No longer disoriented!!

Posted 10:07 PM, September 24, 2006, by saerni

Today was a short day. I woke up pretty late (9 am) and relaxed most of the morning before our 3 pm orientation. This was probably a good move since at orientation we were explicitly told today that we are expected to spend 20 hours per week on research, and 20 per week on school, when in reality we are to spend every possible waking minute working without "going insane". We were also told not to kill ourselves over class since we are in school for research, not for classes. I'm glad they think that since that's why I'm here! Russ Altman (the program director) kept joking that he hoped we knew everything in advance. I hope everyone did as well since I would likely freak if something came as a surprised after turning down other programs!

The first years (left to right Noah, Guanglei, Alex, David, me, Marina) were also given basic information like including how to get a PhD in 4.65 years, the basic process with classes, what is required, and how to discuss money with potential research advisors. They included anecdotes from the lives of other students.We also went over the mission statement of the program.

"The mission of the Stanford BMI program I to train the next generation of researchers in biomedical informatics. Our students gain a knowledge of the scholarly informatics literature and the application requirements of specific areas within biology andmedicine. They learn to design and implement novel methods that are generalizable to a defined class of problems--focusing on the representation, retrieval, and analysis of biomedical data and knowledge."

Even though the statement seems pretty straightforward, it's an extremely loaded statement. We went over every sentence and dissected it, like good scientists should. I guess my French literature minor will prove to be handier than I thought!

After the orientation, we chatted a bit, and had dinner. Noah played piano with Amar Das's daughter, who was completely adorable. She had a Hello Kitty coloring book, that sh was playing songs from. It was very cute! She was quite the performer, singing "Miss Mary Mack" for us. Apparently Marina is a good piano player, but she didn't want to demonstrate! Maybe some day. She was excited to play tennis with me, so I'm completely psyched. When I mentioned the tennis team Noah was immediately game for a team! I hope we can convince David and Nikesh as well! Then we'd be 5 and only need to find a few more to get the team of 8. We could get cute BMI shirts

Alex and David seemed to have had a blast at the weekend camping trip. As you can see from the picture, Alex hasn't fully recovered. Apparently Alex is the only honest "Never have I ever" player! But we all now realize that Alex seems to know everything about everything, no matter how inane the subject.

So I'm going to go to bed early. I think I'm tired from just listening to Russ Altman's Olympic Triathlon that he completed today in Santa Cruz (which according to the savant, Alex, was invented in San Diego)! He gave an open invitation for us to ride our bikes down to the retreat in Asilomar this winter, roughly 110 miles. He suggested we start training now. I'm not sure I'm capable of that. I would likely spend the whole weekend in recover if I tried!

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