Graduation Part I

So... Sorry about the lack of posting for an entire month.  If you're reading this, you are one loyal blog reader!  I mentioned graduation, which was great.  My parents came to visit:

I got to wear the Master's robe, which has strange, long, bat sleeves:

I briefly coveted the hoods that the PhDs got to wear, but a PhD is officially off the list for the next couple of years.  That's one decision down.  It may come up again later, but I'm going to get back into the clinical side that I enjoy and then decide, after a couple of years of experience, how I can get a PhD my way-- without having to give up working with people.
 
I got my degree, which is completely in Latin:

And, of course, I got lots of congratulations and support from a lot of other people too!  Thank you so much, not just for being there at the end, but for helping me through the last two years!

Despite all of this, the fact the I am finished didn't really sink in fully until I saw the extra letters after my name on a poster we presented for work. And I got to change my signature line, which now reads, "Rachel Voss, MPH."  Kinda cool.  Kinda cool like these pictures, which are some of my favorites from the weekend:

Can you see the words?  These are etched in the stone under the Brown bear on the main green, and I could not have said it better myself. It took a lot of work, and it feels really good to be finished!

Next post: Graduation part II and Becca's wedding!  And the status of the June list.  Stay tuned-- I promise it will not take me another month. :)

Almost there

So... I'm graduating tomorrow.

Finally.

Again.

Hallelujah!

Yup, that about sums it up.  :) Pictures to come soon, after I've finished hiking around Providence with the parents.

Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen/ It's Okay Though

The following is not a judgment of anyone else's workout habits, lifestyle choices, etc.  This blog is all about me, after all, so please relax if you think I'm somehow judging other people-- I'm not.  I'm writing about my own life, thank you very much. 

It's been a rough couple of months with my workouts.  I usually don't stress about it (or write about it), because every day is a new day and a new chance to take care of my body.  But today, when I was a little sore from tae-bo and a few burpees last night, I cried a little bit inside.  Actually, a lot.  I know I'll probably never again be able to lift like I did in high school, and that's okay.  But I shouldn't have been sore from what I did.  And I was even more sad when I realized that walking now makes up a good portion of my physical activity-- I know things change with "age" and life demands, but I was an Exercise Science major.  As in, I majored in "Loving to Move Intensely."  On top of that, I have just spent another two years thinking about all the possible barriers to healthy lifestyle.  FALLEN.  And now I actually understand what people mean when they say working out is like a chore.  It's so hard to motivate yourself when you remember how you felt once upon a time and now feel like a complete pansy.  And it makes me ANGRY that something I love so much is suddenly not so lovable.  Or rather, I'm upset that I've let my life disintegrate into something that could even allow this to occur.  On the upside, it's not permanent.  But now you see why I want to be so careful about my next move-- I'm constructing a lot more than a career, here.

On the upside, I got 100% on my final paper in Nutritional Epidemiology!  This may sound like a minimal feat, but I am really proud of those 20 pages, and getting a perfect score from my professor was no cake walk.  (I should know, since she was also my thesis reader and has been ripping my work apart weekly for the last several months.)  I feel like I did what I should have been doing the entire last two years:  Developing a deep and thorough grasp on the current evidence (and its limitations) for a topic so that I feel confident giving an authoritative opinion.  A PhD might not be so bad...  I have been so grateful for this awesome professor, and this class was a good one to end on.

Another great thing that happened today was recovering some pictures that I thought might be lost forever.  I co-hosted a bridal shower for a friend a few weeks ago and took a ton of pictures... and then couldn't find them when I hooked my camera to my computer.  This made me completely nauseous, but tonight we were able to recover them, which is one more thing I can safely cross off of my May list. :)  Plus, we're adorable.

Ashley, the bride-to-be.

:: ::

I'm having, as John Mayer puts it, a quarter-life crisis.

I applied for this fellowship yesterday. It feels good to have it finished, and I should find out in about 3-4 weeks whether I get to interview. To those who gave me feedback-- thank you! If I get it, it would be a really great opportunity to get down in the trenches of a community to help improve food access, and then I'd get to go back to DC to try to stir up some action there.

But the thing is... if I take this fellowship, it still only solves my problem for a year. What am I going to do with my life after that?!!! (Yes, this question does merit three exclamation points.)

I have all these grand plans, but I get really discouraged when I think about how most leadership roles require sitting on my duff in an uncomfortable chair for 8+ hours a day. I really think I should be over this by now, but I'm not. Sitting for hours on end is my deepest circle of hell. It's uncomfortable and boring and makes me want to scream because bodies were made to move. I hate not being able to concentrate because oxygen has stopped racing through my brain and is, instead, oozing.

I was puzzling about this today (until my puzzler was sore) trying to figure out why I didn't realize this in college. I've been working since my sophomore year of high school, so why am I suddenly having such a hard time working? And then I realized that every single job I've had so far has had me moving and interacting with people and things around me. I feel like a child with some sort of stimulation deficit-- or an attention deficit. I need to break things up. I CRAVE it. I liked having multiple patients every hour and having multiple responsibilities during the day so that desk time was confined to 4- or 5-hour chunks. I liked getting immediate feedback from my environment (instead of just staring at a screen). And I liked the seemingly paradoxical security/instability that comes from working with people; I can be safe in my competence but still get a welcome and vigorous challenge from unpredictable and unique people.

I also think some part of me needs to be standing up at the front of a room drawing things on the board and talking to people about things we care about. I really think my dream is perfect-- carrying a half-time patient load as an outpatient dietitian, and leading diabetes group management programs the other half of the time. I'd get to move. Engage. Teach. And the desk time would have a visible end. Basically, it would be more immediate gratification, because I'd get to see people processing things everyday, even before the total program impact is clear.

But boy is it hard to find a position like that. And p.s., I'm not a stinking dietitian yet. I mean, how do you summarize that dream into a nice Google-friendly search term without using the word "dietitian"? It's like playing an unfortunate game of Taboo.

On the upside, I'm pretty decent at Taboo. :) Wellness coordinator and health coach have been doing pretty well for me so far, and I'm sure I'll find something. There's even a company in Chicago that looks promising. And if nothing else, I have a lot of options in the fitness industry. The thing is, I really want to help people love themselves and it's just more effective to start with food. Most everyone likes food, whereas not everyone likes exercise --yet.

So I'll keep looking. I just really want to do something I love and I also really want to live in a city because, let's be honest, I miss roommates and I miss boys. And I want that city and that job to be awesome enough to hold my attention for a few years, because otherwise I start to feel unbearably flighty and might do something drastic like move to Alaska. Or Spain.

Anyway, for now I'm here and that's good. And by this time next week I'll have started class again and will also have started a cool social marketing project at the department of health. Tune in next time... :)

Health Care and Halloween

I'm just feeling remarkably jaded today, and days like today make me think about moving to a commune or another country. In my classes today, I struggled with a couple of things:

- The RI health insurance commissioner told me that the "universal care" in Massachusetts (MassHealth) is not going broke. His reasoning was that they are exactly on budget-- they just didn't count on the state's revenue dropping 20%.

This is like saying that if I budgeted $100 and spent exactly $100, but only have $80, I'm fine. WHAT?!

The problem with health care reform is that we're not doing anything to reform health care-- we're just reforming who pays for it. I think we should call it "health care financing reform" instead so we can adjust our expectations accordingly. Then the discussion can keep ignoring preventive care or systems change without making people like me crazy.

- Some PhD who came to speak about food safety in my environmental health class basically cautioned against organics because the fertilizer people use may have E. Coli in it. Okay, so here's a thought-- how about we fix the system of giant feed lots that packs a bunch of animals too closely together and feeds them things that they can't digest properly (corn), which is what propagates the bacteria. And then, why don't we fix the system where we have giant industrial butchering complexes where people have to do their jobs so fast (in order to keep up with the assembly line) that they accidentally "spill" dangerous bacteria out of intestines into the meat. Organics aren't as good for the environment and health as local food, but they're still a pretty good thing. I wouldn't stop buying organics because of E. Coli.

I think this is why I hate am very frustrated with my program.

I'm feeling like, if I can't actually fix the root of the problem, then I don't want to pretend that I can. I should just take what I've learned and go back to direct patient care where I can help people develop reasonable work-arounds to deal with the problems as they are manifest in their lives. That way, at least one person benefits, even though the system is improving at the speed of cold molasses dripping.

On the upside, I do still believe that some communities can change, and even though we're still chopping at the branches instead of the root, sometimes we manage to cut a little more closely to the roots. Like the fact that some farmer's markets are now accepting WIC and food stamps at farmer's markets-- that's a lower branch.

Okay, enough of my venting. Sometimes I do stop stressing about changing the world and have some fun.

A neighboring stake hosted a Halloween dance last week and my friends, Mark and Jordan, dressed up with me. I love these guys, because they're always up for doing things-- I don't have to try to drag them along. :)



Good friends, good times.

Hmm...

I am supposed to be working right now, but I have billed only 2 of the last 5 hours because I can't focus; this is why I can't work from home.

However, I'm trying to be a socially responsible person (and good public health student!), so I quarantined myself after I came down with a fever Wednesday night (plus some other symptoms) that were probably a low-grade seasonal flu. Minimum guidelines say to stay home for at least 24 hours after fever goes away, which I did. I feel MUCH, much, much better, but in most flu cases you can be contagious for 5-7 days after onset of symptoms, even if you feel good.

Sigh.

So I canceled everything yesterday and went in to work just long enough to put all my files onto a USB so I could work from home. I canceled everything for tonight and tomorrow... except tomorrow night because I have a friend coming up from D.C. (who was given due warning!) But I will be disinfecting everything and providing Purell, so no worries. :) On the upside, I'm not coughing anymore, so that decreases my likelihood of sharing.

There you go-- public health in real time. And here's hoping that I don't get anyone else sick!