Entrepreneurship

One reason I haven't been blogging much is because I've been working on the foundations of a startup company.  Last Fall, I decided to enter a technology-based business competition at Indiana University, where the prize was $100,000 invested into your business. That sounded pretty exciting to me, so I decided to enter with an idea I'd had bouncing around in my head and see what happened.

Well, apparently I'm pretty good at writing business plans and making pitches to investors because I made it through several rounds to the finals.  I brought on a co-founder who's a friend from college with a great eye for design and style, and she really helped turn the idea into something more tangible.  We're still working on the plans, so I don't want to share too much detail publicly here.  Even though we didn't win any money from the competition, it may be a blessing in disguise because they wanted 35% equity right up front, which is risky for both sides.

Now we're pushing forward anyway to see where this thing goes.  The validation from having made it so far in a competition that started with over 60 teams and making it to the final 6 is something we feel proud of.

It is really exciting to be getting into the entrepreneurship community.  The startup events I've been to at school and in Bloomington and Indianapolis have so much energy and enthusiasm!

Pinterest - my first impressions

Recently I decided to check out Pinterest because I'd been hearing so much buzz and wondered what it was about.  Normally I'm reluctant to try out new trends like this because I don't want to be "one of those people."  But when I was trying to find a cool cake idea for my 30th birthday, I came across one woman's cake pinboard, and something clicked.  Here's a place to store all of those random images of stuff you want to remember but don't want to have to store all the links or pictures somewhere.

So here's what I've observed so far, and why I kinda like it for more than just cool cakes:

• It makes you feel popular/stylish/important when strangers "follow" your pin boards or re-pin your pins.
• WAAAY more women use it than men, but it is really interesting to see what kinds of things men post versus women (hmm...dissertation topic?).
• Most people post about things they like.  So I decided to be a rebel and make a "what were they thinking?" board where I post things that are ugly or bad ideas.
• My most popular pin is from my ugly board, an upholstered chair with a horrible cat print fabric.  Almost 50 people have re-pinned it!
• Speaking of re-pinning, you can see who re-pinned your pins, but you can't see who pins it from those new people.  So if your friend re-pins your pin, her friends might re-pin it too, but you won't be notified (got that?).
• You can learn about weird things your friends think are cool.  Like me, I have a board for "Cute red mushroom things" and 40 people follow it.
• I still can't figure out how they plan to make money on it.  Sponsored pins?
• Some people put up spam posts, where the picture doesn't match the caption and there are some keywords in there, like "cute puppy" but it has some link to some weight loss product.  Lame.
• I could see this being a great way to promote a business that has a visible product, like photographers, bakeries, bloggers, artists, etc.

You can check out my "pins" here https://pinterest.com/binzerella/

30!

I just turned 30 this past weekend.  And while everyone knows that 29 and 30 are objectively not all that different, it certainly feels like a major milestone.  Part of me has been thinking about where I thought I'd be at this age and where I actually am, and all the various paths I've been on - including having lived in somewhere around 11 different places in the 11 years since I finished high school (some more temporary than others).  But the other part thinks of the great mystery and adventure that awaits this next decade!

My 20s were definitely an adventure, moving to places I'd never been and diving into new experiences.  I've made some wonderful friends who I will cherish for the rest of my life.  I've married an amazing man who I am thrilled and even relieved that I am spending the rest of my life with.  And my name has changed, including the addition of a whole bunch of letters I can put after it from the three degrees I earned in my 20s.

So what are my lessons from my 20s?  Here's 10 that come to mind.

1. Try new things.
2. Leave bad things behind (like bad jobs or bad dates).  
3. Don't quit a job before you have something else lined up.
4. It's ok to change your mind about what you want to do with your life.
5. Learn to recognize patterns of behavior you don't like and stop repeating them.
6. Travel.
7. Save your money, but treat yourself to rewards when you accomplish something.  Remember that social security is not something our generation can rely on.
8. Appreciate your health.  It's probably the best it's going to be, so try to keep it that way.
9. Do NOT compare your life course to anyone else's.
10. Good friends are better than gold.  Make an effort to make new friends, especially when you move to a new place, and check in with the old ones regularly even if you live thousands of miles apart.  Not easy when you've moved a lot and your friends are all over the world!

 oh, and get a fantastic cake and OWN your 30th birthday!

Tornadoes

As the whole world seems to know, there were some really bad tornadoes in southern Indiana (and many other states) a few days ago.  We were fortunate to get no more than some relatively mild thunderstorms.  And we are thankful the tornadoes were not in our area.  If there was a tornado spotted in our area, the siren would go off (we can hear it from our house), and we would head to out downstairs bathroom, which is the lowest, most interior room of the house.  Since Indiana has clay soil, most houses don't have a basement, as they tend to flood.

The town they keep showing on the news, Henryville, is about 60 miles from where we live.  That's not very far.

This article from an English paper has pictures of the devastating damage from all over the areas affected by the storm.  It was written right after they found a toddler in the middle of a field, still alive at the time, but unfortunately her injuries were so bad they could not save her.

Our hearts go out to those affected by this disaster.

Cancer sucks. Bone marrow donation can help.

I've had several people close to me experience cancer in the past few years, from my grandmother in her 80s to two close friends around my age, and another friend's little girl (Millie) who was diagnosed at age 4.  While the older ones are in remission, now 6-year-old Millie relapsed just as she finished up 2 years of chemo.  She's currently in the hospital getting aggressive chemotherapy and waiting to find a bone marrow match.


Please consider signing up to be a bone marrow donor.  All it takes is a cheek swab, and you could be Millie's match.
http://marrow.org/Join/Join_Now/Join_Now.aspx?promo_code=marrow4millie
 

Here's a picture of Millie with her brother and Santa from her mom's blog. You can read more about Millie and her family's journey with cancer here http://bradyandamanda.blogspot.com/

Done with Classes FOREVER! What now?

This semester is my first semester as a PhD student with no more classes to take. When I tell people that, they ask a seemingly straightforward question - "so now you just have your dissertation and that's it, right?" Nope. This is academia, so things that should be straightforward need to go through nine levels of hell more hurdles before starting the dissertation.  I'm fortunate to have funding as a Research Assistant this semester so I don't have to teach a class to have funding.

Here's what I have left:

1. Qualifying Exam.  This is an essay assignment where you are given a list of questions and have 72 hours to write up to 30 pages answering those questions using a personalized list of academic research material.  The reading list consists of roughly 100 journal articles and 30 books that are the basis for your specialty in Sociology.  Since I'm specializing in medical sociology, it tends to tip towards more articles and fewer books, so my list is about 120 articles and 20 books. 

PhD students usually take about a semester to make the list (it involves multiple iterations with two advisors) and 3-6 months to do the reading, depending on their other workload (teaching, research, taking classes).

One would think that after roughly 6 semesters of graduate-level coursework and obtaining a master's degree in the process that there wouldn't be much reading left to do.  Not true.  This exam is supposed to show that you understand your area of expertise broadly and in depth, so you can't just focus on the few topics you find most interesting. For example, I think that structural changes in the social organization of medicine in the past 100 years is fascinating.  I'm less interested in figuring out one more way you can show how life is unfair and that there are systematic patterns in who gets sick (also known as epidemiology).  But I have to know all that literature because it is important in my field.


After passing the Qualifying Exam, and it is possible to get an "honors" distinction in this, the student is officially a "doctoral candidate" AKA "all but dissertation" or ABD.  It also means you have to finish the dissertation within 7 years of that date, which is a challenge for some people.

The handbook says "The Qualifying Exam is designed to serve as a bridge between graduate course work and preparation of a dissertation proposal," which brings us to the next obstacle before the dissertation. 


2. Dissertation Proposal.  This is an oral "defense" of your research proposal for your dissertation.  I'm still not sure exactly what the parameters are for this, but it takes some people a year or longer to put it together. In the "Real world" something like this should probably take about a month.

3. Dissertation research.   Actually doing the work for the dissertation.  Data cleaning, statistical analysis, text analysis or whatever else was proposed.  All of this analysis needs to get done before you can write much of anything up.  This could take anywhere from a week to several years if you are collecting your own data.

4. Writing the dissertation. 'nuff said.

5. Oral defense of dissertation.  This is done in front of your committee, who you hope will ask nice easy questions!

So I just have 5 things left, I guess!  Of course, this doesn't include any of the other research I'm working on nor publications I'm trying to put out nor grant proposals, fellowship applications, etc, all of which require lots of time-consuming writing and data analysis.

St Lucia and Traditions

Yesterday was St. Lucia Day, a Swedish holiday that celebrates the life of a saint who dedicated her life to feeding and caring for the poor until she was brutally executed for being a Christian. She's also the patron saint of the blind because she was blinded before her execution. There's a lot more to the story, but that's not what I want to get into on here. You can read more on wikipedia for that story. It's been a tradition in my family to attend the St Lucia Festival every year and sing along with the traditional Swedish Yuletide songs, and for me, to get dressed up in the white robe and sing with the other kids while I was growing up. I try to attend a St Lucia festival wherever I live. There was a nice one in Chicago at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Andersonville, but I couldn't find one in Oxford, and there is definitely not on in Bloomington (the closest is a 4-5 hour drive away at the very northern tip of Indiana).

So this year I opted to watch the official Swedish Santa Lucia program on the internet. It doesn't quite have the charm of being there in person with the candlelight and glögg afterparty, but it's something.

What struck me this year as we are in Indiana, far from our families and from our ancestral homelands was that I could still in some small way be connected to my family. I imagined how different it would have been for my relatives who first came to the US in the early 1900s, not knowing if they would ever make it back to their homeland. I think part of what kept them going was being able to hold on to traditions. To this day, displaced Swedes (and I am sure other ethnic groups) continue with traditions that may have long been abandoned by the people in their homeland. Traditions are what makes any place feel like home, even when you are thousands of miles away.

In Sociology, there's a whole area dedicated to globalization, which is sort of the melting pot idea but on a global scale, and the concept of the diaspora. A diaspora is a group of people who have left their homeland all at once, but who have all relocated to a new country and live near each other (think of a Chinatown or Little Italy). They may or may not have known each other in the homeland, but they come together in the new country to celebrate their cultural festivals and create a sense of community. Eventually, but not always, the immigrants assimilate into the local community and the diaspora disperses as people move out of the neighborhood and/or intermarry with people from other backgrounds.

Sometimes these cultural festivals in immigrant neighborhoods go on long after the original group of immigrants leave the neighborhood. For example, in the Cicero neighborhood of Chicago, there is a Houby (Mushroom) Festival that was started by the Czech diaspora. The neighborhood is now primarily Mexican, yet the Czech mushroom parade continues, with Czechs coming in from elsewhere.

When my family moved to the US, they were in a Swedish diaspora. It may not have been as dense as some of the other ethnic neighborhoods, but there were enough Swedes to support their own church in downtown Providence. Like other immigrant groups without their extended families around, they came together at certain times of the year to have that sense of groundedness and community with people who shared a similar background. The St Lucia festival is one of those special events, made even more special because there are no gifts exchanged and no big feast to prepare. It's just some beautiful singing by candlelight followed by some light refreshments and spending time with people who have something in common.

So I take this special day wherever I live to remember my heritage and feel a sense of connectedness to the generations that came before me. Even though I live far from family and really far from my ancestral homeland, there is something nice about feeling connected, even if it is only through the internet.