Question: if it is impossible to know the true population mean except by theory, why does it show up in biostats intros so much? I ignore this question usually.

I am struck by the nice binding and spacious margins on this biostats book from 1964. Much easier to make tidy notes on the pages. More fun way to study.

Living like a Grown-up

In my perpetual avoidance of homework, I came across this lovely post: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/what-do-you-need-to-live-like-a-grown-up.

The author listed AA batteries, light bulbs, toilet paper, basic cooking supplies, and living things. All of which I've had...um...actually, I think I kept a stock of all of the above since I was a freshman in a dorm. Overprepared, maybe. And then I had one apartment for six years, which allowed for much accumulation. Even given that most of it was immediately lost to the winds of change when I moved, however, I did not and still don't feel like a grown-up. So I really enjoyed the comments, which opened up all sorts of possibilities.

• Art on the walls. That has been carefully chosen. I would add, that has nice frames. Definitely the most grown-up moment I've had was getting a print framed to put in my new place. Now I just need art for all the other walls...
• Space for guests. Visiting my sisters twice in a row made a huge impression on me. One was in the process of moving. I slept on the couch, surrounded by cardboard boxes, and listening to the wheeze of the geriatric pet rat. I had lots of fun, and the rat survived the visit, but I was definitely living out of my luggage! When I visited my other sister, I slept on the couch again, but the living room was immaculate, and there was a spot for my luggage to sit quietly out of the way. Having traveled excessively since then, I've gotten to see the really nice guest rooms and the let's-just-shove-this-off-the-couch-there! My old apartment had the space but not the organization. My new apartment has the space but not the furniture (discretionary income helps, it turns out), so I'm not there yet. 
• A full bed. 'Nuff said.
• Although...nice bed linens, a duvet with a nice cover, and three pillows more than you really need are a requisite part of any grown-up bed.
• Basic cooking supplies. I've been covered on this front for years, the trick has been not having so many cooking supplies they start to obscure each other.
• A dining table, table linens, and nice china. I don't know that I require the full china service, but a pair of wine glasses is a necessity. And a wine bottle. It's really easy when you drink wine maybe once a year, because then you just wait for someone to give you a bottle and you are set.
• Tea. Teapot. Teacups. Little plates. This is not the same as dining. This is TEA.
• Sad to say, a television and accompanying equipment. It's hard to host movie night otherwise. 

And the intangibles (so much more important!)

• A cleaning schedule
• A specific space for dropping all bags and coats that does not block the door and is NOT the middle of the living room. 
• Control over the placement of furniture. These days I visit my parents' house, look around, and go, "Hm, these chairs have been in the same place for fifteen years...they could be rearranged."
• This is very different from trading out old chair from the curb for new chair from the curb.
• Waking up before the alarm clock goes off.
• A morning routine
• Going to bed at the same time every night, before midnight.
• Having a savings account. Putting money in the savings account is a bonus.
• MAKING SUSHI!!!
• *ahem* From memory.

Please pardon me, it is autumn

The purple ash outside my apartment is being gorgeous. It's hard to be sad too much with such ridiculous beauty going unappreciated. If it weren't impossible to replicate the sun falling through the leaves and the gentle gradation from buttery yellow to illuminated burgundy with veins of green on every leaf, and leaves in bunches and the dark thin branches half hidden, it would be worth learning to paint this single tree. But even then I would still miss the sky's illusory blue, and the ability to reach out and touch the cool smooth rough-edged leaves. All I can do is sit and stare until a box elder beetle lands distractingly in my hair, life pulls me away, and fall passes, taking the colors.

Thankfully, too, or I'd never get anything done.

EIS wait wait wait Oh look a diversion

wait wait wait

One of those group exercises was inflicted in us during class today. You know, "take this quiz and then we'll split you up into groups and talk about a semi-arbitrary way to split hairs when describing personality types." It sounded an awful lot like the Myers-Brigg exercise we had at the beginning of vet school. Maybe doing a full Myers-Brigg analysis works better (or maybe not...thanks Wikipedia!) than the truncated versions you find on Grad School Orientation Day, but it always puts me in mind of reading the horoscope: omg my horoscope describes me so perfectly...and so do the other eleven! (Unless it's the Onion's horoscopes...)

 The questions on the quiz were not promising. All of them could have been answered by "It depends". And the arbitrary groups were maybe a tad arbitrary. However, it turned into a decent exercise nonetheless. Four groups, delineated by color, roughly broke down into:

 1. The talkative people who want people to be nice and get along and have a good time, and are we all on the same page?
 2. The pragmatic people who just want to get it done and get it done right. Also, punctuality is important.
3. The academic-minded who will pore over the details, are a little baffled by these emotions that other people make such a big deal out of, and want to think the problem through.
4. The energetic creative types who will move on a problem immediately, try out new things, and have no concept of punctuality (luckily they tend to get things done without it). Are we done yet?

 I liked the breakdown, surprisingly, despite past experiences with MB. I fell into the first and last categories most, which explains why my sister and I operate on such drastically different measures when it comes to farming. Meanwhile, the long wait continues. I figure all bets are off now, limbo is now installed for the month of October and anyway, in two weeks it will be time to start looking at internships for next year.

EIS Jeopardy

It is 25 days after the EIS application deadline. No word yet...

EIS = the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the CDC program for training people in applied epidemiology. Sounds dry, yeah? Disease sleuthing is the better name for it, things like investigating food outbreaks, for example listeria in ricotta cheese a week ago. There's not a lot of first-person accounts of the application process, though, which makes it a mite more harrowing.

This summer was spent gathering letters of recommendation, filling out the online forms (describe every job, volunteer experience, and educational activity you've ever done), and now is the waiting. 

Wait wait wait. 

Check online status of submission.

Where's my license? WHERE?? Oh, there it is.

Wait wait wait.

Call. Find out where the last bit of paperwork got lost in the stacks. 

Wait.

Check online status of submission. Oh goody, now it's being reviewed.

Wait wait wait.

Text other applicants compulsively, commiserate about the misery of not being rejected upfront.

Obviously from this post, I applied.

It's a long shot for me. I'm still working on my masters in public health and have less field experience than most candidates. Also, I'm a veterinarian. This is both good and bad. There have been veterinarians in EIS (Pappaioanou, 2003, a great article if you are a DVM obsessing over your EIS application, as is this powerpoint), but the majority of officers appointed are human medical doctors who have already done a residency.

 Still, I got to attend the EIS conference this spring, and it was full of fascinating people and such scope for practicing communication AND population medicine that I would be a fool not to try to get in. It's obscure outside the sphere of public health, though, and I hadn't even heard of it until I was partway through vet school.

Now, of course, they've made a nice movie (Contagion) with Kate Winslet as the EIS officer, and the service has become better known (by the handle: You know that movie with Kate Winslet and people dying? No, not the one with a boat).

Correspondingly, the applicant pool has doubled.
Thanks, Hollywood *shakes fist*

wait wait wait

Anyone have a good list of fidgeting techniques?

Externship + Echidna = New Plan

I quite liked talking in undergrad, and writing and design and all those communication skills that were then ground into paste by several years at vet school, where I was surrounded by people smarter, more experienced, and more committed to saving animals. It's not that I don't like saving animals, I am very much in favor of cows and I have great love for emergency medicine (finally, a job compatible with my sleep schedule!).

Then, during fourth year, I went to Australia. My determination to travel abroad manifested in a two week visit to the land down under, where I just saw the nice parts (Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra) and spent a week with smart, experienced people committed to learning about and, where possible, saving wildlife. I like wildlife on principle and in practice, though I suspect regurging seabirds is not in my future. But there were so many places it overlapped with human health: oysters as environmental harbingers of water quality, bats and birds and little predators as pest control, and the Great Barrier Reef as a rather troubling indicator of degraded ecosystems. Yet at the same time, intense frustration with the media and with human beings in general for not recognizing the importance of these environmental markers.

Oh look, said a little voice in my mind, a niche! Because I'm always trying to work communication science into my ambiguously defined career.

And then I saw echidnas eagerly waiting for play time with the keeper at the Melbourne zoo, and hey, if there is a job where I get to travel to random places and see things like that, AND use communication science, AND the principles of veterinary medicine, I want to do that.

Fortunately I'd already applied for the masters of public health program. Even better, I got in.

Of course, now I have a ton of essays to write on the human health care system, which has nothing to do with echidnas.