My boss's boss could only make part of a meeting and asked me to sit in on the rest and take notes. During that meeting, someone introduced themselves as a new team leader at the CDC's local quarantine station. I applied for similar roles this past summer and was referred to the hiring manager but never heard back, which is a shame because what an absolute dream job it would be working with shit like that. Well during yesterday's meeting when the new guy introduced himself he mentioned they were hiring one more. Sent him a cold email after work mentioning that is a dream job of mine, and he wants to forward my resume to the hiring team (he's too new to hire himself) and follow -up next week.
First real job interview in 3 hours. Health emergency planner for a local health department. Seems like a potentially fun job, but it's limited term meaning it's for a single project and cannot be more than 3 years and that's the longest they'll employ me. But likely less than that. It does come with health benefits and retirement benefits but doesn't provide pension (though will that be around in 40 years anyway?). It'll be an interesting interview for sure. I'm mostly just glad to finally have a real interview and not just rejection emails again and again.
Just received a job offer! Pays nowhere near enough, but a job is a job and I'll work it for a bit. They said I'd be eligible for a raise at 6 months so that'll be very helpful.
Getting together with demure for lunch in about an hour and a half! Still unemployed :( But damn the bay area is gorgeous, so I'll take that consolation prize while not having a job.
A little over a decade ago a good friend of mine took his own life. It set off a wild train of depression and hurt in me as no early teenager is equipped to deal with that shit. I didn't get any support and suicide was a real option. I'm doing a lot better now, but it's left its scars on me. I'm overall a much better and happier person and I truly like who I am now, but it's also become clearly apparent that I still have plenty to deal with when it comes to interpersonal relationships. So I'm going back to therapy for the first time in years. The first time was a disaster, a combination of bad mental state, bad therapist, and not knowing why I was going. I am hoping this time goes better.
After three months the IRB has approved my study!
Finals are done! All As and a B so far but still waiting on the Biostatistics grade. That one has a lot of potential to bring me up, or to ruin me, so it'll be fun. Parents are in town this weekend. They'll be meeting my partner, which is a first for them, so that's going to be interesting. In a week and a half, I'll be in bumfuck to help with an infection prevention role at a rural nursing home. It's kinda near Jimmy Carter's birthplace, so maybe I'll go there one weekend and run into him. I hear he spends a good bit of time out and about in his hometown, but he's also slowing down a lot and I don't expect to see him. Thesis is starting to take shape. It's going to be looking at Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic Therapy (OPAT) among Veterans. Don't know exactly the breakdown of everything just yet, but it'll probably be looking at age differences, outcomes, risk factors, etc. It's going to be fun for sure.
Alright ya nerds for the final chapter in my job transfer adventure: I have accepted the new position! Talking with the person who will be my boss I am going to have a higher level of responsibility than most. I'll essentially be the point person for outbreak things. All facilities, all types of disease. She has watched the work I've been doing with the facilities so far this pandemic and has been pleased and needs an outbreak person. That's pretty much exactly what I want to do so I took the leap and took the mid-pandemic job change. No reason to close that door without trying it.
Overwhelmed -- I have a group project due Sunday. There's still no assignment we've received nor groups we've been assigned/chosen. Same class has a four page paper due next Wednesday. Then still have all my weekly homeworks for my other four classes. Depressed - talked to the girl from last pubski. She said she is in fact into me but just getting out of a long term serious relationship and not ready for anything. Anxious - after three rounds of job interview for a student job (wtf) I should be finding out if I got it "within a few days" hopefully I will be employed again soon but who knows.
I have somehow tricked Emory into accepting me to their MPH program on top of the Johns Hopkins MHS. Global epidemiology and epidemiology respectively. Now only waiting for EuroPubHealth (will be notified by March 3) and Georgetown (no notification timeline). Apartment lease ends at the end of March. I'll be moving in with my parents for a few months before shipping off to wherever I go come late summer/early fall. Parents still don't know I've applied. Waiting to hear back from EuroPubHealth before I tell them I applied so I can have some idea of whether or not I'm staying in these great United States. Covid cases slowing down sharply which is great. It's allowing me to do a lot of data cleanup which was badly needed.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH That is all.
Settling into school. I have a solid study group going. We all share like four classes or something like that. Still looking for a job. Not a big fan of the unemployed life. Went on a long weekend a week and a half ago to visit a friend. It was pretty nice to get out of town for a bit. Though the street preacher yelling "Where's the Jew?" was less appealing. Having finally started settling into not only school but living in the south, I have a few friends which is great. One of them I'm definitely closer to than the others. And I'm catching feelings for her which I didn't want to. We're very similar, similar hobbies, similar sense of humor, both getting our MPH so we can challenge each other mentally too. We mesh really well. The first time we hung out outside of class we went to get lunch, and we ended up sitting on my balcony after for the rest of the night. And every time we hang out it goes like that -- way longer than planned. This past Saturday, she came over and we spent all day baking and doing homework. We went out to dinner after and came back to my place to watch TV. Then she laid down in my lap and we cuddled for a few hours while perusing Zillow. The next day I asked her what the deal was and she said just friends. We're still texting way too much. Last night we sent duck gifs to each other all night. It's really messing with me. 2021 Ig Nobel winners were announced. While exploring their website, I noticed a typo on a random page. I emailed them to let them know, and they offered a free journal as thanks. It's absolutely incredible and there's a real chance I subscribe now. Always enjoyed those awards and the journals they throw together are just masses of absurd research through history for a single topic. It's probably a good idea to give them some support.
First day of classes!! My morning class was cancelled already, so only the afternoon one. I've met a bunch of cool people so far during orientation. Excited and anxious for the first day of classes. I unfortunately have a class and a lab online. Trying to change those, but they're both closed right now. I did email the professor for one of them asking for permission. She responded super quickly saying reach out to the advisors but she'd be happy to have me if possible. Dishwasher leaks sometimes. Not every time, so I think it's based on how it's loaded. Washer/dryer arrived broken, Couch didn't fit up the stairs so now I need to find a smaller one. Ikea was sold out of everything I wanted except for the rug and they were back-ordered by months. Previous tenants left a nice armoire, but my TV is too big for it so it sticks out awkwardly. Pretty sure my air mattress/couch has a slow leak. Moving down has been an exercise of Murphy's Law. So it only makes sense the classes will be full and I'll be stuck with those online for a semester. I sent a cold email to the guy who wrote a super awesome book on his work eradicating Smallpox in West Africa and did some other cool stuff, like being the 10th director of the CDC. Maybe all the shit I've dealt with during moving down will yield enough negative karma I need some good karma to return to neutral and I'll hear from him or have some luck with the in-person classes. Hopefully I didn't use all my built-up karma to get into grad school and now I'm just deeply in karma debt to the universe. Also people from the US South -- does it ever get cold and/or not humid? This shit is brutal.
Pubski opened so early today! Work! Yo y'all need to stop doing anything. Lock yourselves in your houses and hibernate for a month or so. Cases up hard. I've opened up 17 new facilities in the past week. Three of the past five working days had five opened per day. The facilities are doing a good job of reporting cases to the department, but my colleagues also apparently don't know how to report to me, so a lot have fallen through the cracks until the state yells at me. I've also become the only person doing congregate living settings, so now I get to do the weekly emails and meetings that I never had to do before. I was worried about the responsibility aspect of things when I took the job but that's going really well which is great. My old job still isn't filled. The supervisor over there thought it'd be filled by January. Pool season is rapidly approaching. No one is going to be trained for it and it's going to be a disaster. The dryer broke. It's 15 years old at least. Hell of a good run. I was in favor of repairing it. I think only the heating element broke. Appliances seem to be getting moor poorly made so I'm guessing something from 15 years ago might be a little better to repair than buying a whole new one. Also less waste. Also cheaper. We've gone through three refrigerators in the past few years. One broke every few months like clockwork starting not a month after the warranty ended. Two was shipped damaged and defective. Three arrived a few weeks ago. Warranty on all three was just a year. Also why the fuck the fridge need to connect to wifi. I'm all for the old dumb dryer not whatever shit is coming. New one has touch controls which just says to me a new piece to break that's not a dial and easy to fuck with if if breaks. But whatever not my money. And I'm moving somewhere soon so there's that. Living with the parents is... going. They have absolutely no respect that my job is like super HIPAA shit and I'm WFH two days per week, so they're running around all the time. They're both WFH every day and are using bedrooms for offices so I'm in the kitchen. They are so clearly listening to everything I say and as has always been the problem with them -- no privacy. We're not releasing what facilities have cases but my mom works with a bunch of these places and tries to find everything out. I can't and don't give it to her and she gets a bit pissy. But I'm doing my best. Less than four more months so that's nice. I need to ask my boss in a few months if I can go full time remote or if I get to train a replacement. I hate working remotely but money is money. And I'm about to be in debt. A lot of debt. I appealed the financial aid decisions of "you get federal loans and jack shit else" and all three lovely institutions laughed at me. How much has y'all's endowment grown over the past year. Y'all have the money. Give me some. Please. Anyway, the big question. The answer you've all been waiting for. It only feels right to let y'all know before anyone else (including the school!) And the answer is... Emory! CDC, puclic health capital of the world, lots of global health organizations, cheap enough living, still a global focused degree. It just feels right. Thanks to everyone listening to my ranting and throwing me advice throughout whatever this process has been y'all have been great.
Idk if y'all remember a whole six days ago but there was a bit of a coup attempt in these beautiful United States. Good times were had by all as I understand it. Well that was a bit of a motivator for me to get the fuck out. I've been talking with veen and Devac for a while about EuroPubHealth which is run by Erasmus, some fancy European agreement about studying and education and stuff. At some point I had started the application but hadn't finished since I wasn't sure I wanted to fully apply this year. Moving alone is stressful. Moving to another continent with no social base in the middle of a pandemic to begin studying is monumental. Plus saving money is great. I haven't done research I'm not sure how working abroad on a student visa works. Or how employable I'll be with little to no knowledge of the language. So I'll have a lot of games to play. But also getting the fuck out sounds nice right about now. So I finished that application. I'm damn near done another one. Which leaves just two more to go on my year of reach schools and seeing what sticks. The two completed applications both said they'll be back with a decision by March. It's going to be a fun (read: stressful for some reason because it was a last-minute decision to apply) waiting game to play. Also since it's all reach schools and I'm not expecting to get in anywhere and wholly unprepared y'all are the only ones that know so feel extra special. Beyond that nothing exciting. Covid still exists. Cases still rolling in. Continuing to function at my job at whatever low level I manage. Continuing to convince people I'm better than I am and know more than I do thanks to my ability to research effectively. It's a wild time.
Okay so I've now heard back from all four programs I've applied to. Final tally in order of response received is: Johns Hopkins MHS Epidemiology - Accepted Emory MPH Global Epidemiology - Accepted EuroPubHealth w/ Concentration in Epidemiology - Denied Georgetown MSc in Global Health - Accepted So now what am I gonna pick? Well that's a whole 'nother ballgame. No financial packages from any yet. Gotta decide by April 15. I've been put in touch through various means with people at every school so I might ask them about their thoughts on the programs. If I want to be William Foege in House on Fire what will serve me best? I think the answer is Emory due to CDC connections and just all the global health stuff going on in Atlanta, but Georgetown guarantees international experience with a 12-14 week field research study thing and it's not like DC won't have public health availability (much of HHS), and Johns Hopkins is Johns Hopkins and that's just in it's own world in public health. And while being in Emory of course gives me a leg up for CDC connections but doesn't guarantee anything. So it's going to be a fun month of research and pondering. Other pro/cons to consider is cost of living. Baltimore and Atlanta are both pretty cheap but DC is stupid expensive. In moving in with the parents at the end of this month I'll be able to do a lot of saving over the next few months before I leave so that'll be nice. Hopefully a hint less student loan debt. That's going to be a fun game too. I've been doing a bit of looking into being the head of a dorm since I was an RA as an undergrad. That should give a healthy stipend and a free place to live for two years, but I'd also hate my life for two years I hated being an RA I can't imagine I'd like that too much. Why is adulting so expensive? Lots of good news for me thus far into 2021, but a whole lot to think about and stress over too.
So now those anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers can all claim they are vaccinated even though they're not and start spreading again. Feel real bad for health departments in heavily anti-mask/anti-vaxx areas. Grocery stores and restaurants aren't going to request vaccination cards for entry and even if they do, they're easy to fake or pretend you left it in the car or at home or something. Not a fan of this one. Prefer we go on a state/county level for percent vaccinated to life masking orders. Localized health rules are better than national ones anyway as they can be tailored to a population. What a shit show this is gonna be for a lot of the country. Hoping it doesn't allow a variant better able to escape the vaccine to spread and rip through our country again.
European program said no and while I'm certainly disappointed, I'm still ecstatic to have gotten into two excellent schools already, which is more than a lot of people can say. Glad to finally at least get an answer on that program though. It's been a stressful wait and the anxiety was just getting worse every day, so I'm glad that's done now. Now I just have to let my family know I'm moving in with them in a few weeks... I had a big plan if I got into the French program including a bottle of nice Champagne and making some big deal of it being from France where I'm heading and just being over-the-top like that. Don't have a plan now, so if any of you have ideas on how to break the news in a fun way to the fam, do let me know. I'll probably let them know tonight. I was also going to be cruel to you all and post a fake goodbye post and then only reveal in at the end of that it's a goodbye to America and not a goodbye to you all, but I don't get to play that game either. At this point, just waiting on Georgetown, though I am thinking Emory is the most likely option right now. It's the only of the three that is an MPH, JHU isn't a global program, and I think Emory will have better connections at the CDC and stellar global operational opportunities, especially because that one is global epidemiology, not regular epidemiology like JHU. Georgetown is likely more policy-based being it's in DC and I would certainly prefer the operational side of things. Other than that, nothing too exciting. Same shit different day.
So if y'all haven't been stalking chat, my current life excitement is that I applied for a job much more closely related to what I want to ultimately do with my life. That would put me as one on a team of 7. My current role has me running 3 county-wide programs myself and gives me a ton of responsibility and freedom. The new role is with the same health department, same pay, pretty much the same people. Not any different in those realms. I went and talked to my current boss on Monday and let him know I applied and how his job might help me achieve my long term goals. He was basically like it won't which isn't true it offers a ton of good experience and skills, just not direct experience. But I told him that and he kinda understood it. I asked him to look into a title and pay grade increase so he's theoretically doing that. He also said he'd be open to exploring how to incorporate my life goals into the job. He does like me a lot so I know he'd write me a great recommendation. I love the freedoms and independence the current role offers. I think I might be leaning towards that but I fear that also relies on my boss getting his shit together and one of the reasons I have so much freedom is because he doesn't have his shit together. Missing 3/4 supervisors (with the one not missing hired a few weeks ago and adjusting) and in general has shit staff that only do the absolute minimum (the fucks won't help with pandemic response in the middle of a pandemic, but it makes me look better sooo...). So he's busy babysitting all of them while also trying to be the head of all of an entire 35 person team with almost no supervisors. In other news Portugal the Man released a new song: Love their activism around indigenous people and cultures. I'm also thinking about learning French. MSF is a French organization and most of their work is in their former colonies which speak a ton of French. Also considering European master's degree because cheaper and then I can become an EU citizen which makes traveling there a lot easier. And France has arguably the best healthcare system in the world so I am considering there.
Alright let's see how many shout-outs I can manage with little cheating (minus the cool people that already shared this). When I undoubtedly forget some, please shout them out for me! kleinbl00; ecib; humanodon; demure; thenewgreen; OftenBen; insomniasexx; Cumol; veen; galen; nowaypablo; steve; mike; b_b; katakowsj; elizabeth; blackbootz; wasoxygen; Quatrarius; KapteinB; dublinben; rezzeJ; WanderingEng; goobster; johan; NikolaiFyodorov; uhsguy; flac; flagamuffin; I think that covers a decent amount. I'll drop an empty @@ for the people I missed and an @@ for those who have left us.
Blasphemy this is a fake pubski all are welcome at the pubski speakeasy this week.
I'm officially employed on a permanent, full time basis. Unfortunately I'm not super excited about the job, but it's a job and it pays pretty well. Gonna see how it goes and if I don't like it, stay for a bit over a year then go get my Master's and if I like it, stay longer to save up, maybe long enough to get into the pension (thanks government work). I've already been working here in various roles for almost a year, but the starting pay was non-negotiable and because I'm starting after October 1st, I'm not eligible for the annual raise in the springtime, so I already feel like they're kind of tossing me aside which definitely isn't a good way to start. For that reason, I might keep looking for jobs even though I really only need one more year of experience before I can apply to the master's programs I want to. Trying to start this job with an open mind but it's going poorly.
It's been a while. Where am I? I'm 21 and can legally drink now, so that's neat. Also not an RA so I can drink shamelessly. Graduating in December a semester early! Anyone hiring? Backpacked Europe for the entire summer a year ago. The blog layout sucks for some reason with no navigational ability. The final route ended up being Copenhagen -> Berlin -> Dresden -> Wroclaw -> Krakow -> Budapest -> Zagreb -> Sarajevo -> Dubrovnik -> Skopje -> Ohrid -> Athens -> Paros -> Santorini -> Naxos -> Split -> Pula -> Venice -> Bologna -> Ravenna -> Florence -> Parma -> Milan -> Back to Copenhagen -> Stockholm -> Narvik -> Oslo -> Prague -> Vienna -> Prague -> Home. Truly a life changing experience. Krakow, Sarajevo, and Ohrid were my three favorite places, wonderful people, incredible histories, and so few tourists mobbing about. Absolutely wonderful. Santorini was my least favorite. Shopping mall on an island. The other Greek islands, Paros and Naxos were fabulous though. Lots of pictures on my poorly laid out blog. Going to two concerts soon, Portugal. the Man and Reignwolf, about a week and a half apart. Yesterday I went to my first ever therapy intake. Holy fuck that sucked. Hopefully it will help some. Have been putting it off for like 6.5 years or so...
I'm no longer a college student, I'm now unemployed graduate!
Grades are in. I managed to pull a 3.43 which means I made Dean's list (3.40) which is awesome. Unfortunately, that means my parents will kinda expect that for the next three years and be disappointed if I don't make it. Which as classes get harder... yeah. Moving is a bitch. Lot of stuff to pack and throw away, and a lot of work to be done to the new house. It'll be a fun few weeks.
Krakow is incredible and Auschwitz is incredibly depressing. It has easily been my favorite city so far. In Budapest now and it's wonderful. The parliament building is stunning. I'm mooching off public WiFi right now waiting for it to get dark to get a good picture of the building lit up and reflecting off the Danube. And the pictures!
Yesterday was my last day of high school. I am all done. Going to Syracuse in the fall. I am so excited.