School Me Saturday 9/16/23-September personal report

Apparently, last month I started doing the monthly personal reports on the first day of school. Which led to September’s report being today.

I’m okay with that.

We just finished the 5th week of school. The professor in my policy and ethics class pointed that out.

And I’ve already done so much.

In my first class, which is a quantitative research class, I gave a presentation yesterday on Quasi-Experimental Non-Equivalent Control Group. Every time I said the entirety of what I was discussing I cringed a bit. That is a lot of words. Of course, I broke down the discussion by defining all the words and then bringing the definition of each word into the presentation before I explained the entire thing.

I am not a good presenter. But I keep plugging at it in hopes of improvement.

In this class, there have been 5 weeks of reading the textbook, 11 articles to critically read, one presentation given, and a discussion post where we dissected an article. Next in this class is a literature synthesis exercise due at the end of the month.

Behind door number 2, there is a health disparities class. This class is completely asynchronous, which means there isn’t a face-to-face online class every week. It is read and learn on your own. This class is the only one of the three like this.

So far in this class, there have been 5 weeks of reading parts of the 2 textbooks, watching of many videos and a few Ted Talks, the reading of 22 articles, and more taped lectures. So much reading! My presentation in this class isn’t until the end of the month, with a discussion question due at the end of next week.

Last, but not least, is the advanced health policies and ethics. The students in this class, myself included, are not shy when it comes to discussing the importance of the 6-9 articles we’ve read. There are also weekly textbook readings and videos to watch. The next assignment I have in this class is a policy presentation around a policy of our choosing, but hopefully around our area of interest. This is due at the end of the month, and I already have an idea, and I’ve started researching it.

There are less assignments in grad school which ratchets up the pressure to perform well on them.

The research assisting that I am doing is going well. I met with the PhD nurse and she has been giving me assignments. I am learning a lot, which is what I wanted.

Of interest to my cohort is the qualitative class we have to take during spring semester, and also the comprehensive exam. This is the multi-paper written exam that shows what we have learned in our time in the PhD program. It is also the mark that separates us as PhD students and, with the addition of an approved dissertation project, after which we can call ourselves PhD candidates.

I’ll just keep plugging away at my reading.