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Showing posts from 2021

2021, in conclusion/memoriam

We're all just ignoring any and all goals we set during the pandemic, right? Right. After the nightmare that was 2020, 2021 wasn't so bad. I submitted my first first-author publication  that uncovered a long-standing misconception about airborne transmission of disease, and it got me featured in WIRED magazine . I successfully defended and submitted my dissertation about volunteer health communication in US refugee resettlement. (Those two projects sound very unrelated, but medical rhetoric is the key there :) :))  After 2 years of doctoral coursework and 3 (soul-sucking) years of dissertating, I graduated with a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech. My mental health immediately   improved. While I was finishing my dissertation, we sold our townhouse in Blacksburg and moved to a 1910s-era bungalow in coastal North Carolina. My daughter started 1st grade (!) in a Spanish immersion program. We all got vaccinated. I was on set as an extra in a Simu Liu/Phillipa Soo movi