Poznan and Kalisz, Poland

Earlier in July, a couple days after I finished my qualifying exam, we took off for Poland for Paul's cousin's wedding.  

Here are some pics from Poznan, where we spent a night before heading off for the wedding. Check out these wheels!

 

Paul's checking out the town hall (we had to leave before it opened - this is not an early rising city for tourists!)

Beers at our hotel, Brovaria, on the square in Poznan.  Cute town with some nice museums!  We didn't have time to see them all, but this city has done a great job preserving/rebuilding the historic stuff.  And the great beer doesn't hurt!

 

 

Train station in Kalisz (aww, look at that cute couple - no idea who they are, but it makes a nice picture!)

Me enjoying some wine on a stroll around Tlokinia Palace.

The fam (minus bride and groom).

Inside the church in Kalisz, during the wedding.  The bride and groom are seated, with the best man & maid of honor behind.

The bride and groom with their first toast.  The glasses are tied together with ribbon, then tossed and smashed for good luck.

Qualifying exam - DONE!

Today I just turned in my qualifying exam.  It feels pretty darn good.  My preparation over the last few months, despite turning me into a hermit, really paid off.  Technically my "readers" have until the end of the summer to grade it (pass/fail/honors), so it might be a few weeks before I find out if I pass.  But I feel pretty good about it.  I am really fortunate that my friend, Emily, let me stay at her place to take the 3-day exam. It really helped me to focus to not have to worry about the dog or the laundry or cleaning my house and I am so thankful to her for it! 

My area of expertise is in Medical Sociology, so it was really timely that the Supreme Court ruling on the individual mandate of the health reform bill came out while I was taking the exam so I could comment on that.  So you want my take on it as a PhD-level medical sociologist?  Well, it's complicated for sure.

It's no surprise that the individual mandate was the part that received so much media attention, because Americans really value their independence, freedom, and personal liberties to do as they please with their hard earned money.  Americans like having choices.  But the healthcare reform bill (PPACA) puts the squeeze on insurance companies by requiring them to accept everyone regardless of preexisting medical conditions, and to provide unlimited lifetime spending on health care services.  So requiring healthy people who otherwise wouldn't rationally pay for health insurance to now purchase it helps to subsidize the more expensive, more sickly people.  If there's not some kind of subsidizing or "redistribution," insurance doesn't work.

Insurance companies have historically enjoyed substantial profits from their cut of transactions in health care services, and PPACA limits those, to some extent.  So shoveling in more money from coverage of healthy people (under age 26, plus anyone who wouldn't otherwise choose to purchase health insurance) really helps to keep insurance companies profitable (albeit, limited to 20% under the act, with some exemptions).

For a great read on health reform, check out Howard Watizkin's Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire.  Really the only last chapter is where he digs into PPACA, but the rest of it kind of sets up the argument.  What I loved about this book is that despite how much of the book focused on overthrows of capitalism as an evil beast, the final chapter presents a liberal criticism of PPACA.  You can get conservative criticisms by the truckload, but it's really unique to see something written from the left that is not supportive of the act.  Essentially, he argues that PPACA will continue to serve the interests of the "transnational ruling class" (read - the 1% but on a global scale), and the whole system will implode from continually expanding costs that focus on expensive technology.  So that view may be extreme, but it's really interesting to see an analysis of PPACA that doesn't focus on individual liberties.

So personally I'm not going to argue that PPACA is good or bad.  It's got a mix of good and bad.  You've got more people covered (but still not everyone - Waitzkin argues it'll only cover half of the currently uninsured at best), but not much of a cap on escalating costs of high tech medicine that has a poor return on quality of life.  I'm also not sure if it's going in the right direction, because that all depends on what the desired outcome is - cost, quality, access, coverage.  Pretty much all PPACA addresses is coverage (and to some extent, quality, but that's a whole can of worms in itself).  But we'll see where it goes from there.

Push Girls

I just watched the first episode of "Push Girls," a documentary about four women who happen use wheelchairs to get around. It's so rare that anyone on television is in a wheelchair, nevermind a whole show!  These are some truly inspiring women.


Here's where you can watch it online http://www.sundancechannel.com/push-girls/

Having just finished reading the section of my qualifying exam material that deals with stigma, I definitely noticed the lack of research that has been done on physical disability.  Nearly all of it centers on mental illness.  Here's a few takeaway points I think are important when it comes to stigma:

1. People with a disability or illness do not immediately consider themselves "a disabled person" as their primary identity.  If it's a new issue for them, their whole existence prior to the diagnosis does not suddenly erase everything about them.  And even if the person was born with the stigmatizing condition, it still is not how they define themselves.  This is why it's better to say "a person with a disability" rather than "a disabled person," to emphasize the importance of the person over their physical (or mental) condition.
2. People with a stigmatizing condition know they have the condition, and know that other people notice it.  Sometimes this makes them nervous that the other people will treat them badly if there are negative stereotypes about their condition (this is called stereotype threat), and this can make them act in ways that actually confirm the negative stereotype they are trying to avoid.
3. Problems that people see as character flaws, like substance abuse, are stigmatizing and make people want to avoid those people.  But problems that are blameless, like being paralyzed from an accident, are still stigmatized, albeit to a lesser extent. 
4. Discrimination can be supported as a cultural institution.  For example, in the show, one of the women is looking to get back into modeling and finds that all of the modeling agencies she tries to work with have never represented someone in a wheelchair before.  One even told her that their building was handicap accessible with a staircase.  Thus the culture of the modeling industry systematically excludes people who use wheelchairs to get around.
5. Not all people who have a stigmatizing condition are upset about it.  The main thrust of the "disability rights movement" is to enable people with disabilities to be self-sufficient (see related article here) and not dependent on medical professionals or caregivers.

Anyway, check out the show!  It addresses so many sociological issues besides just stigma.

Fresh Air

Sometimes when it's really humid and windy outside and I'm walking my dog in the morning, I pretend I'm walking along the beach smelling the spray from the waves. (the pic above is from the beach I'd go to growing up)

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!