nope

the speech pathology director at henry ford called yesterday to inform me they offered the position to two other people and they've accepted, but i was a very strong candidate and it was a difficult decision, blah blah blah. so i didn't get it. oh well, i'm really not devastated. it just means there are other plans for me. there's still plenty of time to look for another job since i don't finish my program until august.

new topic: i'm coming home this weekend and i'm bringing one or two people from detroit with me. if anyone's free friday night around 9 or 10, let me know. i'm thinking bubble tea at pacific mall.

from student to practitioner

i have a job interview this thursday. an interview as a professional, not a student anymore. scary and exciting at the same time.

this job is a one year contract position (clinical fellowship) designed specifically for new graduates. in that year you complete all the requirements to become fully certified as a speech-language pathologist in the u.s. it's at henry ford hospital, which is a great facility with an excellent reputation in michigan. the slp department at this hospital gets a really wide range of clients because they see inpatients, outpatients, voice clients, pediatrics. they are consulted for/during brain surgeries, they evaluate and dispense auditory feedback devices for people who stutter. there are tons of opportunities for continuing education. so this is a fantastic position (despite the salary...), and it is also very competitive, as you might imagine.

the fact that i was even offered an interview was a pleasant surprise for multiple reasons. first off, i just barely got my application together in time. with less than a week to the deadline, i somehow managed to get three reference letters, get transcripts, tweak my resume and write a decent cover letter. i was so stressed and i felt so bad about giving my references so little time to write for me. but it all came together on the last day and i submitted the application. even after i got the application in, i didn't really expect to be contacted because the program starts in june of each year and i don't graduate until august. so they'd really have to like my application a lot in order to offer me an interview and consider hiring me with a start date in september. but they did.

i have a friend who interviewed at henry ford last year. she said they interviewed 7 or 8 people and hired 3, none of whom were wayne state students. so that doesn't bode well for me, but i'm hopeful. it's the only job i've applied for so far, since it had a specific deadline. and i always knew i wanted to be at henry ford at one point or another, if not as an intern then as a clinical fellow. but like i said, it's competitive and i've been praying!

anyway, the interview is this thursday, april 10th. from 9am to 1:30pm. i'm expecting to be exhausted by the end of it! 4.5 hours is a long time to be perky and putting up your best front. the whole process will include interviews with multiple clinicians, a tour of the facility and lunch. my main fear is getting questions that i'm not prepared for and having to make stuff up. i'm not good at making stuff up, i always feel like the other person can tell and then that makes me even more nervous. but i'm preparing as best i can and the rest is up to the Lord.

LPR

Mmm...laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR). Apparently, I have it.

I've been learning about it in my voice disorders class. It's when gastroesophageal reflux/acid that causes "heart burn" gets up to the level of the vocal folds and causes irritation. It can cause your voice to go hoarse, it can make you clear your throat a lot, etc. If it's really bad, there are medications that can help control the reflux, but I haven't really been symptomatic, although looking back I can see very subtle symptoms of it (e.g. coughing in the middle of the night, as gastric acid is most likely to go up the esophagus as I'm lying down).

How did I find out that I have LPR?

Earlier this week I decided to calculate my s/z ratio just for fun. This ratio is a test that SLPs can do to screen for a possible vocal fold pathology. The client takes a deep breath and produces the /s/ sound for as long as possible and then does the same thing for /z/. The sounds are the same except that /s/ is voiceless, meaning the vocal folds are apart during production and /z/ is voiced, meaning the vocal folds are together and vibrating. Normal ratios are 1:1. If it's greater than 1.4 it means that /z/ is shorter than /s/ and too much air is escaping between the vocal folds as a result of nodules or polyps or some other pathology. I was shocked to find that my s/z ratio was 1.5. I thought "No way, I don't have nodules or anything, this s/z ratio is bogus". And I kind of dismissed the whole thing.

Then a few days later it my last day at my clinical placement and I finally got a chance to be videostrobed. I was so excited. I couldn't wait to get a picture of my vocal folds. But my supervisor had a hard time getting a clear picture because 1) I was drooling a lot and it was making the picture foggy and blurry, 2) My oropharynx is small so by the time the strobe got past my tongue and epiglottis to see into my airway it was already up against the back of my throat and 3) My vocal folds are pretty far down my airway. Well, anyway, she was still able to get some images and as she was watching them on the monitor she goes "I hate to tell you this, but you have reflux!" What?! Not possible! Reflux is what old people get when they eat spicy food!

So I have LPR. It explains the s/z ratio. When your vocal folds are irritated by the acid they get inflamed and swollen and they may not fully come together during phonation, thereby allowing air to escape. I've had no other symptoms, no "heart burn", no hoarsenes, nothing other than a bit of coughing in the middle of the night, which I have always attributed to dry air.

Here are the pictures. Don't get grossed out. I'm really proud of them : )

Okay, back to studying. I just spent the last hour and a half posting when I should have been spending my limited supply of energy on exam prep and paper writing. Bah.

Haaaaaallelujah

This past weekend was symphonyful. On Friday I used the free tickets I had to go to a Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) performance of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. The seats were on the main floor and worth $68 each. I didn't care much for the view. We could only see the musicians at the edge of the stage. It was fantastic music, though. I think my favourite seasons/concertos are Spring and Fall.

On Saturday I went to Handel's Messiah by the DSO and Michigan State's Chorale. It was long, but definitely worth hearing in its entirety. The soprano soloist was the best, as she was the only one who didn't use vibrato excessively, and I think I heard her sing a really high D. The conductor was cool--at times he was conducting and playing harpsichord simultaneously! During the Hallelujah chorus everyone in the audience stood up. It's traditional to do that because apparently King George II stood up at that point during a performance, so everyone else in attendance stood as well. Theories as to why he was standing: he was late and walked into the hall at that point in the performance, he needed to stretch or he needed to go to the bathroom. I also found out that the text/libretto is based mostly on Isaiah, Matthew and 1 Corinthians. I just finished reading 1 Corinthians, so it was neat to hear it put to music.

Go to http://www.tsoundcheck.com/ for cheap student tickets to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Live classical music is fantastic! I've gotta say, I'm not usually a big fan of it, but when it's live it can be pretty thrilling.

American Thanksgiving

A couple of weekends ago I had my second Thanksgiving of the year. I spent the American holiday with Dawn (a friend from church) and her family. I told her it would be my first ever white people Thanksgiving. Little did I know that white people are the minority in her family! The story is that her parents adopted a bunch of kids, all of whom are ethnic minorities (Korean, African American, Hispanic). Out of 12 kids in the family only 4 are biological. Several years ago Dawn's dad passed away and her mom ended up remarrying a man who also adopted a bunch of kids. Altogether there are 22 kids in the family now! Absolute insanity. But such amazing people. Anyway, it was a fun day...I ate way too much, but that's expected.

The next day I went to the Detroit Institute of Arts for its grand re-opening. Free admission :) My goal is to go to all the museums in the area for free before I graduate. I've already hit up 4 of them on various free admission days, but at least one of them I have to revisit at some point b/c I didn't really get to see everything I wanted to see. Grad school has made me so stingy (let's say...frugal) it's not funny. Not having any income whatsoever after 7 years of holding down multiple part-time and full-time jobs simultaneously will do that to you.

Saturday morning my family came to visit. We went outlet shopping, of course, but we were disappointed that we didn't find any major deals. After Birch Run we went to Chicago Uno Bar and Grill, which is becoming a bit of a tradition now. We always go there for steak after a day of shopping. The next day, after some more shopping, I finally got to take my family to Citadel. The past several times they've come to visit they weren't able to stick around for the service, which is in the afternoon. This time they stayed and I think overall they at least thought it was interesting, but then I didn't feel like the service was representative of Citadel. My parents were also really shocked at the testimonies of youth in the church who had just come back from a purity retreat. A bunch of them stood at the front of the sanctuary and said stuff like "I learned that masturbation is a sin...not that I do it" (haha!) and "After this retreat I've decided not to have sex anymore until I get married" (nearly causing the girl's grandma to have a heart attack at the news that the girl had been having sex at all).

Christmas is three weeks tomorrow! Definitely putting up the tree as soon as I get home. I don't care that it will only get put up a couple of days before the 25th or that it'll probably be ugly since there is no rhyme nor reason to our random collection of decorations. The past three years we've been away during the holidays, but this year we're home and we are having Christmas.

long time no blog

the past couple of months have been busy and eventful. this has been the craziest semester yet, with four academic courses and clinical placement all day mondays and wednesdays. i like my placement at st. john hospital. it's a mix of acute care and outpatient. in acute care, slps usually get consulted for swallow assessments, whether it's at the bedside or via x-ray. after a stroke, many patients have trouble coordinating all the muscles necessary for a safe swallow, so we assess them and determine if they need to be put on a modified diet that's easier to swallow or if they need to receive nutrition through alternative means. there's also the odd communication eval here and here. in outpatient i've been seeing a lot of videostroboscopies, where a camera is put into a client's mouth to view the vocal folds. it's pretty cool. i'm hoping to get strobed sometime before the end of my placement. in terms of coursework i'm taking language disorders of school age children, motor speech disorders, voice+cleft palate and acoustics of speech. i love the material that i'm learning but i've been complaining a lot about a couple of my professors, and i should stop. ah, pride. last year i read this prayer that was really helpful in showing me what my attitude should be.

so highlights of the past 10 weeks:

egypt! i had a great time. saw the pyramids, swam in the nile, climbed mount sinai and snorkelled in the red sea. i met a girl from arizona who is applying to med school at wayne state so if she comes for an interview i'll definitely see her again. anyway, the trip was awesome and i think i really like being in arab countries. pictures can be seen here.

my car broke down. i was driving home from church and suddenly the stereo went out and wouldn't turn back on. then i had my window down to swipe into the parking lot and i could hear the engine was pretty loud. then, as i pulled into a parking spot and put the car into park the engine just shut off on its own and wouldn't restart. it was actually the perfect way for my car to break down--in a parking spot in the lot outside my building, not out on the road somewhere. totally blessed. so i called josh, my engineer friend who knows a ton about cars, and he figured it was either a problem with the battery or the alternator. i bought both parts and he came over to look under the hood and ended up putting in a new alternator for me.

i gave a presentation in my acoustics class. half an hour before class started i was eating lunch and going over the powerpoint slides with my group members. as i was having a drink of water from my nalgene, some of it splashed onto my pants. wonderful. turns out it saved me from a worser fate than wet pants. i looked down at my lap and saw that there was a huge hole in the crotch! the stitching running down the centre of my pants just below the zipper had come undone and there was a gaping hole through which you could see my underwear. thankfully, i live on campus and i had time to go home and change. on my walk back to the apartment i had my roommate's jacket tied around my waist with one of the sleeves hanging down just so in order to cover the hole.

had a fantastic thanksgiving at home. lunch with the girls on friday, family dinner later that night, dim sum with grandma, dinner at uncle jody's, community service at jaffray, hiking with the family. during the hike coco got lost but then was found. crazy dog running around like a maniac. pictures: here.

saw regina spektor in concert at state theatre downtown. she sang even though she had a cold, which is bad for your voice, but i guess it's an occupational hazard that you can't really avoid when you're on tour. anyway, she is super talented. it was just her and a piano, then just her and a guitar. she has great control of her voice and her music is delightfully quirky.

i'm a CRush member for the detroit symphony orchestra, which enables me to buy student tickets 48 hours in advance for $15. it's a little steeper than the tso $10 student rate. anyway, since i'm on their email list, i got a notification of this free simulcast they were showing of verdi's requiem last friday. basically the orchestra was playing in the main hall, and there was live video feed in a separate hall with food and an open bar. it's this new thing they're promoting to try and bridge the gap between the symphony and people under the age of 40. anyhow, me and a friend ross from citadel went and watched for a bit, but then decided to get late tickets which i had read online were $10. however, the box office people had no idea what we were talking about, so we couldn't get the tickets and went back into the free simulcast, which was still fine, but not nearly as good as being in the main hall. anyway, towards the end of the night, this dso public relations guy came up to us and started asking us what we thought, etc. etc. and we told him what we liked/didn't like. the main thing that came up was that we would rather be in the main hall, but even $15 was a little more than we were willing to pay. i told him that in toronto tickets were only $10 and he was like "i know, i work for the tso as well". his name was tom allen and he has a radio broadcast too, or something. anyway, he said he would let his people know that the $5 difference was significant. two days later, i got another email from the dso and tickets for several shows in the next couple of weeks are only $10! haha, i like to think that we were the direct cause of that, but who knows? back to friday night. after tom allen spoke to us, a manager of some sort came up to us and handed us his business card. he said "i heard you were trying to get late passes to the performance but weren't able to, so here are two free tickets to any other subscription show for the rest of the season". woohoo! so in december we have $68 tickets for a performance of the four seasons.

okay, those are all the updates for now. blogging takes too much time! anyway, things to look forward to in the next little while: missions conference happening at citadel this weekend, visiting london in a few weeks, going to boston for an slp convention mid-november.

not just for the china man...

on the weekend i went to the grand opening of a laundromat around the corner. they were offering unlimited free laundry so i went with my three loads, which would have cost me $6 to wash and dry in the laundry room of my building. as soon as i walked in i realized i was in for a wait. the place was packed with people and their 50 loads of laundry each. but i figured i could just use the waiting time to study and i would save some money while i was at it.

i signed in (we were all given call numbers), sat down on a window ledge and took out my pediatric dysphagia text. as i was reading i saw out of the corner of my eye a familiar looking red white and blue bag. i looked up and saw a huge pile of maybe 15 hung bak lam bags full of laundry! all of them belonged to this african american lady sitting next to me and we struck up a conversation. i told her i'm chinese and that in hong kong and china we use those bags all the time and then i asked her what they're called in english. she said "you speak english real good--how long you been here?" and then "they're just laundry bags from the dollar store". and today i definitely saw a homeless man with a hung bak lam, too. so apparently they're common here, which i find hilarious :D (on a somewhat related note, what's with little black girls and hello kitty? when i see non-asians with sanrio stuff, it just blows my mind)

well in the end i waited at the laundromat two whole hours and then managed to do two wash cycles before i couldn't take the waiting anymore and just took my wet clothes and dried them in my building. so i saved two dollars. woohoo.