I've tried to write this post 2 times, both times Blogger has deleted it?! FORESHADOWING?!

I really truly hope this is not foreshadowing of a Miami related disaster...

In less than about 18 hours, I'll be on a plane flying high across the country on my way to Miami for the second time in my adult life since I interviewed for the job back in...wait?! when was that? February? March?  I definitely knew I had the job on my birthday, right?  We celebrated that? Well, I certainly knew I had the job at SRCD.  So, let's just call it before the end of April.  Everything blends together on internship.  It really is like some kind of really boring Groundhog's Day style obligation, except every morning my alarm is Sufjan Stevens' "Come on! Feel the Illinoise!", and instead of Punxsutawney, I'm stuck in the CDRC at OHSU. 

It is also difficult to remember exactly when I got the job because it all happened so very quickly.  I was there for two solid days of interviews, then back on a plane, wondering what the f*ck just happened.  I didn't know I had the offer when I'd left FIU, but I had felt really good about the way everything had gone.  Then, I was home, dusting off the travel, shaking off the jet-lag, and on my way back to work the next day, when I was told the job was mine if I wanted it.  It wasn't even really a question.  I needed to take this job, so after some start-up package negotiations, which I really feel landed in my favor on the whole, I had committed. Done deal.

This will be my first real chance to check out the city before moving there.  You know, in 31 days.  I've finally nailed down some times with 2 realtors, who eventually came around to say, "YES! I am happy to show you some places, because that is my job, and I want your business."  I'll be looking at ~8 places, each of which seem pretty decent from the photographs, so we'll see.  I don't need a palace, but I do want somewhere that I'll be very happy because I know myself well enough to know that the first year is going to be HARD in just about every possible way.  So, I really want my place to be one where I'll feel entirely comfortable.  My current place is like that.  It isn't much, but I really feel like it is home.  It is the place I've lived the longest, since my time growing up in PA.  4 years. 1 place.  Home.  

I'll be staying with friend 1 of 2.  Hopefully, I'll be meeting up with friend 2 of 2 (aka, MY FIRST GRADUATE STUDENT?!).  I'll also be meeting up with a dude from OKC who has been particularly helpful in answering my questions.  Between the three of them and the realtors, I'm hoping to at least be able to picture something concrete when I think of Miami when I return, rather than the amorphous heat and humidity that I picture now.

I'll be planning to update you all on what I find: good and bad, but probably not until I return.  In the meantime, wish me luck, and keep your fingers crossed the hardest for me finding a home.

Oh sh*t! Here we go... The inaugural How Not To Pick Up a Woman post!

So, I changed my profile location to Miami, maybe, 2 or 3 weeks ago.  Since then, the barrage of inane messages has served as another reminder that I'm not in Portland anymore.  

Here is the part that is most concerning, the messages in PDX were generally amusing, as you all are aware, the ratio of decent/fair:abysmal was way in the favor of ridiculous most of the time.  Need I remind you of the dude who told me he was going to play a Jedi mind trick on me to get me into bed?  Yeah, dude, that's actually called "date rape" and your "the Force", I'm assuming is rohypnol.  No thanks.   

It seems Miami has generally been the opposite.  Pretty much (with a few actually good message exceptions--one dude in particular has been really helpful in answering my ?s) they've all been generally vanilla, "Sup?!" type messages.  Though, I have already had TWO marriage proposals.  So, I have that going for me.

I'd say the biggest thing of note this far has been the giant shift in Match, Friend, and Enemy percentage ratings that has happened since changing over.  

For those of you who don't know about OKCupid, you better ask somebody.  Or better still, I could just tell you right now.  It is actually a pretty neat little idea that has gone horribly wrong in a lot of ways, but man, it sure does make for good comedy.  

The greatest thing about OKCupid is it is FREE.  The worst thing about OKCupid is it is free.  I'll let you draw your own conclusions there.  The second best thing about OKCupid is their use of data and technology.  Much the same way that Facebook uses information on their members to allow for awesome social research, OKC does the same, but with a romantical edge.
Also, they use some pretty nifty algorithms to determine your Match %, Friend %, and Enemy %.  

Here is the funny thing, in PDX, I rarely saw anyone with whom I was less than a 75% Match, in fact most folks who messaged me were 85% and above, and we all saw how well that turned out.  Man, has that changed.  I'm regularly getting messages from dudes with whom I match at or BELOW 50%.  

Dude, why would I want to date you, if we are a failing grade.  I don't really FAIL at things (except sometimes life, which is beside the point).  In fact, I don't really want to date someone if we are less than a B+, and I'd say that is being generous.  I know, I know, you're thinking, "Erica, you may not be representative of most of the folks on the ol' OKC.  You're pretty happy with your life the way it is.  You're no really LOOKING/SEARCHING/HOPING for a mate."  The thing that is different for me now, though, is what I've mentioned here before, I know TWO people in Miami.  Even if things don't end up romantic, it is hard to meet new folks, and I was (maybe misguidedly) hoping that OKC might be one way of doing that.  Again, I've been in touch with a couple rad folks, so it hasn't been a total bust, but damn, it seems like if me and Miami were going to try for something relationshipy, the best we'd be able to do is about a C-.  I'd say the bulk of folks checking me out have been in that range.  

Oh yeah, OKC also let's you know who has looked at your profile and when. In fact, here is a great secondary-bonus HNTPUAW: Rule #67: The maybe try to be an actual stalker rule.  
HNTPUAW 67--Hey there, Friend, so you sent me a message, and I didn't write back.  I think you can take that as a pretty safe bet that I'm not that interested.  No need to check back 2-3 times per day for 3 weeks after that.  Look, John Hinkley, Jr.,  I don't want to be your Jodie Foster, but thanks for the offer. You're creeping me out.

OK, this has fallen a little off-track, here is the actual post for HNTPUAW for today:
 
How Not To Pick Up A Woman:  Rule #3:  The ask her a bunch of cliche questions as an introduction rule.

And I quote, "bienvenido a Miami! Well, at least until August :) Hi I'm Drew, born and raised around here. So what do you like to do for fun? What keeps you busy these days?"

Jesus God in Heaven on the Cross, I swear, if you can't glean that information from my profile, you are probably illiterate, and let me refer you to services for that, but we probably have about zero in common because I spend about 87% of my waking hours reading in some form, whether it is for work or fun or just regular living.  

Or maybe you can read, and you are just really, really boring.  Irregardless, no thanks.

Oh shit!  Here we go...

Miami, see you on Monday.

It was a small mistake, sometimes that's all it takes.

WARNING: This post will not be funny...  Not one bit.  Unless your idea of funny is schadenfreude.

If you know me well, you know I have a special place in my heart for some really emo music.  Like Bright Eyes level emo.  Deal with it.  (Note: That isn't even close to what this post is about).

One of my favorite B.E. song goes:

So then I fell like a girl from a balance beam.
A gymnasium of eyes were all holding on to me. 
I lifted one foot to cross the other
and I felt myself slipping. 
It was a small mistake. 
Sometimes that is all it takes.


You can hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHl3ZQbsPDA
If you are so inclined.  

So, I took over this project for a medical student who was no longer interested in working on anything related to research about a year and a half ago.  (Now, I'm wondering whether I should follow in her foot steps.)  I'd been working on it on and off in my spare time.  It is all about shared familial transmission of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).  According to the results of this project, which is a large, population-based study of ~30,000 families, mothers who have a diagnosis of ADHD are about 6.5 times more likely than mothers without ADHD to have a child with ADHD--not surprising, we already sort of know this. However, mothers with a diagnosis of ADHD are also about 3 times more likely than mothers without ADHD to have a child with an ASD--interesting finding!  Some prior genetic, twin, and family based studies have supported this in the past, but this was the first large population-based study of its kind. 

It should be a really cool study. It isn't really in my area of focus, but still a neat little epidemiological-style study that wasn't too hard to complete. It was submitted to one journal, they gave it a positive review, but they just didn't feel they had room for it.  So, we sent it to another and got a very positive review with a request for some minor revisions, as well as some fun additional analyses we could do to look at siblings.  Now here is the rub...

Siblings?!  I'd forgotten about siblings.  Did we even have sibling data in my data set?!  How would they be labeled?  There certainly weren't siblings separated out by columns, so they would have to be in rows...right?  ROWS?! F*CK!!! This wasn't our original question, so I didn't even really think all that much about this issue.  Someone else just handed me the data and told me "to go to town" after all.

If you do family-based research or nested designs of any kind, you already know where this is going, and I should have known better than to take anything someone said about a data set at face value, but I F*CKED UP!!!

BIG PROBLEM with ORIGINAL ANALYSES—

The info got originally from Med Student showed ~35,073 primary cases for analysis, which is what we used for analyses in the original paper using a selection variable (1=exclude, 3=include). This is what was given to me in the original data set: ~45,000 cases and a selection variable.  Since this was the selection variable I was told to use by the previous person working with this data, that's what I did. WRONG DECISION!
 
I was told this selection variable was created to select children for inclusion in analyses if they were singletons (i.e., only children) or if they were *THE* child selected at random from multiple child families, but it wasn’t.  It wasn't at all!!!

Instead, the selected children in that data set (i.e., those marked as include) were any children that fell in the appropriate age range  for the sample (regardless of whether they were in the same family).

That is...There are only 28,651 families in the data set, so there should only be that many primary cases for analysis…all singletons and all children selected from multiple child families...ONE CHILD PER FAMILY == 28,651 child mother pairs!!!  All mothers only counted one time!

However, in my original analyses--we had 35,073 (all those I was told to include), so we were counting mothers from multiple child families multiple times as long as they had a child in the data set who fell in the correct age range.  This is problematic for issues of independence, as well as our estimates of how many mothers had which diagnoses, because we were counting some of the moms twice, as if they were two different people.

It may also help to explain why some of our prevalence rates were off, etc., but that is WAY beside the point now.

I’ll have to go back and redo ALL the analyses.  ALL of them. ALL.


Not to mention, this means I can't just simply fix the few minor things targeted in the review and add the fun analyses.  It means, I have to redo everything and explain to the editor that I F*CKED up, and now the original version of the paper I sent had to be completely redone, and probably pulled from consideration all together.  If I were this editor, I'd want to tell this Erica-girl to buzz off because she doesn't even know what she's doing well enough to count the number of families correctly.


UGH!!!

I'm so frustrated!  I cannot believe I didn't catch this sooner.  I'm really angry at myself and disappointed, and of course, now riddled with self-doubt.  I'm not usually sloppy, let alone *this* sloppy.  Of course, the immediate place I go in my heart is I don't deserve to be a professor. I clearly can't handle even basic math.
I'm trying to move away from that place right now.  I'm not a machine. I'm an animal. I'm imperfect.


It was a small mistake, sometimes that's all it takes?

Places I Do Not Go: With the flow

(Apologies in advance if the person this email back and forth was developed with does not want what they wrote shared on the Internet.  Identity is kept anonymous, unless you know 1 of the 2 people I know who live in Miami, then it is pretty obvious.)


I'm a planner; I plan.  That's what I do.  It is a big part of the reason I've made it this far in school.  Very few deadlines ever creep up on me because I make sure to check and double check and triple check to be sure that I know when they are coming.

This is why I can barely even understand how Miami functions as a city.  No one there seems to plan ahead for anything ever.  I've been looking at apartments on Craigslist since, well, since February, but that is beside the point.  I knew I likely wouldn't get one nailed down until July, so like the planner I am, I booked my flight, found 1 of 2 friends to stay with, and rented a car.  I am so very ready to apartment hunt.  I have a big, long list of possible buildings I'd like to live in.  I have a sense of what areas I'm open to, and importantly, which ones I am absolutely not.  

So, I have been in touch with 3 realtors.  Sidebar--apparently this is a thing in Miami, realtors show apartments/condos for rent on behalf of the renter, and they charge the renters to do so, not the tenants.  Rad!  I love being treated like a semi-big-deal for free.  Except...

So, again, I've been in touch with 3 realtors.  Each one of them says, "You are starting too early, call me back (2 weeks before your trip--which is NOW), (1 week before your trip), (2 days before your trip)."  My response is, "Oh yeah, I don't expect you to have places to show me in mind yet, I just want to nail down July 2 and 3 as times you can show me places, because that is the ONLY time I'll be in Mia before I move."  They respond, "Right, well, contact us right before you arrive, and we'll set something up."

WHAT?!  How do you even function if everything is so spur of the moment?!  I am viewing this as an ominous reminder that Toto, I have a feeling we aren't in the PNW anymore.  I booked my first place in Eugene 3 months before I'd moved.  I booked my first place in Portland 1.5 months before I'd moved.  I'm a planner; I plan.

So, I just wanted to be 1000% sure that I wasn't loosing my mind, so I contacted 1 of 2 only friends in Miami to ask if he would mind sharing the name of his realtor--who was obviously successful at finding him a place, given that he is not currently homeless.

This is how it went:

Me-- "Hey Dude.

I'm having a heck of a time getting someone to commit to show me apartments on 7/2 and 7/3, they keep saying it is too early to schedule, but as I'm a planner and that is TWO WEEKS AWAY, I'd like to get this settled.

Do you remember the name of the person or company you used?

THANKS!
E"

1 of 2-- "I know you don't want to hear this but any realtor is going to tell you the same thing.  You're just going to have to go with the flow."

Go with the what?!  If there is one place I DO NOT GO, it is with the flow.

Apparent Survival Tip # 1: Let go. And go with the flow.  It is possible that Miami functions in a way that is counter to every fiber in my being, but something tells me I'll be the one changing.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

Well, that pretty much sums it up.  I don't.  No idea what I'm doing.  None.  


Here are just a few of the things I'm left wondering about as I prepare (1.5 months left in Portland) to embark on this journey  (WARNING: This particular blog is going to be a little more truthy and a little less funny that future ones, promise):

1. Imposter Syndrome?

OK, I know everyone in academia talks about it.  A few people even admit to it suffering from it. 

Imposter Syndrome (n): the feeling that you surely don't deserve to be at the stage of your career which you are at because you ________ (fill in the blank: aren't smart enough, don't work hard enough, haven't had the same amount of recognition/publications/grants as your peers, all of the above), and it is only a matter of time until everyone finds out and kicks you out of academia for good. 

I've dealt with IS off-and-on for a large part of my graduate work.  I felt like I didn't understand statistics my first year because I was "bad at math", which was some weird lie I fabricated to make myself feel bad.  I'm actually pretty damned good at math (I won every high school math award there was all 4 years).  

I felt like I wasn't working hard enough, when it was time for my first-year project to be due, and it was done but basically garbage, which it wasn't because after a few tweaks, it ended up getting published.

I felt like I sucked at clinical work because in my third year, a supervisor asked me whether I might need to "take a break" from it. At the time, I was struggling to balance dealing with: working 100 miles away from campus, the loss of my father, a failing relationship, teaching, working at a summer treatment program, regular course work and clinical placement, and of course, still conducting research in the lab I was slowly leaving.

I felt like a general imposter when I went to work with a real Psychology Powerhouse, where the demands were infinitely greater than I'd ever experienced in graduate school, and I struggled to prove I could do it, while learning to talk faster than I could think. Again, while living 100 miles away.

I felt like a procrastinator when I proposed my dissertation the fall before I was hoping to go on Internship.  Even though, I totally worked my tail off and submitted/defended it in time to go on Internship.

And of course, I felt like a total failure when I finally went on Internship, and everyone was watching me and providing me with constructive feedback constantly, even though that is a documented "strength of the program".

I can reflect back on all of those times, and cognitively I can justify why they were silly, but in that moment, I was convinced that I was a fraud.  This time it is HUGE.  I really feel like I don't deserve this.  I compare myself to others at this stage of the game.  I tell myself I wouldn't have this job if it weren't for Psychology Powerhouse.  I have no idea how to be a professor, run a lab, get a grant, be an advisor/have a graduate student.  I mean, geez, aren't I still a graduate student?

I've wanted this since my sophomore year of college, but now that it is here, I'm truly terrified.  I just keep telling myself, "Do not F this up, Erica".


2. Miami: The Whole Shebang: I've been there 2 (or was it 3) times.

I know literally nothing about Miami.  Even after doing a little bit of research about it (I'm a planner), I have no idea what to expect.  As far as I'm concerned I might as well be moving to Mars, because it is probably more similar to Portland.  I have been there as a child, as a young adult, and when I went to interview.  Of course, during my interview, I mostly saw the inside of peoples offices and the backs of my eyelids because I was exhausted.  I feel like I could not have picked a more different place to live when compared to Portland if that had been my goal.


3. Friends? What Friends?

I know exactly 2 people in Miami.  Two, as in, more than one, but fewer than three: Two.  Now, I know what you're thinking, "But Erica, you didn't know anyone in Rochester when you moved there or Eugene when you moved there."  True story. I can't deny you that truth. However, need I remind you that when I moved to Rochester, I was 18 and living on a college campus--basically everyone was my new friend, and when I moved to Eugene, I was instantly connected to 10 other people who were going through the exact same transition.  This time it is going to be pretty different.  I have no single binding phenomenon to share with other folks.


4. Where are We Living Now?

It is mid-June.  I'll be arriving in Miami on August 1.  I have no place to live, yet.  I don't know what part of town I'll be living in.  I don't know whether I'll be getting a new car or shipping the one I currently have.  For someone like me who tries so very hard to predict the future, this is crazy, nightmarishly hard.


I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting, like the fact that I have never had even the slightest desire to live in Miami, I don't really like heat/humidity or really big, crime-filled cities, but that covers the bulk of my unknowns.

For real, can you tell me, WHAT AM I DOING?