I have survived three weeks of the new job. I actually am surprised its been that long; I still feel in many ways that it's week one.
Some people have asked what it is I'm actually doing. I'm a Project Coordinator for a research group that does mathematical modelling to do cost-effectiveness analyses of preventing AIDS complications. The group is run by two Harvard MDs who were in med school right when AIDS was being discovered. The guy who created the group still runs it. The model has evolved a LOT since the group was officially formed in 1994 to keep up with the many changes and discoveries in treating HIV and AIDS. I believe that the model originally was created to model the US epidemic, but the scope of the group and model has since expanded to cover developing countries as well. The group collaborates with people in the US, France, Portugal, Cote d'Ivoire, South Africa, and India and will soon start working in Brazil (I believe).
My role will be to, with the other Project Coordinator, manage the Research Assistants (9 of them), liaise between them and the Principal Investigators of the projects and the heads of the group, and then hopefully also be involved with some research and modelling. In what ways we'll be involved in the research and modelling, I'm still not quite sure. But I know past Project Coordinators have been first authors on papers, so I think to some degree you can be as involved with the science side of things as much as you'd like.
Right now I'm still in the thick of learning the model. It's really cool, but there is SO much to learn. I feel like I'm back in grad school where I was hugely inspired every day, but where my brain hurt a lot from trying to learn so many new things. There are a lot of things in this job that I'm coming across, though, that I only know about from grad school (like the difference between prevalence and incidence, or incremental cost-effectiveness ratios), so it's nice to feel like I'm using my degree. For my job in Haiti I needed a graduate to degree to get the position, but once I was in the position I didn't actually use any knowledge from my degree to get my job done. I just used common sense.
I also feel like I'm getting a crash course in HIV medicine. I've learned a ton about HIV from a clinical standpoint in the last 2.5 weeks which, again, is really cool, but is also a lot of information to take in, understand, remember, and then relate to the way it works in the model.
So basically "one day at a time" is my motto right now. I know it will take me a LONG time to get up to speed, and I'm trying not to be frustrated by that and just go with it. So so far so good. Everyone is very nice and are understanding, reasonable people, so that's good. The commute is still brutal, but now I only have 3.5 more weeks until I move into my new place. I cannot wait.
That's all for now!
Some people have asked what it is I'm actually doing. I'm a Project Coordinator for a research group that does mathematical modelling to do cost-effectiveness analyses of preventing AIDS complications. The group is run by two Harvard MDs who were in med school right when AIDS was being discovered. The guy who created the group still runs it. The model has evolved a LOT since the group was officially formed in 1994 to keep up with the many changes and discoveries in treating HIV and AIDS. I believe that the model originally was created to model the US epidemic, but the scope of the group and model has since expanded to cover developing countries as well. The group collaborates with people in the US, France, Portugal, Cote d'Ivoire, South Africa, and India and will soon start working in Brazil (I believe).
My role will be to, with the other Project Coordinator, manage the Research Assistants (9 of them), liaise between them and the Principal Investigators of the projects and the heads of the group, and then hopefully also be involved with some research and modelling. In what ways we'll be involved in the research and modelling, I'm still not quite sure. But I know past Project Coordinators have been first authors on papers, so I think to some degree you can be as involved with the science side of things as much as you'd like.
Right now I'm still in the thick of learning the model. It's really cool, but there is SO much to learn. I feel like I'm back in grad school where I was hugely inspired every day, but where my brain hurt a lot from trying to learn so many new things. There are a lot of things in this job that I'm coming across, though, that I only know about from grad school (like the difference between prevalence and incidence, or incremental cost-effectiveness ratios), so it's nice to feel like I'm using my degree. For my job in Haiti I needed a graduate to degree to get the position, but once I was in the position I didn't actually use any knowledge from my degree to get my job done. I just used common sense.
I also feel like I'm getting a crash course in HIV medicine. I've learned a ton about HIV from a clinical standpoint in the last 2.5 weeks which, again, is really cool, but is also a lot of information to take in, understand, remember, and then relate to the way it works in the model.
So basically "one day at a time" is my motto right now. I know it will take me a LONG time to get up to speed, and I'm trying not to be frustrated by that and just go with it. So so far so good. Everyone is very nice and are understanding, reasonable people, so that's good. The commute is still brutal, but now I only have 3.5 more weeks until I move into my new place. I cannot wait.
That's all for now!
