As you may have already guessed, my timeline is off for the ideal live version of my Journey to the Centre of Campus blog series. Time doesn’t make sense as it flies by, yet other moments seem to last an eternity. Examinations and final papers raced by, although at times it felt like there was never an end in site.
The paradox of time… (in university)
February 25, 2015Observing care at Maimonides
February 23, 2015New MSc Global Health Policy blogger Sandra writes:
Over the New Year period I embarked on a great adventure doing a three-week nursing observational period at the famous Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY. Part of my afternoons I spent at their very well-equipped Degenshein Memorial Library to study for my elective modules and work on the proposal for my MSc project report, but more than six hours a day I was following nurse managers, clinical nurse specialists, registered nurses, nurse practitioners and nurse preceptors (trainers) while I penned down noteworthy observations and made the best out of this learning experience.
Journey to the Centre of Campus – Early days
January 27, 2015Epidemiology at 50: Thinking about what matters
December 16, 2014It has been eight months since my last post, which I wrote when I was about to dive into the intense exam prep period of my second year in the MSc epidemiology distance learning program. Exams for my three classes (EPM303, epidemiology of non-communicable diseases, EPM202, Statistical Methods in Epidemiology, and EPM304, Advanced Statistical Methods in Epidemiology) went well, helped by the fact that I’d gone through LSHTM exams once already and knew what to expect. The basics—create a realistic exam prep schedule and stick to it, do a dry run to the exam center so you know where it is and how long it takes to get there, and sleep well the night before—were no different. The only thing that had changed was that I parenthetically turned 50 the day before the first exam.
“Priorities, people!! Priorities!!” he squawked…
December 8, 2014If you ask my Mum what life was like with me as a teenager, one of the things she’ll likely mention was her critical role as the ‘No Police’ as she liked to call it. She spent a fair bit of time helping me to say ‘no’ to the plethora of opportunities I managed to drum up for myself… and mopping up the proverbial mess when I still managed to overcommit when she wasn’t looking.
I don’t think I’m alone in the fact that I’m more than minorly addicted to overcommitting myself and biting off more than I can chew.
And occasionally it all comes to a head and it’s time to prioritize.
Reactions to my return to study
December 5, 2014Hello, Welcome to my new blog. I hope to provide you with a weekly distraction from your studies which will lift your spirits, make you laugh and think ‘he is a idiot, I won’t read his blog again’ all in a few seconds. However, you will read my blog again to see what rubbish I have written so you can complain to your friends (and of course your secretly enjoying what I say you just can’t admit it to yourself).
I currently work for a pharmaceutical company in London and it is a different experience to any I have had in the past. The key difference is that in my past jobs almost everyone I met had been an undergraduate or postgraduate student. Whereas now I work with people from a variety of backgrounds who are mainly doing the job because they need the job. As well as being a distance learning student on the MSc Epidemiology, I have fellowships and memberships to a number of institutes which I am active with. Read the rest of this entry »
Better done than perfect! Studying in the gaps…
October 24, 2014Oh, did the academic year start again already?! Yikes… I must have missed the memo… or it could have something to do with my mushy postpartum brain.
A week before the school year began again, our little boy made his entrance into the world and he’s now a month old. We’re vaguely ‘emerging’ from that postpartum haze and hubby has been waiting on me hand and foot, becoming quite the Jamie Oliver, and being a total star champ A+ support.
I’ve spoken before on this blog about how much I appreciate the flexibility of the UoL programme, and that couldn’t be more so the case than now. Now that I’m a brand new Mum, with all the uncertainty that entails, to know that I can just chip away at whatever I can manage, and defer whatever I can’t, is a real relief!