Just Like Us

Driving home today, yesterday we visited Harvard and MIT campuses in Cambridge, just across the river from Boston. (We also went kayaking on that river and had a picnic lunch in Harvard Yard.)

Harvard Students - They are just like us!
Seen on campus: 
Student with an armful of obviously stolen toilet paper.
Overheard:
"Yo, if a girl matches you on Tindr means she is go to go!"

MIT Students - Less like us
Seen on campus: 
A juggling club practicing in a hallway with a variety of materials.
Overheard: 
"When you amplify the sample size, you decrease the error rate."

Doctor Numbers

Flying home today and I still keep thinking about the intercom call for a doctor that happened on our flight down. It seems like such a strange policy. And for sure it is some type of policy because airlines have procedures for everything. I decided I wanted to look at the numbers:

Cooling My Feminist Jets
So, I had been very happy/surprised that it was a female doctor answering the call. Turns out, not that rare. There is probably still a wage gap, and possibly still a 'senior position' gap, but the gender gap for Canadian doctors has shrunk considerably. 41% are female; 59% are male. Two thirds (64%) of family physicians under age 35 are female.

What About Specialists
Almost half of the over 83,000 Canadian doctors are specialists of other disciples, instead of Family Medicine. Students in medical school in Canada will experience many fields of medicine and decide on their specialty during 3rd or 4th year. After that choice, residency training can be anywhere from 2 years (Family Medicine) to 6 years (Neurosurgery). Most specialties are a 5 year program. So they have the medical base, but a specialist can really be pretty specialized, and there are 37 specialties available in Canada. Would a urologist be that much help to someone who fainted in a plane?

Seems Like A Long Shot
Based on the total population of Canada there is only about 1 doctor for every 500 people. The plane we were in seats 100. That is a 0.2% chance there would be a doctor on board. When looking at people who fly, mainly those who can afford to fly, than doctors would be more likely to be on board a plane while the general population less so - this increases the chance. Often planes would be larger than the jet we were one, increasing the passengers to maybe 200. Huge planes can have more than 600 seats (in a two-tiered class configuration. Actually 800 in single-class, but I have never seen that.) I still don't like the odds, or many I don't like the fact that they are relying on odds.

Improve Your Odds
If they had asked "Is there a doctor or nurse on board" that would really improve the chances of a generally trained health care professional. There are lots of different types of nurses, including those in advance nursing practice, like nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists. There are 4 times as many nurses as doctors in Canada.

Source information:
Look at me citing things like a good girl who went to university and grad school!
- Canadian Institute For Health Information
- The Canadian Medical Association
- University of British Columbia Medical School
- AirBus Corporate Site, Aviation Blogs

Further Reading:
I am like my own Wikipedia article here. If you found this as fascinating as me, the likelihood of that might be small, then these are some interesting international articles on the same topic:
- July 2017 - ABC News (Australia) - Is there a doctor on board? What happens during a mid-air medical emergency
- March 2017 - The Telegraph (UK) - What really happens during a medical emergency at 35,000 feet
- January 2017 - Singapore Medical Journal - What to do during inflight medical emergencies? Practice pointers from a medical ethicist and an aviation medicine specialist
- April 2013 - Quartz (USA) - What it’s like to be the “doctor on board”, and why airlines shouldn’t be relying on them

A Flying First

My birthday falls almost exactly one month before our major event at work. I don't really feel comfortable taking any time off leading up to it, in fact often I work over the weekends on top of Monday to Friday. So, Jason wanted to plan a surprise for me and the end of April would be the last possible time I might feel comfortable take a couple of vacation days.

I didn't know where we were going, which turned out to be Florida to explore The Everglades and Florida Keys. I found out in the UP Express on the way to the airport. It was a very exciting last-minute reveal.

As any regular reader of Always Standing would know, I have flown quite a bit (it has its own tag.) But last night on the way down something happened on the plane that I have never experienced before - They called for a doctor!

Near the end of the three hour flight, an elderly women a row or two behind us got up to use the washroom and fell down. (What what I heard afterwards it was more of a 'passed out' than a 'fall' so I guess the proper term would be she collapsed.) The man that was with her, a few other passengers and a flight attendant were taking care of her.

I thought it only happened in the movies, but I soon heard someone ask over the intercom, "If there is a doctor on board please identify yourself to the nearest flight attendant or ring the assistance bell." Right away a bell chimed in front of us, in first class. Soon after a woman can striding through the curtain. (I was quite happy that is was a lady-doctor.) I think the doctor was helpful since it wasn't long before the passenger was back in her seat and everything was back to normal with the crew.

I was surprised that they do this, as the population ages it might sense to have at least one attendant on each plane that is also a nurse, so that there is accreditation beyond First Aid and CPR. Also, calling for a doctor is fine, but what is their specialty is way off from general medicine? An orthopedic surgeon is a doctor, technically so is someone with a PhD in Art History.

Propelled To Learn

I have mentioned way too many times on Always Standing that I love to learn, so much that a single link to a post exemplifying this wouldn't be enough - I say it all the time, because I mean it. I just read an article that ties this to my ADHD, and I totally agree:

"We need to be careful about what we label as a disorder. When it comes to ADHD, for instance, there is growing evidence that ADHD individuals achieve very good outcomes by normal social standards. The popular-culture stereotype is of an ADHD (often "ADD") person superficially clicking from one channel or Web site to the next. An alternative vision is that many ADHD individuals adapt and end up using their cognitive profile to propel themselves from learning one piece of information to the next, and in fact end up better educated and maybe better situated to deal with the social world as well."

--- from Autism as Academic Paradigm by Tyler Cowen in The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 13, 2009.

A Solid Score

I did a GMAT prep test this weekend. I would like to get an MBA at some point but am not in any rush because of the time, work, and cost involved. However, both Maria and Natasha are planning on writing the GMAT this summer to apply for their Business Masters. I figured it would be nice to have some company when studying and the scores last for 5 years. The fake test helps give a sense of my starting point - I went in pretty much blind. I knew what type of questions to expect but hadn't studied at all.

My score was 620, which is pretty decent. This is in the 69th percentile. With just that score I would have no issue getting into most of the Canadian schools. However, it isn't quite high enough for the elite programs and it isn't good enough for scholarship options, which I will need because an MBA is expensive. Here is what the test is like and how my score broke down:

Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) - 30 Minutes - 1 Topic
Scored out of 6, not scored on the practice test.
This is an essay.

Integrated Reasoning (IR) - 30 Minutes - 12 Questions
Scored: 4/8
Percentile: 37
Types of questions: Multi-Source Reasoning, Graphics Interpretation, Two-Part Analysis, Table Analysis

Quantitative - 75 Minutes - 37 Questions
Scored: 36/60
Percentile: 40
Types of questions: Data Sufficiency, Problem Solving

Verbal - 75 Minutes - 41 Questions
Scored: 40/60
Percentile: 90
Types of questions: Reading Comprehension, Critical Reasoning, Sentence Correction

I know that I can do much better on the Quantitative (or Math) section. I knew how to figure out pretty much all of the problems but without studying, I didn't have the tools needed (like the formula for the area of a circle, or different shortcuts you can make with exponent equations). I am glad that I will be able to improve this because the main score is out of 800 and is calculated only from the last two sections. The IR is really really hard. I don't know if they send that score separately and if they do how much it matters to admissions.

Congratulations Heather

Heather has been awarded a Graduate Professional Certificate in Cultural Heritage Studies from the University of Victoria.

The program provides advanced learning for emerging and mid-career individuals involved with a range of cultural heritage fields. Heather already has an MA in Greek and Roman Archaeology from the University of Newcastle in England. She has been working in her field (museums) for as long as I have known her. It feels like just yesterday she was talking about starting the online program from U of Vic. She did it on a part-time basis, one course per term, so she could still work full-time. It can't have been easy, I am so proud of her.

TB - Curves Diet

I discovered The Curves Diet back in Ottawa. I was working out with JennB at Curves and decided to try their Weight Management Program. It was very easy to do when I was living with JennB, who did all the cooking. During the first half of 2010, 7 months, I probably lost about 40lbs through exercise and following the diet guidelines with absolute precision. Then I went on my big trip for a month and a half, during which I lost another 10lbs from all the walking, strange food, and still adhering to the basic rules of the diet. The last part of 2010 I moved to Toronto and started my Masters at Ryerson - the stress from that pulled off another 10lbs, leaving me quite thin. Over the next 5 years I have put that 60lbs back on and maybe a little bit extra. Off and on, I would try following the program again but never with the same dedication and gusto. I do like a lot of the recipes though. I decided last week to start again and have dove into it with my complete focus. I hope to see similar results as before, but recognize that it is slow going. Today, I decided to do a throw back to all the Always Standing mentions of the only diet that I have every enjoyed or been able to follow:

The Curves Diet

- Making The Switch : The first mention of the program
- The Undiet : Too much food
- Guest Writer - Blogging - Steph : Steph mentions the diet in a Guest Writer post while I was in Russia
- Final Week : It looks like I decided to start it up again during my last semester at Ryerson
- Fuck February : I don't think I kept it going very long that Fall but decided to try again at the start of 2012
- Back Under The Threshold : 2 years later it looks like I returned to the diet

This time will be different than my previous failed Toronto attempts. I am already being stricter with myself. Not only do I plan to keep going until I reach my goal weight, but I also vow not to eat a single french fry until my wedding day (on which I will have them as part of my dinner entree at the pub.)

A Seemingly Small Change

I have been reading The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection by Michael Harris. As a Canadian writer, Harris' thoughts and research feel very local and relevant. The book is focused on the following point: "Soon enough, nobody will remember life before the Internet. What does this unavoidable fact mean?"

As the title suggests, Harris argues that the main thing that the Internet has taken from us is the notion and experience of solitude. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with, but at the same time I fear solitude and sense danger at being left alone with my thoughts for too long a stretch of time.

Harris says, "As we embrace a technology's gifts, we usually fail to consider what they ask from us in return - the subtle, hardly noticeable payments we make in exchange for their marvelous service. We don't notice, for example, that the gaps in our scheduled have disappeared because we're too busy delighting in the amusements that fill them. We forget the games that childhood boredom forged because boredom itself has been outlawed. Why would we bother to register the end of solitude, or ignorance, or lack? Why would we care that an absence has disappeared?" But for me these thoughts are incorrectly worded, because I DID notice, and I DO care. I don't know if I want to change it but I have been making a point to register this change for a long time. I feel the change deep in my being and I worry about what it means for the future and for my future children.

I also feel and acknowledge the unprecedented speed at which change is occurring. It has always been easy to equate the rise of digital text/information to the switch from scribes to a printing press, or from oral history to a written one. This type of technology shift is not new, but the pace is shocking. I will allow Harris to provide a succinct explanation, "The rate of penetration - the amount of time it takes for a new technology to be adopted by fifty million people. Radio took thirty-eight years to reach that mark; the telephone took twenty years; and television took thirteen. More recently the World Wide Web took four years, Facebook took 3.6, Twitter took three, and the iPad took 2. Google Plus, which nobody even finds useful, took only eighty-eight days." The book is filled with these types of lists, facts you know and are not even surprised by but they can still somehow be shocking to read.

I remember an English teacher in high school saying that computers were not revolutionary - that they didn't actually do anything new, just found a new way to store thoughts and information. I remember thinking at the time how incorrect he was, that this new type of storage solution and ease of information transfer was going to touch every part of our lives in ways that we could not yet understand in 1999. Almost 15 years later, in my Master's program, we often argued about whether the Digital Revolution was an era in its own right, or merely an extension of the Industrial Revolution. I still don't know the answer.

For me, the most powerful passage in the entire book is a brief musing about modern teenagers in the current era of smart phones, iPods, the Internet, and basically access to more digital technology and information than any generation to come before. Even though the words state that the author feels great regret at the prospect, in the grand scheme of the book it is just a couple of tiny sentences that seem thrown in merely for their cute factor - but reading them struck me to my core:

"There is a single, seemingly small change that I'll be most sorry about. It will sound meaningless, but: One doesn't see teenagers staring into space anymore."

University Is A Fight

---------- from Facebook

A very accurate three-part comic about life in university, grad school, and the workplace. I like the idea that post-secondary education is a daunting battle/fight - I totally felt that, especially in Engineering and during my Masters.

CHECK OUT the "Truth About College and Getting a Job" by Oliver Coakley from Insert Life Here

A Great Ad Combo

I was a little slow to really look into 'programmatic marketing,' I think my Literature Masters took me away a bit from my Mass Communications roots. Of course at some level, I was aware of this type of campaign in digital marketing - I think we all are. Steph's work advertising Stephanie Beach Photography has dealt with this type, and it really is one of the key ways to create a targeted digital campaign. We will be moving towards this at work too - so I should be able to learn about it in much more detail.

A brief overview is that -in digital marketing, programmatic marketing campaigns are automatically triggered by any type of event and deployed according to a set of rules applied by software and algorithms. So, for example, if I owned a bakery I could set up a programmatic marketing campaign with a rule that had my ads appearing for a user (whose IP located them in Toronto) for a week after they had Googled "Cupcakes Toronto." My ads were then appear across multiple sites, connected to this triggered campaign. This is super noticeable with Facebook ads.

I love looking at what AdSense has posted for my 3 banner ads on Always Standing.
- In 2010, I talked about it twice
- Again in 2011
- Most recently in 2014

I used to assume that it was based on what I wrote - and in some cases that is true. AdSense does scan my content to post ads that match what I am talking about. However, ads also appear based on where that specific platform (computer, phone, tablet, etc.) has been/done. It is interesting to think - what did I click to get that?

Today's Ads (For Me) Are:
- Polysporn - about treating pink-eye (which I don't have)
- Insure.ca - about getting the best premium on my car insurance (which I don't have)
- Favor Mart - about choosing chair covers for my wedding reception (which I don't have)

Oh Mariah

Working on finishing up some assignments from the Photoshop course that I am taking with Kristen. This is a CD/DVD Mini Jacket Sleeve that I designed:

A Fast Week

Flying home now from Paris. I need to go to my Photoshop class tonight which means in 'Paris Time' I will be up from 6am until 4am - not looking forward to a 22 hour day. Hoping to sleep on the plane and get home in time to nap before class.

Some Homework

Mid-Week Friend Update - A Wednesday feature that provides a small update on what is happening with the incredible people that I have in my life.

Kristen and I are still going to school on Wednesday nights, working on a Photoshop course at George Brown. We haven't had a chance to work on our own photos. In fact most of our projects are just working on basic snap shots that have been provided by our instructor, as is the case below but I really like how it turned out and the teacher complimented it. This is from our work with HDR Toning.

A Pretty Poppy

Photo by GB Instructor

Adjustments by Me

Better Read Than I Thought

I am a terrible English Major, and I really am not nearly as well read as I should, or would like to, be. I found the recent link BBC Believes You Only Read 6 Of These Books and did the test. I guess the average for people is 6, however I got 41 out of the 100 listed. I did it truthfully too! I have fully read, start to finish, 41 of those books. Because I have studied, and written, about a number of books I wouldn't consider myself to have actually read it is hard to do these lists. I can probably stretch the number up to 59 - for example I have studied Moby Dick at least 3 times in university and included it as part of a major essay. However, I relied on Spark Notes every time. I have only skimmed Lord of the Rings and of course seen the movies. Etc. Now be honest, how did you do?

Car Dreams

As I mentioned before, for Christmas, Jason gave me a car racing game for the Xbox One, Forza Motorsport 5. One of the best parts of it is that you get to customize and decorate cars. (I doubt most people who play it would call it decorating though.) Here is the first one I made:

My Custom Hyundai Genesis

Photo of the TV, with Jason's phone

The 'decorating' feature has lots of number, letters, patterns, and logos to add to all different areas of the car, and using them is very very intuitive. This is especially true when I compare it to the things I am learning at the Photoshop Course, as that program is not very intuitive; this makes me appreciate Forza even more. Whenever I win, or buy, a new car in the game I can customize features and the paint job. I have decided that my entire fleet of cars will feature matte black paint jobs and then I will change up the designs and additions. (For example I added the red honeycomb pattern on this.) In real life, I have been admiring the Hyundai Genesis for a while now, it is definitely my favorite 'practical' car at the moment.

Kristen And I Are In School

Mid-Week Friend Update - A Wednesday feature that provides a small update on what is happening with the incredible people that I have in my life.

After leaving The Word On The Street, Kristen's new job with The Writer's Union of Canada involves a lot of design work. She decided to start taking some related night courses through the Continuing Education program at George Brown College. She is working towards a Graphic Design Certificate. According to the George Brown website, "This certificate provides you with a foundation in design principles as well as training in the main software applications currently used within the industry." When she went to pick her third (of the eight total needed to get the certificate) she decided on a Photoshop course. I love photography and feel like it is probably a good time to upgrade my Photoshop skills, that I haven't improved on since the Media Photography course at Carleton. We go on Wednesdays and while I missed tonight's because I was overwhelmed at work, I really love the class and it is great to hang out with Kristen once a week too.

Questions For Friends

So I had been planning for Wednesdays to be posts with updates about my friends - who are all doing amazing things with their lives and I find that sometimes I slack off with graduation, marriage, baby, and job change congratulations on Always Standing.

Anyway, I haven't started to prepare for doing this yet. However, I plan to email people a list of questions so that I can use their answers to form the posts each week. I would gather the most interesting facts to share to let everyone catch up on what the person has done lately.

Here are some ideas for questions I could ask:
- Current city.
- Current job.
- Dream job.
- Family/relationship status.
- Recent achievement that you are proud of.
- Where was the last great trip taken? When? With who?
- Event in 2014 you are most looking forward to.

Any other ideas for what I could add to my 'friend survey' before I send it out to people?

Game For My Commute

I am too groggy most mornings to read on my almost hour-long transit commute to work. (I always read on my trip home, which sadly is shorter, and then seems even shorter because I am reading.)

Before she traveled over to Stockholm to do her Masters, Anne visited Toronto for a little while this past summer. One thing she said she noticed (besides the fact that Toronto smells, which is unfortunately true most summer days) was that there seemed to always be sirens going and emergency vehicles rushing around. She would point them out to me as another fire truck, EMS, ambulance, or police car drove past and I kept saying, "It is strange, I swear it isn't usually this bad."

I realized though, that maybe I had gotten used to it. In Paris, we lived a couple of blocks from the train tracks; I got so used to the light window shaking and noise that accompany the trains I could even tell you how many passed during the day/night. Perhaps it had become the same with the noises of Toronto.

So, I now play a morning game with myself - Can I make it to work without sirens? Well, turns out for the most part, I can't. They seriously happen all the time. I get excited if I am a couple of blocks from work and haven't seen/heard one - then in most cases I see cops rush past (we have a station near work.) So, near work it is usually police and closer to home it is fire trucks, either way there are a lot of sirens happening in this city! But I want to start winning the game more!

Most Useless Degree

I ran across this great article/rant on Thought Catalog (which as a 'digital magazine owned and operated by an experimental media group based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn' and might be a little too trendy for me to be reading.) I often talk about the uselessness of my TWO degrees in English (proof of this can be seen in the English, Carleton, Ryerson, or Grad School Always Standing tags.) However, I agree with author Tyler Vendetti when she says, "Yes, I’m An English Major. No, I Will Not Be Working At McDonald’s." and in fact I agree with her whole article, my favourite part being:

"I can be a publisher. I can be a journalist. I can be a research assistant. I can be a speechwriter. I can work with magazines. I can be a movie critic. I can review books. I can be a copywriter. I can be a news reporter. I can manage social media. I can be a lobbyist. I can be an editor. I can write for television or radio or movies. I can be a travel writer. I can work in advertising. I can do anything I want to do ... The skills that you develop through writing and reading (such as critical thinking), the skills that come with an English degree, are used in every single day of your entire life." - By Tyler Vendetti, Yes, I'm An English Major. No, I Will Not Be Working At McDonald's., Thought Catalog

I would have made the list of career options longer and more varied, and the list of famous people who were English majors is way too actor heavy, but the article as a whole hits home, hard.

Time For Gmail?

I have had my YahooMail account since I was 12. I didn't change it to something 'more mature' or 'more professional' at any of the logical times to do so: applying for university, updating a resume, etc. I have never had any issues and hate the idea of changing something that has been so easy and the same for so long. But over the weekend at The Cottage I had issues getting into my account, which I assumed were related to the terrible internet there. However, now that I am back in Toronto I am locked out of my email account to the point that Customer Care has to help me. Of course, even though Customer Care is free to call, they are so busy that it just tells you to hang up when you phone. I have Tweeted at them and sent in an online form. I hope this gets sorted out soon, I have CSOL related emails in there that I need to access!!