The present days

A recap of where I stand these days.

My roles currently include:

PART TIME GRADUATE STUDENT
- I just started back to school as a part-time graduate student in HPM (dept. in public health). I am taking health law with a professor I very much like. Having a dad who is a health lawyer to talk through all the facets of class with makes it all the better.
- I am considering taking two other classes
1) A leadership and ethics in health care course- it's only a 2 credit course and meets once a week. I've already taken global ethics, organizational leadership and behavior and research management and ethics ..... so maybe it is a bit redundant but it would mean being taught by one of people I respect most in life, Dr. Edward Brooks.
2) Anthropology of science - since taking an ANTH class in 2010 exploring "detection" and the "rhetoric of evidence" in biomedicine, a more specific topic within the STS - known as "science and technology studies" or the philosophy of, history of, social science study of - science and technology. This is the closest UNC has to offering a course for which there are more and more universities offering graduate degrees in. I am fascinated with epistemological and ontological inquiry into the social and cultural construction of "facts", "truths", "knowledge". See these links: Philosophy of science  or more broadly, here.

Self-portrait for Duke Documentary
studies workshop

PROJECT MANAGER FOR AUTISM RESEARCH STUDY
I am working half time with my undergraduate mentor, Dr. Steve Reznick in his study developing the earliest detection instrument - a survey to be completed by parents about their one year old. I am responsible for the finalization of the instrument (what questions, question responses, ordering of the questions), the layout of the instrument and other elements the mailing with a daunting 30,000 survey size of recent parents residing in NC. I'll be working with a designer on a logo and layout; who will do the printing, the mailing, the scanning of the surveys returned; setting up the database of birth records and addresses from the NC Center for public health stats which gives us the info on who to mail to; figuring out what sample would likely lead to a representative sample of respondents; determining how to collect the survey instruments we receive in the mail; and working with the team of five or six other professors / PhD researchers on our team.

I love my job. I appreciate the autonomy, initiative and creativity that it has allowed thus far in what could be construed as a potentially more defined if not micro-managed, very left-brained role. I think the research is novel, am intrigued by the tasks I've worked on thus far and believe I am contributing to a significant & important area of study. Not to mention how much I am learning.

DUKE CENTER FOR NON-PROFIT MGMT

I am just about to complete my non-profit management certificate through Duke. I have been gleaning hours up to the total required since last spring in day-long courses. I've have two this week and then will have one remaining. Topics have included: Grassroots fundraising, constructive conflict resolution, working w/ high functioning teams, managing multiple priorities and time, effective business writing..... I have REALLY enjoyed and learned a great deal applicable to Sustain and other NP as well as general school and life skills.

DUKE CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES

After taking one workshop this summer to kick-start this certificate program on "Literacy through photography", I am taking an 8 week class this fall - meeting one evening a week- on "Documentary photography as a fine art". I'll be working on my "photographic vision" through understanding what elements of a photograph converge with principles of fine art. We'll be critiquing iconic photography and each other's work in later weeks. For the certificate, one needs to take around 6-7 courses of around 20 contact hours each. I am super excited to be extending my recent delving into my right brain, building on the arts classes taken last winter and creative projects I've been working on pretty much constantly.

AS WELL

- Serving as the Sustain: Sakina project coordinator until we find a director. I am trying to find partners for our Sakina Secondary School Scholars for the upcoming school year. If interested in being part of giving the opportunity of education to these motivated youth in need, please contact me! Partial scholarships are welcome as are non-monetary methods of support.
- Being the treasurer of the Weaver St. Cooperative Housing Association where I live. This has taken more of my time than ever imagined but is rewarding too.
- Working daily (at this very moment) at Open Eye and Driade. Expanding to Weaver St. and Looking Glass as well. Still enjoying my daily vanilla americano.
- Meeting Tuesdays or Wednesdays with an art collaborative that has formed from the "altered book" course taken at the Artscenter. We meet at the teacher's art studio in a barn at her home out in the country. Four woman, making and altering books, sharing each others lives, often sharing alcohol. A thing of beauty.

Celebrating a strike while
costume bowling at Vanessa's b-day party

- Running when I can which has not been often because of my stupid left knee. Still not tracking correctly due to my quad muscle not firing properly all stemming from my stupid stupid tail-bone cracking incident at Linville when I attempted to swim down a rapid.
- Yoga at the Open Heart Yoga studio as much as possible.
- Hanging out and cultivating a friendship with Vanessa and relationship with Austin.
- Spending time with my family - dad, mom, grandma
- Tending to my flower garden in all of it's beauty and contending with all of it's problems (disease and insects currently invading). I had a sunflower bloom!
- Painting a wooden unicorn
- Listening to books/podcasts on audio CD in my car
- Biking around town
- Watching the recently released Ally McBeal TV series when I have time (which is not so often)
- Tending for my kitty, Snowflake

Phew. I was going to add my "plans" but should stop here as I have work to do! It is a beautiful late summer evening when the heat dies down a bit, the breeze picks up, the sky begins to soften in color. A lovely time to do my reading for the week :)

Life is a spiral --- student life once more

My life has been defined in relation to others: a daughter and grand-daughter, friend, girlfriend but also in iterations of my identity mainly as a student and a runner.

The position of my self with-in the cultural world of the academic institutions feels like home... it was all I had known until I graduated college. 21 of the 27 years of my life (13 years until graduating high-school + 4 years undergrad + 3 years grad + 1/2 yr. part time + 1 summer of Thai language) "being" a student.

I have not been a student since last December 9th, 2010. I also had 1 1/2 years of graduate school as a student giving 100% effort erased, "withdrawn".

As I begin in public health once again as a part time student this fall, I feel like I have gone in a circle - or - more of a spiral with broadening boundaries and perspective. Yet, while the distance from the center may have widened, I stand in relation to the same space that I have inhabited before as a new student.

The b-line, straight line to a PhD, like most things in life has taken an unexpected detour(s). I never thought I would be a "new student" again. I believed I would start graduate school and continue until completing my terminal degree. Instead it has been revolutions of a wheel that I am riding, inching forward semester by semester.

Not only anything but a linear trajectory, I have actually gone backwards or rather, time passed for which I was a full-time student that "doesn't count" ..... does that mean that the time - a year and a half of my life did not exist? Obviously it did.

It is just strange to stand here in the present which is a point along the PhD line that I should have passed years ago. I stand here as a student starting the fall semester of the 2nd year of my master's program as if the year spent in anthropology and in the PhD program never occurred.... (maybe a detour rather than a circle or a spiral then?). The students that I started my master's program with have since graduated and been working for over a year.

Where would I be - location? job? if I had not transferred into the PhD program early? What other possibly life courses might I have taken if different paths were taken at the major crossroads thus far?.

I cannot help but to feel like my identity has been lost in time and I am left to ponder where exactly my two feet are standing as I pause before walking into the Health Policy and Management building.

Will this be the last time I am a new student? Will it all come crashing down, again? Defer. Wait to heal. Withdrawl. Repeat.

I so want to embody the life of a student... perhaps for my whole life. I can see myself graduating and never leaving the university system switching from student to teacher/professor. All the time I am learning surrounded by a culture of learning. This is where I feel at home.

Ready. Set. Go.
Patricia K. Brewer- part-time post-baccalaureate student-HPM 710: Health Law.
Here's hoping for synchronicity between absolute time and time as a student.

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**Note: I firmly believe that wherever you are, you are and that that is ok and alright. This feeling does not keep my mind from churning around with its chattering of thoughts.

Shiva wave rider

I believe one major shift in who I have become out of the challenges I have faced is that I genuinely hope for a life of balance (rather than all systems go) and for a life that is person-centered (as much as I am still in full concentration mode if you come upon me at a coffee-shop). I see that to strive is to create stress and to make me into a mess of a person, full of anxiety, of the wearisome of livin' "on the edge" and the worry and weight of the world. I still seek to see myself in the system of things, to re-position myself and put what effort I can towards creating the change I am capable of producing at any given moment. I am much more likely however, to see that change as the present conversation I am having rather than the futuristic (perhaps) realization of my present-moment churning big ideas that keep me from fully engaging in the conversation I may be having. 

I also have stopped believing that the waves of life are ever going to calm into a placid sea nor am I sure that I'd want them to. Rather, my focus is on riding the waves as they come instead of getting continuously pounded by them. I've been using the name "shiva wave rider" lately as it suits my perspective towards living. 

Shiva and surfing.....

Shiva in that everything is created and destroyed in an instant and that everything changes. While I still look to "SUSTAIN" on my arm during tough times, I think the change is in the expectation and thus the orientation of my life.  I believe it is feeling the water, the tide, the waves and making from the heart decisions rather than listening to the "logic" of my mind and its little voice telling me to "push through". Why try to swim out to sea and struggle in the middle of the white water when I can just go with the tide to the side, watch the water for a break in the waves and finesse myself past the break zone? 

It is life as a dance rather than an endurance race. Balancing flexible (thinking) and relying on the firmness of the ground and finding strength there. With less hurry but no less urgency and no where to "go" but being fully "there".... . I breathe a full inhale and exhale and leaning forward into the "dancer" pose just as I would paddle in to a wave and find the board beneath my feet to ride in the wave - perhaps the most beautiful dance between humanity and nature . I do this over and over and then over again. 

Is this not life? 

Note in the picture - a self-portrait for a class at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies - the dancer standing on the yoga sutras surrounded my medicine bottles. This is my life. I ground myself in what I believe in and the wisdom of the ages and take the experiences and objects present in my life as they are - the medicine bottles- and just try to find the center. 

Admitting my qualms with T.S. Eliot re: the man behind the poetry, I admit my love of the "Four Quartets".  I believe Mr. Eliot had come to some conclusions at the end of his life as he writes of Krishna and the fire and the rose and the dance. And so, here I conclude with one of my favorite lines of poetry:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. 

Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

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The fire of ingratitude

In yoga class last night, my teacher talked about gratitude. About cultivating a feeling of gratitude in the moment.

The question or rather proposal posed in class was that it is a choice to feel grateful in a given moment. Yes, there are people in this world who are suffering and reasons to personally feel less than grateful for all of us. But, how does the opposite of gratitude or the lack of gratitude serve us or others? Also, that gratitude should be a feeling based on the present moment and not on objects of the past or future.

I have a hard time with this teaching. There is so much I feel grateful for in this world- people, places, memories, dreams, the present moment- at times. I also struggle with life: with people in the world who are suffering at present, with myself at present (especially on this particular day of feeling unwell physically) and the scars of my past and uncertainty of my future.

Given the suffering inherent in the world and given that yes, we should recognize that and work to do something about it, there does still seem to be the option to either smile and laugh or cry. Given things how they are I am unsure of whether it is better to be happy and gracious and joyful or to be grateful when the feeling arises. For me and for those for whom I interact, are we better served to exude steady positive feelings or to internally be with and externally reflect whatever the feeling is present at any particular moment.

What is the opposite of gratitude? My teacher proposed it to be: the "fire of a feeling that lacks gratitude". I fire that purifies and churns us and like all fires burns away and/or transforms that which is burning. What would be on the other side of allowing ourselves to not feel gracious when it is appropriate to do so (and when is it appropriate to do so?).

Is there a choice here? I discipline to apply to one's thoughts or one's feelings? Does it get easier with practice?

Sunshine blooming

I planted seeds with abandon as it was already late to be planting seeds if not late to be planting potted plants. But I bought some mixed perennial seed packs and spread them through my new flower garden. I waited and waited. Small green would pop its head out from the mulch and that was the first joy, true joy I had  had from a gardening experience. Yes, I realize that watching seeds grow into plants is something that is amazing when first done in 3rd grade. But who says the amazement has to end in adulthood.

So you can imagine my excitement over the sunflower that is as tall as me bloom over the weekend. One, my love, love of sunflowers. I buy one every weekend at the Farmer's market. I have watched it grow from a small seedling on an exponential growth curve. Like my other seeds that sprouted, the growth rate was exceedingly slow at first and I was sure that by the time they grew to full size it would likely be the middle of NC summer in which plants have little chance of survival. However, the plants I now realize were on an exponential growth curve (is this common?). Slow slow slow in the take off and now a sizable increase in height with each new day. Like rings on a tree but on the exterior, there is a circle around where the plant was in the ground the previous day and now was 1-2-3 inches taller. Many are blooming. Most I have no idea what they are, what flowers they will have or what color they will be. Which makes walking out my door each morning one of the beautifully simple joys in life.

"Sunshine" my lovely sunflower.

My sunflower however is just beyond what I ever could have expected. That I could grow one at all. That it would be as tall as me.  That I didn't have to purchase what someone else had grown but what I had meticulously planted and tended. That it is a living sunflower and did not have to be cut for my enjoyment.

Sunshine about to bloom! 

I have always felt that sunflowers capture the essence of the light that the sun brings. They brighten my life.

I like to name plants, animals and inanimate objects. I will call the sunflower "sunshine". As it truly is the manifestation of the energy from the sun cultivated by the intricate organism of a sunflower, growing from and upon blooming fully expressing the light of the sun. Illuminating my world (and perhaps other coop residents who pass it entering our gate).

Curly? (Random?) transformations

I got my hair cut yesterday and under the top layer of my long hair and with the length taken off, aghast I have curly hair. Not super super curly but wavy bordering on curly in the back. How does something like this happen. What does it mean? Twenty seven years of stick straight hair and suddenly curls? Is this the manifestation of the events of the past year? Or, a sign of things to come? Or, just a random transformation.