Slumber Party in Kenya!

I just bought 4 tickets to Rwanda! Unfortunately we have an 11 hour layover in Kenya but I anticipate that we will all be so tired that at that point we'll be at the "everything is funny" stage. Looks like we'll be having a slumber party in Kenya!
So it appears that I will be returning to Kibogora,Rwanda with a wonderful team of health care professionals. The team consists of a family medicine doctor, a fellow nursing professor and a nutritionist. I will be delivering the completed trauma curriculum. My friend Lisa (the doctor) and I will be developing some teaching materials on basic cardiology for the hospital staff as they just recently got their first EKG machine.
Melba,the other nursing professor, will be working with the nurse managers on quality improvement strategies and Dorothy (the nutritionist) will be working with the child survival program. I also plan to do a little networking and note taking for possible future work on my dissertation. Stay tuned for another round of "Muzungu Moments."

They Should Put a Warning Label on These Things

I think there should be a warning label on graduate education, esp. doctoral education. I've heard that doctoral education is less about learning certain things and more about becoming a certain kind of person. It's true... Doctoral education is an experience that will change the way you see the world, think about the world and communicate with the world forever. I can't say that's a bad thing but it's not an entirely good thing either. There is danger of becoming indecisive; instead of becoming more concrete, many things become more ambigous. The people who make up degree programs and decide prerequisits, objectives and requirements; the people who accredit these same programs are people no different than you and me. This a scarey thought in my mind. Embarking on this process also has potential to affect the way you are able to relate (or perhaps more likely, not relate) to others. How do you make your new paradigm compatible with function in the world you live in? It would be interesting to do a study on students persuing a PhD to examine the life changes they experience during and immediately after PhD journey. Did they experience any major changes in their relationships with family, friends and collegues? Did they change jobs? What would they put warning labels on?
I asked one student what she would put a warning label on and we ended up having a really interesting conversation. What life experiences would you put a warning label on and why?