sixth year

I'm officially a sixth-year MD/PhD student as of July 1 of this year (2014).  It's hard to believe that I haven't posted for almost an entire year - just have been keeping my head down and working.

I took what might be my last course of graduate school last semester - an amazing course on using partial differential equations to model biological systems.  That was fun and challenging, but sucked too much time and mental energy away from my research.

I have data.  The problem is (for me) that there are no colonizations or infections - but I guess it means that 1) infection control is doing a great job, or 2) there are an awful lot of false negatives.

I submitted a training grant to the NIH and got thoroughly rejected (<50th percentile).  Partially that was because I flubbed it at the last second and tried to make some last minute revisions that backfired, I think, as I found some papers that had actually used many of the same techniques we had.  Also it would have helped if my mentor had gotten my revisions back before the night before the deadline!  But it was a rookie error to try to change the grant at the last minute, but I just felt that it wasn't possible to make the same claims once I had read the other paper.

I will have to persuade my committee that I deserve to graduate next year.  Not quite ready, but I have a month to persuade them.  I am starting to get antsy and wanting to get out, but we shall see what happens.  The deadline is October for miracles to occur.

I spent entirely too much time on triathlon training and completed a sprint triathlon in May and an Olympic-distance triathlon (~1 mile swim, 25 mile bike ride, and 10k run) last weekend.  I've also spent an awful lot of time in basically every outdoor body of water I could get to in order to prepare for the open-water swimming portion, which can be really freaking with no underwater visibility, chop and current, and other swimmers swimming near, around, and over/under each other.  My only goal for that section was to stay calm and swim freestyle the whole way, which I did.  It was actually almost anticlimactic after all my preparation, but I guess that was the point.

No more classes - I have got to focus and make progress on my research.  I'm also needing to have some downtime after two years of medical school and three years of graduate coursework.  It's going to be a hard few years after this, so I really need to be able to work my tail off with complete focus.

The motto for this year: do less, focus more.  But I'm trying hard not to get too entranced with triathlon training, because I finished in the  top 20% without really even having a training plan, proper bicycle, clipless pedals/shoes, or swimming particularly well.  Got to keep my eyes on the PhD goal.