In recent years, scientists have begun to demonstrate and document the physical benefits of laughter, proving through science what so many have known for centuries. Laughter, it seems, truly is the best medicine, especially in today’s complex landscape: it is cheap, easily accessible, and its benefits can be readily spread amongst the masses, regardless of age, race, gender, or insurance plan. As healthcare paradigms slowly shift towards models of holistic and integrative medicine, laughter will become a key component of whole-person treatment, as it mends both mind and soul, patient and employee alike.

For me, my clumsiness and subsequent bursts of laughter have transformed into a bridge over which I can drive from the shores of self-involvement, across the void, to touch upon the lives of others….always being sure, of course, to keep a Stain Remover Stick in the glove compartment for all the messy moments to come.

You Look Tired Today

2008-04-03T08:54:00.002-04:00

"You look tired today"

This is what a co-worker told me after startling me out of the rhythm I'd been working since 6:30am, pouring over my gre books before the official start of the work day.

This phrase is essentially a euphemism for, "Wow, you look terrible."

Well of course I do! During a brief vacation to Madrid last week, I managed for the first time in a year to completely divorce myself from my work lifestyle and identity for an entire 7 days (albeit the one evening when I woke up in a sweaty panic over my forgetting to submit our final budget proposal...how bloody boring!). It's definitely challenging to re-adjust to early mornings and late nights when you've spent a week doing nothing but sipping coffee, watching people, and actually conversing about topics other than the latest watercooler gossip.

Of course, jet-lage aside, the real looked I looked exhausted was because I had not yet had my morning cup(s) o' joe, which I normally require even to look at my laptop.

For some strange reason, this office's coffee literally tastes like someone ground up a few tons of manure, slow roasted them for a few hours, and then brewed it with a few hundred gallons of tepid bathwater. The other bizarre part is that the only other option to regular poo-flavored coffee is a kind called "Santa's White Christmas," which for some unknown reason is a combination of vanilla, caramel, hazlenut, coconut, and crap. Whatever marketing genius somehow decided that this combination of flavors somehow suggests a wonderful white Christmas must have been snorting some other white stuff, because drinking it literally incinerates my tastebuds. There's nothing worse at 6:30 am to greedily gulp down that first swallow of life-giving coffee only to abruptly realize that you are having Christmas forced down your gullet two days after Easter. I mean, I know Jesus was a miracle worker and all but let's give the guy a break!

Needless to say, I need copious amounts of dairy/soy product to make this so-called coffee even remotely drinkable, and unfortunately I discovered today I am out of the glorious "Silk" soy milk that masks the odious flavor of the Santa coffee.

Unfortunately, my primal need for caffeination me to resort to savage practices that many humans only adopt under the most dire conditions, Lord of the Flies- style.

Like stealing.

Now, normally, I'm not a thief...in fact, I probably haven't stolen something since the time when I was 7 and swiped 50 cents from my Dad to buy Doritos, and after my guilty smile revealed the orangey powder still crusted all over my teeth and lips, was grounded from the library for a week ( you can tell what kind of cool kid I was).

And in most offices, a couple borrowed teaspoons of milk would probably not be that big of a deal, but because of a recent rash of Lean-Cuisine thefts, the fridges have been plastered with signs reading, "If you don't make it, don't take it," and other such threatening messages.

So stealing it was. I first had to do recon in the kitchen, where I knew precious extra milk was tucked away behind the decaying corpse of someone's leftover lunch. Unfortunately, this being early morning, there were tons of people drifiting in and out, so in an attempt to seem inconspicuous, I smiled innocently and exchanged the normal pleasantries about the weather (blah blah--I swear, the only reason people live in Chicago is because they can always use bad weather as a conversation starter, rather than endure an awkward silence or think of something meaninful to say. It's truly a refuge for the socially dysfunctional....this is probably why Northwestern is located here.).

Anyway, after awkwardly finding excuses to wander back and forth from cube to kitch, my moment arrived. Modeling myself after Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment I opened the fridge and gracefully weaved my way through sundry lunches, sodas, and strangely, a box of yogurts labeled "Posionous-Do Not Eat!" to snag the milk, quickly slop a half cup into my mug, slam shut the door, and dash back to my desk without getting caught. No Chinese water-torture or (worse) HR policy meetings for me today, I thought proudly.

I triumphantly slurped my coffee until I looked down and noticed an insidious brown stain spreading across my sleeve where the coffee had spilled during my hasty retreat. I frowned, and although I could feel the caffeine working its magic, the thought occured to me:

While I no felt or appeared exhausted, I still somehow managed to look like crap.

The True Meaning of Christmas

2007-12-18T22:42:00.000-05:00

In preparation for the impending Christmas/holiday season, television has once again been inundated with a deluge of commercials, urging us to find the "true meaning of Christmas." In this case, the true meaning of Christmas seems to be expressing our gratitude and love for friends and loved ones by giving them an endless supply of "must-have" products as quickly and at the best price possible.

While some might argue that these products exemplify America's gluttonous and hedonistic ways, I completely disagree. For example, I have been brushing my teeth with a standard toothbrush for years, unknowingly risking serious dental health consquences and apparently a dramatic increase in social status. Thank God for Crest, who has essentially been performing (very expensive) public service announcements by urging folks to run out and purchase one of their Spinbrushes which, with its duel vibrating heads, ergonomic design, and (for kids) sea-creature-shaped handles, will revolutionize public health almost as much as Louis Pasteur did with that whole pasteurization thing. I can only hope to God my parents love me enough to slap a bow around one of those puppies and stuff it in my stocking.

However, this Christmas season I understand more than ever why so many people suffer from depression and anxiety during this time of year. Thanks to Apple, I have been forced to question my existence several times a day--a painful experience for someone already in the throes of a stereotypical twenty-something existential crisis. Apple knows I've survived without the Iphone, but how? they wonder. Good question. Thanks to Apple's insightful inquiry, I'm beginning to wonder whether or not I'm biologically equipped to handle daily life, let alone grapple with issues like graduate school or career choices.

To exacerbate the issue, right now I only have a refurbished phone I purchased from Ebay for a whopping thirty bones. It doesn't even have a camera on it, and worst of all, I have to use a standard, pre-set ringtone. What's Christmas without the Mariah Carey reminding me that all she wants for Christmas is me everytime someone calls? Talk about dejection! Every time that phone rings it's like a knife tearing into my soul, reminding me of my lameness and evoking a serious fear that I may not survive the day. What a Blue freakin' Christmas.

And of course, anyone who bashes the season's overcommercialization is overlooking the important lesson these ads teach us in the skill of communication. How else can people prove their love for one another than by giving them jewelry (preferably on sale)? Things like spending time together or small tokens of affection like favorite books or sweaters are nice...but let's face it: those things are about as temporary as Britney Spears' comeback, but diamonds are forever! My personal favorite of these commercials are those advertising the diamond necklaces that have several diamonds increasing in size to reflect the way "love grows."

My only fear is that this jewelry-giving may be misleading. In the spirit of honest, open communication, my suggestion would be that these items be customized to reflect the true spirit of the relationship. Perhaps a nice rhinestone or two could represent the time the husband accidentally landed in the lap of his secretary and moved out for three weeks. I think a nicely tarnished tennis bracelet would do well to illuminate the relationship between two highschool sweethearts who had a shotgun wedding and have been living in relative antipathy in a mobile home outside of town ever since. For my uncle Jarvis, who's been married 5 times to 3 different women (his current wife #5 is also wife #1), this approach could be slighly complicated. However, I'm sure a tiny bit of coal set in a silver ring could reflect the capricious nature of their relationship. Sure it seems a bit harsh--but that bit of carbon might eventually morph into a diamond under the pressure of their failing relationship, who knows? As the commercials advocate, gemstones truly are the perfect vehicles for communication, as long we use them accurately.

So anyway, this post has absolutely nothing to do with my life as a BabySuit, except to underscore the fact that I watch far too much TV and have no life outside of work. Please excuse the facetious nature of this post in light of the upcoming holidays--it's just that the sarcasm builds throughout the week, and as countless teenage boys have argued, if you don't use it, you lose it. I hope whoever reads this has a wonderful holiday, and is able to find the diamond hidden somewhere in the rough of over-commercialization (and for me, over-sarcasm). Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah!

Handshakes, hugs, 'n' kisses

2007-12-05T23:12:00.001-05:00

This weekend I got a much needed lesson in the art of the handshake-hug-cheek kiss. I have never been much of a hugger--the only people I normally deign to hug are my parents, my dogs, and chubby, furry animals in general. But as part of Corporate America, apparently the handshake-hug-kiss is a somewhat common form of greeting...and one that causes an insurmountable amount of anxiety for yours truly.

First of all, there is the traumatic experience I've had with a variation of this greeting. At a benefit dinner I recently attended with several of my company's executives, I made a complete fool of myself attempting what might even be a complex, impressive maneuver challenging even the most seasoned professionals. Now, as a twenty-two year old six months out of college, these dinners are foreign and sometimes painfully awkward enough: I try to drink enough wine to stay afloat amidst of a sea of frothy white-haired heads bobbing to some pedantic speech but not so much that Drunk Suit breaks free and starts flirting lasciviously with that sexy banker at table 10.

In any case, we were all sitting around the table, and one exec, perhaps the P. Diddy of the hugging industry, came around to offer his customary bear hug. In my naivety, I didn't stand fully before he reached my part of the table. I was mid-stand when he reached from behind to hug me. Suddenly, I saw his face nearing mine, and I tried to twist and turn and tilt my face up....when his lips narrowly avoided mine and ended up on my nose. My face turned ketchup red as I tried to laugh and shrug off the fact that I had almost inadvertently smooched the most powerful man in the company...on the lips.

Needless to say, this experience simmers in the back of my mind during each of the 5.5 million cocktail parties I am required to attend. Part of the problem is that there are just too many variations: with women, you can never be sure if they are going to give a strong handshake, a fish-shake or if their birdlike bones will be crushed in my hand as I administer my I-am-an-Assertive-Businesswoman Handshake-so-take-me-seriously-even-though-I'm-your-child's-age handshake. And then there's the hugging: if I go in for the whole hug, will my huggee just try to side-hug me with the traditional one-armed awkwardness so common amongst highschool males, making me look overzealous and scary? And vice versa--if I'm not really a hugger (and I'm not), if someone goes in for the whole hug, they may see my reflexive flinch and stiffness and interpret it for unfriendliness (which it most definitely is not). Plus, I always worry that I might inadvertently overstep the lines of appropriate warmth and morph into sheer creepiness?

And then there's the cheek kiss. This is a phenomenon I have never understood: if the huggee kisses you on the cheek, how can you also kiss them on the cheek simultaneoulsy? It's physically impossible without a considerable amount of talented lip twisting. And if this is true, what's the air kiss but a contrived attempt to seem European?

These questions continued to discombobulate me until this past Saturday, when at my first of four Christmas parties I learned the smooth tango of cursory greetings. After confessioning my intractable clumsiness, a smooth actor friend of mine taught me this: small step forward, slight pressure on the handshake with the right hand while the left goes in for the hug. The air kiss, while not my taste, shows social poise, and so should be executed blithely and quickly. The hug should last as long as it takes to say, "It's so great to see you again!!" or "Happy Holidays!" and then the release and smile. The parting smile is also critical--it's kind of like the parting gift given to the losing contestant on a game show: sorry, I don't like you well enough to keep you on the show, but here's a little something so we can both pretend you're not a sorry, sorry loser. (OK, that's a little harsh, but the point is, the smile is the finishing touch-perfect if you stay to converse, and perfect if you smoothly transit to the next handshake-hug-kiss).

So, after practicing a few times, I felt confident that I might be able to execute the complicated dance of the HHK. After all, if Heather Mills can dance with only one leg, I can pretend to be a normal, semi-poised human being for 30 seconds right? At the party, the same exec made his seemingly slow-motion approach to me, and ...wait for it.....I went in for the handshake-hug-kiss! Check, check, and check! All completed with the perfect combination of machinelike precision and careful casualness. I did a small fist-pump in my head and a genuine smile spread across my face....until he graciously apologized for "stepping on my feet." Apparently I had gouged him with my pointy pumps. My triumph faded as my face once again turned some unappealing shade of red.

If this clumsiness of mine keeps up, I'll be on hypertension meds by 23, not to mention dash all hopes of snagging the banker at table 10. The only available alternative? Another cocktail, please....