OK, so I realize that it's been so long since I posted that probably nobody even checks my blog for updates anymore. However, it's not a bad thing to do a little journaling once in a while, so I'm going to go for it.
School started, and things are pretty interesting. The other students are all smart and friendly, and so my social life is indescribably better than it was over the summer. So much better, actually, that I'm a little too busy with social stuff!
The first semester of an MPH program is a little broad, especially if, like me, your area of focus is Health Policy and Management. My interests lie in the teeny area of health related to health care delivery (hospitals, health centers, doctors' offices), and this semester we're learning about the larger world of public health: people in other countries die more than we do, there are huge socioeconomic and health disparities within the US, and it's damn hard to push those boulders up a hill. It can all be a little disheartening. I'm also taking biostatistics and epidemiology, both of which have some things in common with classes I've taken in the past, but are more specifically applied to public health this time around. My star class is called Healthcare Quality: Measurement and Improvement, and is really sort of the foundation for what I'll base my career on. There's a lot of reading for the class, but I love, love, love it. The class is absolutely enthralling, and we're working with our University Health Services to apply what we're learning to help them improve the reliability of their smoking cessation activities. Guess what I'm doing? I'm the project manager, of course! I can stand only so much talking without action, so I put myself in a position where I can push things forward to results more effectively. Of course, I also made myself the go-to person for logistics...but it turns out that things really don't progress if someone isn't handling logistics. So sue me.
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