Qualifying

I open a new tab to view the blog and Monday, April 29th is staring me in the face. That was almost a month ago and as always so much in life has happened since then. In fact, I just got back from a trip to Philadelphia and should be writing a paper, but I figured some relaxing and catching up in my life would be excused for a bit.

Sidebar. I find I've become much more efficient at typing these last few weeks. It's awesome! End sidebar.

Since my last post, my level of stress has been on the roller coaster of its life. Registration has officially become the center of my life at work and school. So let me take a minute to mention how the doctoral program at Iowa is like. I have to take 42 hours of class credits and another like 30? or so of research credits. This comes out to about two years of classes and another two or so of research. On top of classes I'm expected to work in the lab another 20 hours a week since school is not free. Beyond that criteria, I have three major papers/presentations that make or break my ability to finish. These are (1) the PhD qualifier exam, (2) comprehensive exam and (3) thesis (or dissertation) defense.

Currently the qualifier exam is staring me in the face. About two and a half months ago I was presented a question from my thesis adviser. With that question I essentially have to write a research paper about the topics presented and come to my own conclusions about a specific subsection. It turns out that my question is on registration. For those of you who don't know, medical (or any type) registration is taking two images and transforming or altering one so that anatomical landmarks are aligned when they are placed on top of each other. I have truly enjoyed reading and learning about it, however, everything else it trying to get its own piece of Emily as well.

On a happier note I have officially completed one year of classes in graduate school. This last semester has been a trying one, especially the last three weeks, but its done. Finals were completed, grades are satisfactory (still getting used to this new curve grading thing here at Iowa), and my final projects all managed to work themselves out. Praise the Lord!

Now these next two weeks will be filled with writing and writing and preparing for my presentation which is in three weeks from yesterday. Wow! That's more than I thought I had. Either way, I still have a lot to do since writing papers is like pulling teeth. Here we go!