hippyscientist

Man I'm sorry to hear how crappy Texas makes you feel. In my family we used to joke, because I traveled a lot, that I was allergic to England, but I actually think it's true. From about February/March thru to mid-July if forgot to take medicine and went outside my throat would constrict, my face would swell and I'd look like a million bees stung my face. Very curious to see if I react the same way in central PA because right now, I feel the healthiest & 'cleanest' (best way I can put it, like free of all the crappy sludgy feelings) I've felt in a long time and put it down to being surrounded by hills and mini-mountains!

Coffee, sorry to hear texas is draining for you. Maybe a restorative practice may help? What's going on that you're so busy?? Hopefully good things!

So, essentially, both. I'm doing the 30 days of yoga/yoga revolution through online youtube videos (Yoga with Adriene). This is good, but I don't get nearly enough out of it compared with studio sessions. That's not to say you can't get by just with YWA but I do find the alignment corrections, the community feel and the guidance of skilled and knowledgeable yogi teachers means I get more from the practice. But I definitely do yoga more for the spiritual/mental health goodness! It's a good supplementary workout, depending on what style you practice. YWA is hatha yoga, whereas my studio does all sorts and so I mix it up. Yoga can be core focused, spiritually focused, hip-opening, shoulder-opening, powerful (something like power yoga, or vinyasa will give you a workout!), challenging (for me any inversion class), peaceful & restful (restorative & yin...although be aware yin can be very much a mental battle). YOu get the picture. IF you can, most studios have a free trial class (sometimes week), and I'd suggest going so the teacher can show you correct positions and alignment. I find sometimes youtube videos would go too fast if i was trying to figure out what position they were trying to get me in. E.g. I know what downward dog is but maybe I get confused about lotus or fallen side angle or if they call the asanas by their sanskrit names. Sorry I think i've gone on a massive rambling here - I'm passionate about my practice! Hope something is useful in that mass of text!!

That's exciting! Fingers crossed for you. So today I had my conference/research symposium and I'm just on cloud 9. I have 2 surgeons who leapt at the chance to collaborate, have invited me to sit in on a surgery so I can better understand the procedure, there's an untapped source of orthopedic funding for collaborations who could fund this research and we're talking about starting as soon as the summer, putting together an IRB as soon as the details are worked out on the new method me and my advisor are creating. I'm so excited! And there might be an another collaboration with another surgeon but this one looking at a different lower limb joint, and slightly different concepts. Today was the first time I felt like I might actually be becoming an expert in my field - I could keep up with the surgeons and researchers, had interesting things to contribute, we had some stimulating discussion and my anatomy isn't as shocking as I thought. Oh and my advisor and I had an amazing "nerd" conversation!! I'm so freaking happy right now Then to top it off, I went to yoga class and it was better than medicine and I am SO HAPPY with my studio. I can't stop smiling!!

@Need Coffee in an IV yeah I just followed my gut in picking a team a few years ago & it had to be the Seahawks. Everyone round here gives me shit for it - move to PA and pick neither the Eagles nor the Steelers to support haha. I'm sure identifying bones & things like that becomes easier the more exposure you have, the more experience you have and the more practice you have. We also had a spectacular fail in the lab making the ultrasound case. We were heating up thermoplastic to try and mould it to the probe and it kinda failed & stuck to the probe but wouldn't come off so there was a lot of scratching and picking and everything. Then we realized we forgot to turn the heat gun off. Whoops. We only singed a little bit of the wooden table....

@Need Coffee in an IV no way! Seahawks fan here too Nice job on remembering the bones! I'm completely nerding out right now because I have a research symposium all day tomorrow with the medical school & I looked at the talks and ALL of them are exciting and interesting. I'm so excited and I really need to calm down so I can sleep. It feels like my Christmas present has come a little late. Plus my advisor wants me to talk with one of the presenters because he thinks he'd be a good collaborator. Eeeeeeee orthopedics really is my passion and I get to dedicate a whole day listening to interesting things YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny essentially using a plastic that we can mould to the probe using heat, then putting some posts with a holding nylon screw to keep it in place. I'm working with one of the technicians to get it done right, but this is so far out of my comfort zone it's pretty exciting!

Feeling much better thanks for asking Who's your team? Mine failed the other weekend which sucked Course sounds excellent tho! @Pink Fuzzy Bunny GOOD LUCK!!! Hope it goes well. This week I have to make a thingy for a probe - kinda like a phone case for the ultrasound - and I have to make it. I had to draw the designs and now source some thermoplastic and stuff. Never knew grad school would involve this sort of stuff too and it's actually exciting. We were going to use a 3D printer to make a case but it was going to take too long.

@Pink Fuzzy Bunny it's definitely a bug. Just hoping lots of fluids and rest will do the trick.

So I'm coming down with something nasty. I hate that I have to admit that but I have a fever and chills, keep blacking out and short of breath, all wobbly & dizzy. This is the worst freaking time to get sick. There's so much to do and tomorrow I have to TA and have a meeting with my advisor and meeting with a visiting scholar whos giving a talk about life after grad school as well as some neuroscience stuff and I just need to be in tomorrow and not be sick. I can push it one more day til the weekend right? If I wear a scarf to breathe into...

phew! glad that mess has a satisfactory conclusion

@Need Coffee in an IV ouch I'm sorry! Family can test the best of intentions at times. But that trip to visit your friend sounds really exciting! It saddens me that people buy into over-hyped, sensationalist headlines rather than taking the time to get to know the true state of affairs. My parents had a similar reaction when they found out I only applied to US schools - "racial divides, gun crime, etc etc etc" all were brought up, I acknowledged that they were their fears but that we can't be ruled by fear....yeah wasn't the best but we moved on and forward. You got it

Thanks @nevermind it's put me in such a good mood and it's the kind you just want to share you know?

Thanks nevermind, hope your first day back was good! I had the most amazing day today, I didn't think days like this existed in grad school but they do and I''m flying so high right now! Things that happened today: 1. Woke up to an email from my MSc advisor inviting me to present my work at a conference in Hong Kong this summer. 2. Had a great impromptu meeting with my advisor who told me my writing was "exceptional and an example of how essays should be written" 3. In our official lab meeting my advisor assigned me host duties for a big name in the field whom he invited to talk to us in a month or so, but he has to go to a conference meeting (he's conference chair) and he trusts me over his other first year grad student to act as host. 4. I managed to write the abstract for the HK conference in a day! and my Msc advisor replied saying he was very impressed and can't wait to introduce me to his colleagues in the field. 5. One of the conferences I'm submitting to is very specialized and one of the guys on the committee came to give a job talk just before the break, and I was the only student at his talk. We chatted afterwards about our research interests, and hit it off - hoping this stands in my favor when they're reviewing abstracts. 6. My advisor asked for my help with the conference he's organizing because I have a background of organizing them (admittedly not academic conferences but still). 7. My IRB proposal is almost done 8. I did 15,000 steps, and did my C25K day even though I had food poisoning at the weekend. 9. Got the syllabuses/syllabi? for my two classes and I'm really excited about them. They're going to really complement what I'm doing with my research this semester. 10. Got to hang out with my friends and we went and shot hoops for a half hour instead of sitting around drinking coffee! I'm so sorry if this sounds like bragging, it really wasn't meant to! It's just been the most unbelievable, great day and I wasn't sure they actually existed!

@MarineBluePsy I mean that's frustrating but fingers crossed they let you go with the cumulative GPA! I am pooped this week. Getting lots of work done and getting a ton of spontaneous unintended workouts in too! Just got back from playing basketball with the crew, and the bus schedule is sh*t without undergrads around so I'm walking like 4 miles a day to get to and from my car when it's parked on campus. Yay for random exercise!

See we even have milk and cream and sweeteners and a coffee machine and a chemex and everything. It's just silly! But it was a nice social break to walk to the shop with my friend, have a gossip, head back and be productive again. We work in the same lab so we try to limit our fun talks to when we're not physically in the office so we can get work done! Just need to stop purchasing things when I go for the walk to the shop. And at least PSL season isn't eternal right?

Essentially, be more proactive with my research. It's picking up the first couple of months this semester and I only have 2 classes so I will have more "free" time which I'm going to make sure I spend on research. The other thing I really need to be conscious of is limiting the about of coffee and hot drinks I purchase during the work week. I spent way too much of my salary on teas and coffees last semester which is just STUPID because we have free tea and coffee in the lab! Oh and get more steps in during the day!

*hugs* you're allowed to feel sad about this! Take some time to process. We're back in the lab full-time tomorrow. I've been watching football all afternoon. Great combination!

@Need Coffee in an IV I have a drawer for cables that I use regularly and another one where stuff that only gets used twice a year lives. It helps! @Pink Fuzzy Bunny oooo might take you up on that! Have yet to really figure it all out but I love it so far.

That pizza sounds incredible! And good luck with the vegan/veggie thing. I have a lot of respect for people who can do it but I find my body needs meat. I feel so much healthier when I eat it. But I found out doing my elimination diet that by cutting out all the processed crap, my weekly shopping costs went down by almost half. I was spending $80-100 a week on food, now its closer to $40/50. So meat and veggies is cheaper for me than meat and veggies and crap! SOrry don't really know why I went on a side-track like that. Good luck! Alright, so over the break, I started a grad school website. I'm writing content now so when it goes live I'll have some stuff up there. I'm really excited by it actually, it's less of a blog about me and more of a blog about the field. Hoping it works and is a good way to get my name out there. In other news, my fitbit arrived! It's currently charging but I really really really want to play with it now! And one of my best friends gets back into town this afternoon so we can watch the rose bowl together. Can't wait to see him! Hope this week is a good one for you all

Mainly epic fantasy, or fantasy from different perspectives. I've been reading the Lies of Locke Lamora series and have loved it. Before that, I was working my way through some of the well-known ones that I felt I'd missed out on because I wasn't able to read them when I was younger. Things like magicians, robin hobb's farseer world, Brent Weeks' books etc. I really enjoy adventure fantasy too, so I have some of those lined up to read. My goodreads account is depressing because of the number of amazing books I will try to get around to but inevitably end up not reading! @Need Coffee in an IV thanks for the suggestions! Looks super interesting!

Now I like Moby Dick! It reads well in my head. Once you get past the first 20 pages or so, I settled in to how Melville writes. But can totally see how it's a struggle. I am addicted to fantasy at the minute. It seems the more stressful life and academia is and how much it forces me to use my brain, the more I want to escape into a totally different world with magic and assassins and battle chiefs and giants and all that.

@Need Coffee in an IV thank you! I've been tryiing to verbalise this to people for ages, literary "classics" often don't do it for me as I can't connect with the characters (there are a few exceptions). I love Gone with the Wind but, like you, Scarlett is a nightmare! Actually I'm not sure I like any of the characters!! One of my Christmas presents arrived yesterday - an authorized history of MI5. Can't wait to get stuck into it but I'm enjoying what I'm currently reading. ALways the issue - too many fun books to read, not enough time.

This makes me feel better haha. Coffee, I love it! Keeps making me laugh

Okay so I know we're not our little avatars on here, but I definitely just pictured the man in your photo (who I know, I know I know who it is I'm having a blank) wearing those....either way, they're cute!!