Back at it

Is it summer yet?

No, not in reference to the fact that it is 4 degrees in Minneapolis (yesterday was -8), though I'm not loving that either.

Because I, like a crazy person, decided to take 16 credits this semester. In grad school. I have no idea what I was thinking or whether I'm going to survive -- but I'm always up for an adventure.

The fact that I'm doing two masters' programs at the same time of course makes things tricky, and because I know I'm still two years away from The End, I want to cram everything in and HURRY. Not that it's going to help.

For my Master of Public Health (MPH) program in community health education, I'm taking program evaluation, biostats II and community health theory and practice II; and for my health journalism MA program, I have a computer-assisted reporting class and a directed study that I'll get to in a sec.

First impressions? Classes are going to be hard. And a lot of work. For both program eval and community health, I work on a semester-long project (evaluation plan and grant proposal, respectively), and we're learning SAS (statistical software) in biostats which will certainly be a good time. I'm not 100 percent clear on what the reporting class will be like, but it's a method of rearranging available data in lots of different ways to see patterns and pull out story ideas. Whew.

And my directed study is technically an undergrad practicum course that I'm doing some extra work for to get grad credit instead. I'm technically a contract reporter for the Star Tribune -- which for all practical purposes means intern. I'm working with the paper's health team about 14 hours a week, reporting stories and helping out other reporters. I just started last week so I don't have a great sense of what it's going to be like so far, but I think it's going to be a great experience for me -- no matter how stressed I get! -- and do wonders for my resume and portfolio.

Oh, and just in case you thought I was going to have a spring break to look forward to...I'm taking a two-day class about conducting focus group interviews for one credit. It's supposed to be phenomenal, and I'm much more of a qualitative research person.

Of course I have a million other things going on, too, but I'm trying to scale back. I'm the marketing chair for Twin Cities World Refugee Day and a wish granter for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Minnesota. Oh, and I'm a research assistant in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, where I work on HealthNewsReview.org (more on this in a future post). Etc., etc., etc.

I have to admit I'm a little terrified about whether this is all feasible, but it's definitely exciting!

Thanks to zhurnaly for the fabulous photo.