Chew like you have a secret

I don't know how people feel about the movie "She's the Man," but it's amazing.

And here are some more random thoughts of the day:

How quickly can dreams be dashed? I received another email from the Italian family apologizing because, as it turns out, something has come up so that they won't be able to host me this summer. Sad times. That would be my luck.

Now that my midyear report's in, I guess it's time for some serious thesis writing to begin.

I love inter-semester break, because even though most of the town empties out, you end up getting to know and spend time with people you wouldn't necessarily expect.

As Tegan and I figured out the other night, our high school is way more interesting than we ever thought while we were actually there.

Abby and her cousin are coming to stay with me in less than a week!!

Tonight I will be making stir fry for dinner.

According to my calculations...

...if I write just two pages of my thesis per day for five days a week, starting the second week of February, and excluding the two week spring break and a theoretical five days of "interview/data collection", I should be done writing by mid-May, leaving the entire month of June to edit edit edit. Now of course I realize there will most definitely be days that I do not get two pages written, and there also needs to be considered time spent teaching, going to these seminar things I've been meant to be attending (oops), and writing short journal articles; however, two pages a day is almost nothing so there will also be days that I will write much more than that. Totally doable. Italy may just be more realistic than I thought, at least in theory...

When opportunity presents itself

I'm trying really hard to contain myself, but an amazing thing just happened. I was checking through my email, and the mother of one of my old Italian students sent me a message with the subject "holiday in italy"...you see where this is going. Basically, I taught English in this little Italian city just near the Alps/Turin in northern Italy a few summers ago, where there are very few people who can speak proper English. I've been back to visit since that summer, and had joined one of my students' family for lunch awhile back. Now the oldest daughter in the family is 17, has been to England several times, and is looking to improve her English. Naturally, her mother has just invited me to come live with them for a couple weeks this summer so that Elena can practice her English. Hello, free two week summer holiday in Italy. SO TEMPTING!! ...Only one foreseeable problem: THESIS. As of right now, my plan has been to try to finish my thesis by mid-July so that I can return home in time for my hypothetical med school education to start at the beginning of August. That means I'm already only giving myself about five months to interview professionals in the field, write and edit over 100 pages, and of course write and hopefully publish a few papers on the side... All this should be doable (despite the fact that I theoretically should have eight months to do it all, not five...), but speeding it up even a little more?? Hmm... Tricky, tricky. This is not helped by the fact that I don't know if/where I'll get into medical school, and therefore don't really know when I actually need to get all this done. That's the problem with having my future all planned out, particularly a future that is such a process (ugh), I can never really plan that much ahead because I don't really know where I'll be any further than a few months down the road, and even that's a stretch...

I did, however, finally figure out what my thesis will be. I'm going to focus on depression, after all, but ADHD will still make an appearance. Using ADHD as a comparison, I will look at the ethics of using antidepressants as a sort of neuro-enhancement, in addition to its intended treatment use (which already has all sorts of ethical implications, particularly when applying treatments to children). So with that figured out, I finished the first draft of my midyear report this weekend, and am thus taking the day off from work. I figure I need at least a day of not looking at that report before I can effectively edit it. I also need another day off because I think I've sprained my ankle again, no walking all the way to the office for me... And my sinuses decided to pick another fight with me. Oh the joys of living in Scotland. Tomorrow...tomorrow I will start researching for my first paper--who is policy/legislation really protecting? children or pharmaceutical companies? Then again, maybe I should do a little research today, as tonight I am celebrating Burns Night a day early with friends, and fear tomorrow will not be so productive...

...dreaming of an Italian vacation...

Depression or ADHD?

I am still very stuck between the two topics. But luckily just realized that today is NOT Wednesday, but rather it is only Tuesday, which is strangely and perhaps unrealistically reassuring. I'll admit, I found my lunch with Russell yesterday unexpectedly extremely helpful. Finally able to catch up now that he was done with exams, we eventually ended up talking about my research, prompting me to go home and essentially write down everything that we said on the subject. It's times like these that make me think, wow I'm such a nerd; that is, when lunch with old friends becomes work, but work is actually exciting and fun (not the negative connotation that the word "work" implies). Yet no matter how much thought and effort I've put into this, I'm still feeling no greater pull toward one particular topic, which wouldn't be so much of an issue if my report outlining what I plan to do for the rest of my time here weren't due next week(!!). CONUNDRUM!

On a completely different note, has anyone else ever heard of "frost nip"? It's not frostbite, but sort of similar? Basically, Kate told me about this about a week ago, and I didn't have the slightest clue what she was talking about; it just seemed made up. Of course, a couple days later, I find that a couple of my toes have gone a little bruisey from being too cold, precisely how Kate had described frost nip... I may now be a believer, albeit still slightly skeptical.

Because getting back to work wasn't hard enough

I'm already struggling with the motivation to get up early to go to the office in this first full week back to work. Now add on the maze I need to navigate in order to get to the office this week... For whatever reason, they are needing to re-tile the floors in this BRAND NEW BUILDING (and when I say new, I mean it opened just 6 months ago!), and they thought it would be ok to do this now since classes are not in session. Good thought, except that people such as myself still use the building, and as I am a student they refuse to give proxy access to the back stairway like they do for the rest of staff. Earlier in the week this meant that I could simply go in through the physics building next door and go through the connecting bridge, which conveniently comes out on my floor anyway. However, since yesterday, they have been doing work on the stairwell that I must cross to get to the biology offices, so I had to go through Physics but then go upstairs to the floor above mine, through the medical school labs, through the medical school offices, down the back stairs, and then over to my office...I think I've just confused myself trying to explain that...

Anyway, just got out of a meeting with my supervisor, and my brain is spinning again. After worrying about not getting my ethics forms done, I'm now very happy I didn't put any time in to that because it seems as though my research may be changing... I'm still kind of doing the same thing, but the direction is changing. So far, I've really just done a broad literature review of a bunch of factors in treating/medicating children with psychiatric illness. But when it came time to really figure out how interviewing/surveying people (students, psychiatrists, other healthcare professionals, etc) would fit into what I'm doing, it started making less and less sense. To tie it all back together, I'm looking more at focusing on ADHD or depression in pediatric populations. The hard part is choosing which one, because both are so interesting and would give my project a different spin. But I can only do one, especially because they would be so different. Perhaps I'll choose whichever one is more relevant to everything I've done so far so that I don't have to throw as much out.......

I think I need a vacation. Again.

Back to Work Blues

First post of 2011..happy new year! As predicted, the remaining week and a half at home after my last post were more or less me scrambling around seeing old friends, partaking in holiday madness, and getting things together to come back to Scotland again. Luckily, despite the blizzard that hit the east coast, I still managed to get out of Boston on time last week, with only a slight delay in London. I then spent less than 24 hours in St Andrews before heading back to England. Funny how different the town feels when there aren't students around. Since half the population here is from the university, one would expect it to be completely empty; on the contrary, all the locals seem to come out of the woodwork and there were people everywhere, though none that I recognized (a nice change perhpaps?).

I hopped on a train down to Newcastle for the New Year. After Anna picked me up from the train station, I was greeted by some of her best friends from school, and we had a cozy girls night in. Jamie and Steven joined us the next day, and a group of us went out for dinner in town, and on to a party. Very enjoyable :) The boys then left back to Scotland the following afternoon, while I stayed another few days in Newcastle. Anna and I had a walk around the castle estate where she lives, enchanting! Sadly, the castle no longer stands, but its structure was used to build Anna's house, along with a few of her neighbors'. Really interesting history there. The family that owned the castle estate for generations used to host all sorts of important people, and were friends with the author of 'Alice in Wonderland,' which is said to be based on the family's daughter Alice. The family left the estate during World War I, and later the castle was converted into a girls' school. Not long after that, the head of the family decided he wanted to dismantle the castle to construct a model town, but only managed to build three houses (including Anna's) before the project was abandoned. Some of the old buildings still remain though. Anyways, such a cool place! Spent most of my time there catching up on sleep and sitting by the fire, really relaxing. Also got a chance to walk around the Metro Center, the huge shopping mall in Newcastle, though could not be tempted to buy anything. And had a fantastic bank holiday dinner with Anna's family on Monday...love Anna's grandma (who apparently is quite the heartbreaker!).

And now I am back in St Andrews, and admittedly not quite ready to get back to work....