Semester review and Health Nuts hiatus (sort of)

I have no idea how it happened, but the semester is just about over! I'm done with classes on Wednesday, then after a two-day study period, get cracking on those finals. And lucky me -- I only have two exams! Not so lucky that they're in biostatistics and epidemiology, but hey, they'll be over soon.

My first semester of grad school was awesome. Really. Sure, there were some bumps in the road, which is to be expected, but I really love both my public health (MPH) and journalism (MA) programs.

I heard time and time again that the first semester is supposed to be the hardest because of whole adjustment thing and the classes themselves (*cough* epi). But really, it wasn't bad. I assumed I would hate biostats -- and I love it. I was skeptical about epi -- and I think it's pretty interesting. I figured community health theory would be good -- and it was OK. And health journalism was pretty much what I expected -- good.

The workload was totally manageable, lighter than I expected, even, if you ignore the few weeks right after midterms when all hell broke loose. (This led me to take a couple more credits next semester, which I hope I don't regret.) And, most importantly, the stuff is interesting. Yes, I admit to glazing over/dozing off/zoning out during some lectures and readings, but overall, I feel I'm getting a good, broad public health education with plenty of new things to pique my interest.

It's already opened some doors for me: hooking me up with a cool public health mentor with lots of connections, getting me an internship for the spring with the health team at a huge newspaper, potentially putting me on a really cool (time-limited) project with the state health department and -- I hope -- looking good on my resume as I apply for summer internships (keeping my fingers crossed on one at the state human services department).

And I've made some great friends, done some fun stuff and more or less stopped dreading the fact that I'll be carrying on like this for two more years. Wow. That's a long time.

I hope everyone's semester went as well as mine! I may check in now and then before the spring semester gets into gear, but for the most part will be finishing up finals, relaxing, holiday-ing...and maybe doing a little something to further my career. Maybe.

Keep checking out the health content on Experience.com, poke around ExploreHealthCareers.org and look for ways to get involved in your community on Idealist and VolunteerMatch. And good luck with grad school applications if you're working on them over break!

Anything else going on? Leave it in the comments -- I'll be checking.

Happy holidays!

Thanks, Silfverduk, for the crazy parade photo!