School Me Saturday 10/14/23-personal October update

This is the week in which I discuss my personal PhD journey.

All of a sudden, we are on the cusp of week 10.

Didn’t school start like a week ago?

I have one assignment due this week coming up on Thursday night. I’ve already started writing it.

That assignment is in the Health Disparities and Outcomes class. This class also has a fairly big assignment due Monday, October 26. I’ve started that one as well and I hope to finish it and turn it in next Saturday.

The Quantitative Research class has a big assignment due at the end of the month as well. This is a draft of the research proposal the class has been building towards all semester. I have an idea of the research topic at hand, I just need to be able to discuss tools to get the hard data, and the group I am going to survey to get the data. This, unsurprisingly, has been the hardest class for me this semester. I mean, it’s statistics adjacent.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when details were kind of light on the ground and the world seemed to be on fire, I began a daily practice of reading newspapers and news sites. I’ve kept it up. I have the sites that I think have proven accurate and fact-based and I rely on those. Of course, like any former high school journalist, I know that the best information comes from a variety of sources. Some of these sources I use when I am writing the Tuesday Top of Mind posts. I read about the coronavirus and all its updates, I read about abortion and the cluster fire the Dobbs decision has enabled states to become. I read about climate disasters and the sequelae of climate change. I read about LGBTQ+ issues, including the war on trans people. I read about healthcare because I’m in the industry. The point is, I read a lot of different things. I think it behooves us as citizens to engage with the world.

This brings me to my third class, Advanced Health Policies and Ethics. This is, by far, my favorite class of the semester. Not only because being informed makes for better discussions within the group, but better discussions outside of the group. I find myself wanting to know and understand more. This does lend itself to being more politically involved. During our class discussion on Friday about political activism as nurses, I vowed to email my representatives monthly about what I see as the major political issues. I have thoughts on this versus the money from the lobbyists and special interest groups but I have to start somewhere, right?

This class, too, has a major project due just at the beginning of November. With PowerPoint presentation. I must start on the research for that.

That’s what I do, read research, and plan assignments.

And stack books I would otherwise be reading on the towering to-be-read pile.

Someday.