Picking up where I left off
At the end of last semester, I felt as if I was still being highly-effective in the work I was doing. After becoming accustomed to the workflow of GMI, I was hitting that groove of getting things going. Then hits winter break. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved heading back to Dallas and getting time to spend with friends and family, but I knew it would be a challenge to get back to that efficiency when the semester started back up. But nonetheless, I think it was important to get the decompression time that I got because the Spring semester is going to be a fun and quick one. Now that we are working on both our implementation and design projects this Spring, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. With the Sprint format that we are utilizing, our progress on projects will start to ramp up.
Just our luck
In our second week of the fall semester, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston. The second week of the spring semester was not forgiving either. Houston had a winter storm, the roads had iced over, and we didn’t have class for two days. If I were in high-school, this would be a miracle, but unfortunately, I had to get stuff done. Alas, we GMI students are prepared in the art of preparation and doing things on the fly.
Design projects
As mentioned in earlier blog posts, we had presented our top needs for a design project that we would be working on for this semester (and hopefully be taken over by the incoming cohort). One of the needs that I had presented was to develop a way to increase awareness of patients who have severe food allergies in order to reduce incidences of anaphylactic shock. This need resonated with some of my colleagues, and so we decided to pursue this as our design project this semester. Our team will consist of Abby, Callie and me.
This is going to be a very interesting design challenge for us. We know that there is a large demographic that would be interested in a solution to knowing if there are allergen triggers in their food. However, there are competitors within this space and so part of what our group will be addressing in the upcoming weeks is to determine what our addressable market would be and what would make our solution unique and desirable. There will be some technical challenges to overcome with this project, but our team is excited about this project’s potential and are ready to go to work!
MD Anderson presentation
With our Barretos Teledermatology project, we’ve had the opportunity to have some great collaborators. Mark Munsell, who is a senior statistician at MD Anderson, has been helping us with the REDCap App that Anna has been working on. He is basically a REDCap wizard. He had extended the opportunity for us to present at MD Anderson on our project and of course, we couldn’t pass up this chance to plug the great work that GMI has been doing. We were able to walk through how nurses would interact with the app and device and got some great feedback and potential connections. Some the GMIers even showed up in support just in case we weren’t nervous enough. We want to extend our thanks to Mark and the folks at MD Anderson for being so hospitable (and congratulations to Mark on his upcoming retirement!).
MD Anderson REDCap Presentation (Mark, Anna, Me and Dr. Richardson)
The job hunt
Since the break, I had to make steps towards becoming employed. Yes, the time to find a job is upon us. Luckily, I was able to spend some of the break doing some research on companies and sending out applications to a few positions I thought I would enjoy doing (see, I was semi-productive). Will I find the dream job that meets all my criteria? Probably not, but I understand that as an entering engineer in the workforce, I may have to pay my dues first before I get that dream job, and that is ok with me. I think an important lesson I’ve learned throughout the job hunt process is to never sell yourself short. Being confident in the skills I have and staying genuine is the approach I have been taking in this adventure, and I’m expecting it to pay off soon.
Not letting it pass by
We only have a little over 3 months in the program left. It’s definitely a bittersweet feeling. To look back and see the progress that I’ve made both professionally and personally is amazing. I know I’ve said it before, but I really have learned more in these last 8 months than I could have imagined. But one of the best parts of this program has been the people of GMI. It’s going to a little emotional when we all head our separate ways, but I know that this group is going to be great in their respective careers. We are all ready to tackle this semester head on, but I’m going to make sure I don’t let what may be my last semester of school pass by.