Before starting at MSPP, I had been to Boston only twice in my life: once when I had a layover at Logan airport, and then again when I came into town for my interview at MSPP. So, when it was time for me to find an apartment, my wife and I had no idea where to begin. After a lot of help from my mom and some helpful real estate agents who I met through craigslist posts, we found a nice apartment in a quiet neighborhood. We've stayed in the same building ever since. I like living in Boston quite a bit. It's big enough that there's always something to do, but small enough that it's easy to get around. There's a lot of diversity, which means there are great restaurants everywhere. I've found that as long as sports and/or driving are not involved, Bostonians are wonderfully friendly and interesting.

For the second Saturday afternoon in a row, I'm hanging out at home with my wife with a pizza on the way and a hockey game about to begin. It's a pretty good way to unwind after a long week.

Most MSPP students seem to be pretty tech savvy; almost all of us have laptops, many of us use smartphones, and we do the vast majority of our research online. This means that instead of perusing the shelves or card catalogues at the school’s library, we’re more likely to browse through online databases, (which MSPP subscribes to), from the comfort of our living rooms. I was never quite able to master the Dewey Decimal System, and I can never find anything on a shelf (just ask my wife, she has a million stories of critical groceries that I was unable to find at the supermarket), so I love digital research.

Yet, in a way, it’s almost too easy to find sources. If I type in a few key words into a database search, I’ll have access to hundreds of related articles. I generally save many of these to my hard drive, and then I am left to comb through the many articles and weed out unhelpful information. This can be tedious.

Unfortunately, my wife's father, Barry, passed away last Friday. He had suffered from a number of health problems for a long time, so his death was not unexpected, but of course, this did not make it any less sad. Barry was a great guy, who, although very quiet, was friendly, polite, and had a great sense of humor. He was a tremendously skilled athlete and businessman, and a loving father and husband. I miss him already, and I know that everyone else who knew him feels the same way.

It's only Tuesday, but I am already exhausted. I had an interview at 9 this morning at a potential fourth year intenrship site, and while I was happy to have the opportunity to interview, I usually get to sleep in on Tuesdays, and I was less excited about missing my late morning slumber. Currently, I'm finishing the last third of my shift at Joseph Smith. Thankfully, today's schedule was fairly light, so now I have time to drink some tea, relax a bit, and of course, write this post.

Last month, I met with my doctoral project committee chairman to discuss my progress thus far (or lack thereof). We discussed my topic area, which I’ll describe in a bit, and he gave me some valuable tips for finding relevant information in the clinical literature. Before leaving, I agreed to complete an annotated outline of my literature review by Presidents’ Day. I’ve procrastinated pretty badly so far, and now I really need to get to work.

The literature review is often described as the most difficult component of the doc project. The lit review is important; it summarizes the current state of research and clinical knowledge about one’s topic, and it helps to justify the need for further research. Essentially, with one’s lit review, he/she hopes to say to the reader: “Here’s what we know about this topic so far, and here’s a gap in that knowledge. My research is important because it will fill that gap.” The length of each literature review is different, but in general, they are about 40-60 pages, and they tend to involve at least 60 citations. Yuck.

Every Tuesday, I have two back-to-back four hour shifts at the Joseph M Smith Community Health Center. At Joseph Smith, each individual therapy session is 45 minutes, and us interns are encouraged to schedule five sessions during each shift. This means that in an ideal world, I would see ten patients in eight hours today.

Four days after my last entry, I’ve pretty much gotten back to regular life. I’ve completed most of the readings that I need to do, and although I still have some assignments looming over my head, but I’m not behind any more than your garden variety grad school procrastinator, so I’m feeling pretty good.

Now that it’s the weekend, I find myself once again trying to balance the three conflicting goals that I always have for my down time: getting work done, resting, and being active. I’m still recovering from the wedding festivities and my first week back in town, and it’s snowing, so I’m not feeling particularly energetic right now. It’s 2:00 and I’m proud to say that I still haven’t changed out of pajamas. Earlier today I did some readings for my directed study in women’s psychosexual development, and now I’m happily watching hockey with my wife from the comfort of our couch.

Even though our Spring semester started last week, I have yet to attend my first class, or even take a look at a syllabus. I like to think that I have a pretty good excuse; last week, I married my high school sweetheart. The experience was wonderful from start to finish, and I could go on and on about it, but that’s probably a little outside of this blog’s focus. Instead, I’ll briefly answer the questions that everyone seems to be asking me: yes, my wife and I are exhausted but very happy; no, the ring doesn’t feel weird or take much adjustment; and no, other than the recent excitement, married life doesn’t really feel much different (so far, anyway).

Of course, now that the festivities are over, it’s time for me to return to the real world. Before leaving town for the wedding, I wrote myself a note, which I read upon my return. The note reminded me that: 1) If I wanted clean underwear, laundry had to be done immediately, 2) I needed to write my first blog post, and 3) My first class was Wednesday, and I better start catching up on missed work. You’ll all be relieved to know that I’ve taken care of item one, and obviously, I’m working on item two at the moment. Preparing for classes, however, has been on the backburner, and once I post this blog entry I really need to get to work.