I'm leaving for the rural deep south soon. Start on Monday, will probably leave Friday and take a day or two vacation to go hiking before going to my beautiful motel room for the next seven weeks after that. I'm stressed but excited about the move. The internship needs paperwork signed and completed by my supervisor, who I believe has still not done that. I also have a good bit of training to do come Monday when I start, including CPR certification since my old certification has lapsed. It's going to be a busy few days and a big adjustment.

I didn't really get a break between my finals and this starting, and that's a shame. I need the income, but it's lead to further exhaustion. And my parents were in town which lasted for five days and again lead to less relaxation and lost income because part-time student employment. I'm incredibly fortunate that my job pays very well and is extremely flexible for me, but the lack of regular schedule from the real world is greatly missed. This is just pure chaos. I've got the internship, the thesis, and my job to juggle without taking into account self care and a social life. Grad school is dumb and I'm very excited for a year from now when I'll be done.

Finals are done! All As and a B so far but still waiting on the Biostatistics grade. That one has a lot of potential to bring me up, or to ruin me, so it'll be fun. Parents are in town this weekend. They'll be meeting my partner, which is a first for them, so that's going to be interesting.

In a week and a half, I'll be in bumfuck to help with an infection prevention role at a rural nursing home. It's kinda near Jimmy Carter's birthplace, so maybe I'll go there one weekend and run into him. I hear he spends a good bit of time out and about in his hometown, but he's also slowing down a lot and I don't expect to see him.

Thesis is starting to take shape. It's going to be looking at Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic Therapy (OPAT) among Veterans. Don't know exactly the breakdown of everything just yet, but it'll probably be looking at age differences, outcomes, risk factors, etc. It's going to be fun for sure.

I love the fact that hubski people have personalities and I know many of us and I too would not like it being a massive site, so thank you for being dedicated to keeping it thoughtful. However, it's a very quiet website and I think more people would be good. Years ago when there were more people, there was more discussion and I miss the deep, complex, long-lasting discussions. I think making the sign up process more difficult would reduce the number of spam, but it'd also drastically reduce the number of potential newbies coming in.

And speaking of newbies, I know there's been discussion from newbies (Daffodil that I can think of recently) that because the lack of action on Hubski, earning a hubwheel is a lot more difficult, and since there is functionality attached to that, being a new person is that much more difficult. It's already daunting since we've all been here for years. Are there plans to fix that should you change the sign up process, or even leaving the sign up process how it is?

I should have included something about their bullshit nonprofit status. It'd be so fun if that got stripped away from them.

I looked that up before I decided to record it haha not going to play around with that.

I've finally got my summer plans figured out! I'll be interning at a nursing home assisting with infection prevention. The place is in absolute bumfuck. It's a town of 2000, in a county of 5700. It's going to be a huge change from all of my past experiences. I'm really excited to be working on-location instead of over the phone with my entire previous role. It's also going to be a great, rural, low resource setting. But I've never been somewhere that remote for any length of time and even though it's only like 7 weeks or so, it's going to be a huge adjustment.

I think I know what my thesis will be. I'm waiting on some confirmation but it looks like it'll be working with CMS and the CDC's nursing home team to review nursing home citations to review common places there are problems and ways to improve and have the greatest impact with the least resources.

I've got my first final of this semester in 45 minutes. I'll be done with the semester by May. This semester was disturbingly fast. Also supposed to be the worst. I'm signed up for 12 credits next semester and will likely do the minimum the semester after. I'll have the credits to graduate after next, but I'm not sure I'll be done with my thesis and I'll need to take some more required classes. I reached out to the school to ask about graduating early since it's something I might possibly be able to do, but they said I had a "financial obligation." So I'm meeting with a representative to talk about that sentence, and I will be recording the conversation because that feels slimy as all hell. They're in the business to educate, not make money. And if I need to get my lawyer aunt to listen to it, I will.

Grad school is pretty okay overall. Not happy I have to do it, glad I waited a few years to do it, annoyed at the lack of support from the school, and annoyed that the school claimed it required 2 years of professional work experience but I am one of the older people in the program at the ripe old age of 25. They clearly ignore the professional experience requirement and that's a shame because it would make the classes much better in my opinion. The amount of people complaining about the volume of work they need to complete is absurd. It's graduate school. It should be a lot of work. It should be challenging. But I'm about halfway through at this point. So I'm just hoping for the end to hurry up so I can get back to regular work hours, a steady paycheck, and free time to pursue hobbies.

Update: final completed. It was poorly written and more difficult than the first one, but I went into it with a great grade so I'm not concerned.

So you're correct I'm not trying for scholarships or a PhD. But grading here isn't pass/fail. I am required to maintain a 2.7 (B-, here for most classes 75%, some 80%). Which is one of the reasons it's stressing me out I'm worried about not maintaining that. My other classes are fine for the most part, but the gpa weighting falls off a cliff down to 2.0 after 2.7 and that'll really drag it down. And I really don't want to play that game I just want to not worry about all this on top of everything else I am worrying about.