Student SPHere 2008-09

I managed to be fairly productive over winter break. I worked on perfecting the second draft of my Plan B project, and I am now ready for the final portion of my analysis. I’m really grateful to my advisor because she decided to have me perform my project in several distinct steps of analyses with a writing session after each step so that the process could be fresh in my mind. I think this approach is far superior to waiting until the end and having to conjure up memories of things I did months ago. I’m hopeful that the remainder of the project will go smoothly and I can have a really nice final product. I also continued to work in both of my RA positions in the Department of Psychiatry and the College of Pharmacy. The transplant study for Pharmacy has its first paper in press, and we finished up a second paper that is being submitted to JAMA. I also managed to finalize my own paper on using cumulative logistics models to predict physical activity as a function of drinking behaviors in college students.
My first week of classes went really well. The only frustrating thing really is that my clinical trials lecture is being transmitted to the U of M campuses in Rochester and Duluth, which means that we are going to be cheated out of about 15 minutes of lecture time every class period while the Rhodes scholars who operate the broadcasting system fuddle around. The actual content of the course seems like it will be interesting and Dr. Neaton, the professor, does a nice job presenting the material. I am also taking two Biostats electives. The first one is a seminar style class on phase I and II trials and is taught by Dr. Chap Le. I think this will be a nice compliment to clinical trials which focuses primarily on phase III trials. My last class is Intro to Bayes, which so far has been amazing. The professor is doing a fabulous job so far, and I am really fascinated by the course content. I’m really excited to be learning WinBugs in the Bayes class as well, and the textbook is fantastic. I didn’t need to take this class to get my degree, but I’m really glad that I decided to go ahead and enroll. I think this semester will prove to be extremely informative and enjoyable.
Of course, no blog of mine would be complete without some mention of that most glorious of football teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers. I am hopeful that my Steelers can outperform the Cardinals, although I am sure that Kurt Warner will be quite the contender. I will probably be spending a good portion of the Super Bowl screaming at the television because everyone knows that this is the most effective way to control any outcome being broadcast. In fact, it has been proven that the 1995 OJ Simpson acquittal was single-handedly achieved by a devout sect of Bills fanatics all hurling synchronized insults and stale cheetos at their television sets. So on the most important Sunday of the year (sorry Easter), I will be proudly twirling my Terrible Towel.