Critter, Project, Work, PhD programs

I intended to post to the blog long before now, but life has been crazy (but totally worth it)! Joseph and Jenny are doing well. Joseph was a whopping 12 pounds, 6 ounces at his two month appointment on February 26th. He is getting more motor control and loves to cuddle. Jenny has started to call him "Critter" because he is so cute and cuddly. I'll post a picture or two at the end if I can figure out how to do it.

I defended my MPH project on February 26th and turned in my edits on March 12th, so I made the deadlines to graduate in April. Yeah! I was so worried Dr. Merrill was going to ask me some obscure question about the statistical method we used, but he didn't (thankfully). I am still, however, working on the manuscript with my mentor from NIEHS that we will submit for publication.

Work is going well, but I still get tired almost everyday and have to stand up in my cubicle so I don't fall asleep. I can't wait to only have work to worry about so I can go to bed earlier. The main program manager has started calling me "mini me" because I can do a lot of the statistical and GIS stuff he can or that he shows me. It's sort of weird, though, because I am taller than he is by about four inches so I'm not really mini relative to him. Anyway, I really like the people at UDOH and the work in really varied and interesting. I use SAS almost every day and am currently doing an analysis of the associations between blood lead and blood mercury levels and birth weight in newborns. The paper was already written, but it was rejected for publication the first time because it needed more samples. Now that we have more samples, I just have to replace the numbers and then I get another publication. I won't complain about that.

The PhD search has been exhausting and all consuming in some ways. I visited and interviewed at all four schools I applied to: Emory, Michigan, Washington, and North Carolina. Emory and Michigan interview their top applicants before deciding who to admit while Washington and North Carolina admit applicants and then bring them in to try to entice them to come there. I think I'll just quickly run through each school below.

I had a great visit to Emory and really liked their program, but I've been waitlisted there.

Michigan was basically a downer all the way around. Funding is really hard there, the faculty I wanted to work with were actually in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences (one of whom wasn't there when I visited), and I got a ticket for turning right on a red light about 1/4 mile from returning my rental car. Apparently there were signs saying no right turn on red, but I didn't see them and it cost me $150. It left a pretty sour taste in my mouth toward Michigan.

I ended up having a phone interview the week after I visited Michigan with the faculty member that was gone when I visited. He was very nice and had some interesting research going on. He suggested that I dual-track my application to Epidemiology and Environmental Health Sciences and see which department gave me a better offer, so I did. I didn't get accepted to Epidemiology, but am not all that surprised given that the faculty member that would need to support me is in EHS. I still haven't heard from EHS, but am guessing I didn't get in since Judy was admitted there a couple of weeks ago. I can't say I'm too upset, though, because I don't really want to go to Michigan anyway.

While things haven't turned out too well at Emory and Michigan, things have gone a lot better at Washington and North Carolina (which are actually better Epidemiology programs anyway). I found out while I was at Emory that I have been accepted to Washington and found out I was accepted to North Carolina while I was visiting Michigan. That took some of the pressure off of my visits to those two schools.

I had a superb visit at Washington and can really see myself there in the future. Seattle is beautiful and the view of Mount Rainier is stunning (when it's not raining and you can actually see Mount Rainier). I had great visits with the reproductive, perinatal, and pediatric epidemiology (RPPE) group as well as the air pollution and Parkinson's disease groups. The Monday after I visited Washington, I was offered a spot on their RPPE NIH training grant, so we do have some funding (I know, repro epi? I've got to be kidding, right? Let's just say I would focus on perinatal and pediatric epi.). The cost of living, however, is pretty high in Seattle and I would have to commute an hour both ways each day in order for us to live in affordable housing. They are also on the quarter system meaning I could take more classes, but wouldn't get the depth I would at other places because they don't have as much time to cover the material.

As soon as I arrived in North Carolina I felt like I had arrived home. I was totally comfortable the whole time I was there and feel North Carolina would really fit me and my family. UNC is different from other programs because they are all about the student (Washington or Michigan, for example, are all about the research). Of the 40 new students that enroll at UNC each fall, probably 30 are PhD students. At Washington, on the other hand, only about 10-15 of the 70 new students each fall are PhD students (the rest are MPH or MS students). UNC's graduates are renowned for being the best trained epidemiologists of any school in nation (especially in epi methods) and they have a grant writing course that students have used to get NIH grants for their dissertation research. It is extremely rare for a pre-doc to have already gotten a grant for their research, but it happens all the time at UNC. I don't currently have any funding at UNC, but they assured all of us that we will be funded (probably as RA's) by the time school starts in the fall. If we are willing to take it on faith, they told us it will work out.

Jenny and I really like both Washington and UNC, but I think we'll be going to UNC. It's kind of strange to think I will most likely be turning down guaranteed funding at one school to get probable funding at the other, but UNC was that incredible. We are going to try to make a decision this week, so I hope I can tell you all what we are doing at the DHS banquet on Friday (or I can post a short one to the blog for those that will be MIA).

That's where we're at. Here are pictures of Joseph.


Four generations of Beard men.


Where's baby bear's porridge? We couldn't resist putting Joseph in this outfit from his great Grandma Beard.


"Reading" a book. You have to start them young if you want the list of great scientists to be Newton, Einstein, Eyring, and Beard (just kidding).