sunshine à la mode: FINALLY a post

Hey humans, sorry I fail at posting. Hope you still love me :) I've been apartment hopping, and I've finally landed. Phew!

Fun first interaction: my cab driver from the airport is from Ethiopia and came to America because she won the lottery! She brought her whole family, and now she drives a cab for fun because she likes to meet new people. She's pretty great. :)

So, here's what I've been doing. I arrived on the 2nd and strategized with Barb about how I'm going to approach the research analysis. She gave me some books to read (chapters, not whole books) and I did lots of background research on Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I then received the research protocol and read that from start to finish a few times and THEN I got some of the interviews from parents of boys in the DMD study and clinician investigators. What I didn't know about qualitative data analysis is that it's based off of the subjects free responses to questions asked in an interview. So, I read through those several times (getting irritated at the verbatim transcript -- people say "um" and "like" SO many times!!) and summarized the overall feeling of the subject. I then broke down each (relevant) sentence to a "theme" (i.e. how they became initially involved with the clinical trial) and came up with coding words to apply (i.e. "enthusiastic" "adversarial" "defiant", etc.) THEN I put them into this crazy software called QSR NVivo 9 that sorts EVERYTHING for me (so I don't have to do it all manually). That's where I'm at right now--I'm waiting for the rest of the data--it needs to be transcribed. In the meantime, though, I've started writing the research paper I'm going to present as a poster at the end of the month! Whew! That was a lot said.

And tomorrow Barb has me scheduled to do some interview case summaries on Bardet-Biedl syndrome for a colleague of hers. The goal is to get a fresh perspective and see if there are any other interview questions they could be asking. That'll be a nice distraction :)

I've figured out research (by itself) is a bit boring. Scratch that, REALLY boring. I'm not one for solidarity and silence all day long. I get really weird when I don't talk for awhile. I like to do stuff, and I REALLY like to interact with people. So, I'm definitely sure that I'm going to be MOSTLY a clinical genetic counselor with a little bit of research on the side. The genetic counselors here range from being all research to being all clinical.

Aside from work, NIH hosts TONS of speakers/lecturers from all around the country. They range in all topics--from invertebrates to cardiovascular stuff to genetics to food science. It's crazy fun! I'm also scheduled to shadow a few clinical sessions with genetic counselors across the street. I was supposed to attend one 2 days ago but the patient ended up having a flare-up of her condition and was hospitalized.

My evenings are pretty....low key. Instead of watching all my shows on Hulu I'm able to watch them right away, which is nice. I've also been having plenty of cooking adventures--so far I've made stuffed shells, mac and cheese, and french toast! I also fried some dough and coated it in sugar. MMMMM YUMMY! Sometimes for dessert I eat one of the 6 cupcakes I got at Georgetown Cupcakes last week (I froze them). They're the best cupcakes in the whole wide world.

Tonight I have to do laundry and clean up my apartment because it looks like a disaster zone. I might make some sweet potato stuff too...I dunno. AND this weekend I'm going to see a friend I haven't seen in 6 years--since I went to the Acadia Institute of Oceanography in 2006! We've been pen pals ever since, but it's going to be exciting to see him! We're going to go to Sugarloaf and Harper's Ferry (only a little ways from here) and explore some small quaint towns along the way! It's going to be a jolly good time! Yippee!

Momma's going to come visit me the 19th to the 23rd. CANNOT wait. I wish daddy could come, but Mr. Cooper needs him too much :)

Here are some pictures, too!