Yesterday was a blur! Definitely my longest day ever for a conference. I began with a neuro- ethics talk, followed by scanning several posters and speaking with a few of the presenters, lunch with former coworkers, a 4 hour symposium, and more posters!
Afterwards I headed outside the convention center for some fresh air and ended up running into an alum from my grad school. We chatted briefly and decided to go for a drink, which quickly turned into two. I then met up with my current lab mates for the Monday night football game and had yet another drink and fries.
Needless to say my liver could really use a good detox. I see lots of water and a good workout in my future for tomorrow and over the next week! Scientist really like to party :-/
To answer a few questions I'm in my 3rd year of graduate school working towards my degree in neuroendocrinology. I have at least 2 years left in my PhD program, the average graduation rate for my school is 5.5 years so I'm right on track, maybe even slightly ahead. Still not exactly sure what the goal is for post graduation. I have a very strong interest in public health, particularly public policy. Much of my work is focused on the development of obesity as a result of psychosocial stress and given the societal implications of my work I feel like I have an obligation to think about how the findings of such research reaches the public and how the public is educated about health and nutrition. However, I haven't thought much beyond this goal and am using this year to look into my options.
Cheers,
Nicole
cool career goals! i cannot believe the obesity epidemic here in the states. i had one patient when I was rotating through the pediatric clinic who was 13 and totally off the bmi charts. it was so sad, but i truly believe that parents are to blame when kids are that young. they need guidance on their food choices. if their parent's are overweight, it's even tougher because it's such a vicious cycle. being obese triggers so many inflammatory pathways in the body that do nothing but reek havoc on the systems. can't wait to see where you end up in 2 years. thanks for sharing!
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