Sara's blog

Later this week, my last Christmas break ever will begin. Yes, I’m sure I’ll be taking vacations during the holidays in the future, but what I mean is that I will probably never have a whole month off again. This is a welcome break since I never thought I’d have one again after undergrad. But this time I’m pretty sure it will be my last. So here’s what I plan to do:

1. Relax and recharge

2. Apply for jobs

3. Enjoy time with friends and family that I haven’t had much time to see since I started grad school

4. Get back to the gym and do what I can before having hip surgery

5. Have hip surgery on January 7th. It’s not an ideal date since school starts on the 13th, but it’s the first available surgery day that my surgeon has. So I’ll be starting my last semester on crutches for at least the first couple of weeks and I’ll have to go through 6 months of rehab, but it should all be worth it when I’m back to normal after dealing with this issue for almost 2 years now.

See y’all next year!

Today I had my residency presentation at Hillcrest. Colonel Haines and Dr. Henderson came and of course my precrptor, Marcy Weber, was also there. Paloma decided to come too since hers was postponed for a couple weeks.

I talked about the Smart Babies project and how it fits in with Nurse Family Partnership (NFP), Hillcrest, and Waco Foundation. Basically, NFP is a nurse home visiting program. Smart Babies is an early childhood initiative started by Waco Foundation for ages 0-3. Smart Babies wants to implement the NFP model to go along with the other programs they have. And Hillcrest wants to help implement the program as well as house it.

So that’s how everything fits together in a nutshell. I felt good about the presentation and I got some good questions from Colonel Haines and Dr. Henderson. Marcy also took some of the questions herself since she’s pretty awesome, basically. She also said she’ll need me next semester to help with the grant writing for the program. I’m excited to get to work with her for a few more months. She’s an amazing person and I’ve learned so much from her! It also helps that we are similar in many ways and get along great. This has really been an amazing experience and I’m so happy that I chose to go to Hillcrest even if there’s no way I will stay in Waco after graduation. Haha!

So now I only have 3 finals and a few more days left of work before having a whole month off. Let the countdown begin!

This has been an incredibly busy week, but also a very good one.

Monday: Went to school, then work, then to order my husband’s birthday cookie cake, then came home and registered for core 3. Then read the million pages I needed to for several classes.

Tuesday: Started the 3rd 5 weeks of classes, went to work, went to physical therapy for my hip, picked up my hubby’s birthday cookie cake, then went to the Hillcrest President’s Circle dinner. This was a very fun event with good food, great company, and fantastic music! Check out the Dallas String Quartet if you haven’t already. You can thank me later. 🙂

Wednesday: School, work, then to the ethics forum launch. Received the ethics case at 5pm, met my group at 6 to work on it, then went home to work on my slides and to study for my accounting final the next day.

Thursday: Took my accounting final, went to class, went to the bookstore to buy blackout shirts, worked a little bit, then headed for Floyd Casey stadium. What a game!!!!!!! But I think they have a lot to learn about crowd control at that stadium. Hopefully they will fix that for the Texas game next month.

Friday: Woke up early to go practice our ethics presentation with my team. Presentation went well. Went to the luncheon, then went to work, then conducted the last 2 interviews needed for my OB project. Got off work, came home to pack, then headed to Houston to see Zahra!!!!!!!! Had dinner with hubby, Zahra, and Marie and now here I am. I’m looking forward to having fun the rest of the weekend before next week gets going (which will be insanely busy again!)

Tonight I registered for Core 3 classes. I had heard complaints from classmates who had registered earlier in the day about how the process was different this time and that they were only opening up spots in each section a few at a time. A lot of people complained that they couldn’t get the 9:30 classes they wanted, so I was curious about how it would go. It was definitely frustrating this time since the system kept telling me that both sections were closed over and over again for several classes. I was eventually able to register for everything I needed and I got every 9:30 class, so that worked out well! Anyway, in the midst of my frustration, my husband said “but just think about it. You never have to do this again!” At that moment I realized just how fast time has flown by for the past year and a half. I cannot believe that I only have one semester left. This journey has been full of ups and downs, but the ups have definitely outdone and overshadowed the downs even if it didn’t feel like that at times. I will do my best to enjoy every moment I have left here.

This was a very weird and sad week for me. I woke up on Wednesday to find out that one of my friends from undergrad was killed in a bicycle accident the day before. She and a few friends were on a 40-mile ride in Austin when her tire blew out and she fell into traffic. A truck swerved to try to avoid her but the trailer he was pulling hit her. She died later that night after being resuscitated 3 times. Needless to say, it has been hard to concentrate. I can’t even get on facebook right now without her being tagged in many pictures and posts. It’s obvious that she touched a lot of lives in her short 28 years. She definitely lived life to the fullest and did not waste a moment. Tragedies like this one definitely make you think a lot about things.

Every Monday, this amazing woman at work sends an email with a new “Monday inspiration.” I really liked the one we got a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I would share it with you guys:

A young woman was complaining to her father about how difficult her life had become. He said nothing, but took her to the kitchen and set three pans of water to boiling. To the first pan, he added carrots; to the second, eggs; and to the third, ground coffee. After all three had cooked, he put their contents into separate bowls and asked his daughter to cut into the eggs and carrots and smell the coffee. “What does all this all mean?” she asked impatiently.

“Each food, “ he said, “teaches us something about facing adversity, as represented by the boiling water.” The carrot went in hard but came out soft and weak. The eggs went in fragile but came out hardened. The coffee, however, changed the water to something better.

“Which will you be like as you face life?” he asked. Will you give up, become hard or transform adversity into triumph? As the “chef” of your own life, what will you bring to the table?

Like the title says, this was quite a day. Before I get to my interview, I’ll tell you a little bit about something else that’s going on. I really don’t remember whether I mentioned this before, but I had a big wipeout while snow skiing on my honeymoon a year and a half ago. The skis didn’t pop off and my right hip got pulled in awkward ways when I was somersaulting down the mountain backwards. Anyway, the orthopedist I saw at the time suspected a labral tear but we decided to try conservative treatment. I was told to stay away from exercise for 3 months (which was hard since I was used to working out almost every day) and take anti-inflammatories regularly during that time. Well right around that time, I moved to Waco and started the MBA program, so I never went back for a follow-up. And with the arrhythmia issues I was also dealing with, I didn’t really have time to take care of the hip issue. Not to mention that since I couldn’t work out much with the beta blockers, my hip pain was bearable for those months. It’s not like I was putting a lot of strain on it.  But now that I’ve started getting back to my old workouts, the hip has been getting pretty bad. So I went to see an orthopedist here in town. He said he agrees that it’s probably a labral tear. He recommended an MRA (which is like an MRI except that they inject contrast into the joint in order to see it better.) So that’s what I did this morning. They also went ahead and injected some steroids while they were in there. Hopefully that will help a little bit too. I should know the results on Monday.

After that, I went home and waited for my interview to begin. I felt good about it during and after. When it was over, I asked when I should hear from someone. The recruiter said that I should receive an email within a week so I could schedule the next round (it’s a pretty lengthy interview process.) So I decided to try not to think about it too much since I would go crazy for a week otherwise. But…an hour and a half later, I received the email about the next round which is an Excel assessment! I’m so excited! I emailed them back with my availability for next week so we’ll see what happens. I’ll continue to keep you guys updated.

I was supposed to have my interview with Ascension today, but the person who was going to interview me got sick and had to go home. No worries, though, because they said they will call me tomorrow to just do everything over the phone. At least they already met me so they can put a face to the name when we talk.

Another thing that happened today was “Think On Your Feet” in management communication class. This is where an interview type question comes up on the screen along with your name. You get up there and talk about it for a certain amount of time. Today it was 1 minute for the first question and 30 seconds for the second question. Luckily I got 2 questions that I could talk about quite easily so I feel pretty good about the whole thing. I think later in the semester we will be doing this again, except that the questions will cover things we’ve learned in class.

I’ll keep you updated about tomorrow’s interview. Wish me luck again!

So, today was the Hire a Bear Career Fair. This time around, I was really only interested in one company, Ascension Health. I went to their information session last night and came out of there really liking the company and feeling like it’s the right kind of environment for me. Not to mention that the Supply Chain Analyst jobs they’re recruiting for right now are right up my alley. Like I’ve mentioned before, I really enjoyed my rotation in the supply chain department and I plan on spending more time there this fall.

But anyway, back to Ascension. Reshma, who graduated from the healthcare program in May, was here recruiting along with some other folks. She went to this job fair last year and landed the analyst job in January. It was great to see her and also to hear about how much she enjoys her job. This made me even more interested. So I went to the fair, talked with one of the representatives for a little while, gave them my resume, exchanged business cards, then headed to work. On my way home, I got a call from one of the recruiters. She said that they wanted to invite me to an informal mixer tonight as well as an interview tomorrow. She said that it would consist of 45 minutes of behavioral questions, and a 45 minute business case.

I went to the mixer, which was a lot of fun. I was able to talk to some of the analysts quite a bit. I also scheduled my interview for tomorrow so wish me luck!

Wow, it has been a while since I’ve posted anything! So I’ll start by talking about my residency a little bit.

I was very sad when the fall semester was approaching because I wasn’t ready to leave my residency. I have learned so much by being in that environment and I have loved every minute of it! So I talked to the VP of Operations to see if there was any way that they would keep me part time this semester. I looked at my class schedule and determined that I could put in 20 hours of work per week by going in from 2-5pm Mon-Thurs and work a full day on Fridays since we don’t have class anyway. After a couple of weeks, David said that they would keep me! I was ecstatic since I feel that I still have a lot to experience there. Also, I didn’t want to leave without having a complete implementation plan of my Smart Babies project. Speaking of which, we have determined that Waco is an excellent candidate for this project and Hillcrest definitely plans on moving forward! Marcy (my amazing preceptor) was asked to give a presentation about our findings at the community update meeting. So I quickly got to work on a powerpoint presentation for her. When we got there, Marcy told them that I would be presenting some of the slides since I’ve been doing pretty much all the work on this project. I can’t tell you how nice it was to get recognized for what I’ve been doing all summer. Marcy could’ve easily taken credit. I can’t overstate what an amazing preceptor she has been. She’s always willing to teach me new things, talk about work, life, or anything else that comes to mind. To sum up my experience with her, I’ll leave you with a brief conversation we had the other day.

Me: “Marcy, I just realized I haven’t asked you if you would like to continue to be my preceptor this fall. You technically only signed up for the summer.”

Marcy: “Oh yeah, girl, we’ll have fun!”