Overheard at Work #6

I love how discussions at meetings always degenerate just as the meeting ends. An example from this morning:

Person 1: We've submitted all of our paperwork [when things reopened at the start of the fiscal year] but it looks like it's at the bottom of the pile, so it'll probably take a couple of months to get processed.

Person 2: What? We weren't at the front of the line to submit it? We didn't camp out like to get Grateful Dead tickets?

Person 3: You know, they're not grateful anymore, people just call them the Dead these days.

Person 2: Well, yeah, that's cuz half of them are dead already.

Branch Chief: O-kay! It's 11 o'clock. If there's nothing else, meeting dismissed!

Overheard at Work #5

"I bought some pinecones for my house yesterday, and..."

Really? You bought them? Just...wow.

Overheard at Work #4

The office was abuzz this morning after the Kanye West-Taylor Swift debacle at last night's MTV Video Music Awards (and rightly so! Who picks on a teenager like that?), and my coworker pops into my office saying, "Hey, you would know this. What does 'keeping it real' mean?"

I'm a little bemused as to why I'd be so likely to know this, and a little sad to say I honestly have no idea what it means. Ideas, readers?

Overheard at Work #3

From the kitchen, I hear two people collide. Startled, one of them says:

"Well, I guess now I don't need to worry about retirement. You just scared me to death!"

commuters crack me up

A friend reminded me a few days ago it's been forever since I've written. Things have been busy - I graduated, went on vacation for a bit, started a new job, moved to a new house, and more, but (thankfully) it's starting to settle down again.

And I'm starting to get into a routine. As you might guess, that new job I mentioned entails a new commute. It seemed like a hellish change at first - my previous commute was all of a six minute walk. Counting elevator time and waiting at stoplights, I would leave my apartment at exactly 8:52am to get to work by 9. These days, not only do I have to be in by 8:30, but I have to leave my place nearly an hour earlier to get there on time. There’s a half-hour metro ride on the dreaded red line (wmata.com says it’s 20 minutes, but we all know better), and from there, a 20-minute walk to my building. Notice I say it seemed hellish at first. Now, strangely enough, I’m starting to like it, and the route itself is becoming autopilot. I’m actually able to take time to smell the roses, as they say. Or in this case, watch my fellow commuters (and unfortunately, smell some of them, too. Not quite so rosy. Please guys, when it’s 99 degrees outside, either shower or don’t sit next to me).

Which brings me to today. I thought it was just an ordinary Tuesday morning as I slipped on my iPod, started blasting the Taylor Swift, and began walking in time to it, feeling like the main character in a dance movie montage (c’mon, you know you do it too). But the characters I encountered, and the fact that I actually paid attention to them, made it just a little less ordinary. It all started with my decision to act like a Rockville local – when in fact I basically know nothing but the route to and from my office, and from my office to Panera – and take the shortcut path behind the hedge that cuts approximately two seconds off my travel time. As it happened, this decision probably added five seconds today as I nearly got bowled over by the guy running to the metro.

I should explain something here. I don’t know why, but the sight of adults in business clothes running always makes me laugh. Particularly when they’re carrying a briefcase, when there’s no apparent deadline (today’s guy was nowhere near the signs saying when the next train was), when they’re not doing that cutesy/annoying skipping thing that women in heels do, but full-on sprinting. This guy fit all three of those. But I have to give him credit – my sudden appearance in his direct path did not faze the guy one bit.

Little did I know this would not be my first near-collision of the day. It seemed today was a big day for Rockville-ans to take the metro (don’t you all have cars?) and they were all so eager to get into the spirit that they started obeying the metro escalator rules a whole block before the station. To be specific, they were walking on the left side of the sidewalk like it was their job. Correct me if I’m wrong, but since we drive on the right side of the road, we walk on the right side of the sidewalk, right? The result of all this was multiple surprised looks at me as I jumped onto the grass to avoid being hit. I know you’re excited, guys, but you’re not on the escalator yet!

Anyway, I made it past that obstacle course and it seemed like my fellow pedestrians had calmed down. But it was a morning of misconceptions. I’d just turned off of Rockville Pike when I encountered part two of running men in business clothes. Like most sequels, this guy totally outdid his predecessor. Not only did he have the bag and no obvious deadline, he was wearing a suit (a suit!) and running across the middle of Old Georgetown Road. As anyone who’s ever walked with me knows, I have nothing against jaywalking. In fact, I embrace it; it’s my little way of rebelling. But across a four-lane road during rush hour? That takes guts.

After making sure my suited friend survived his little sprint, I continued down Old Georgetown when I had my first run-in with a driver. It was bound to happen; unlike DC, this area is ruled by cars. Which the driver I was about to cross in front of (at the cross walk – I know where I can and can’t jaywalk) was well aware of and clearly wanted to make sure I knew, too. She was a mild-mannered motherly type emerging out of a shopping center parking lot, so I thought I was safe. Not so. I take one step off the sidewalk and she whips her head around, looks at me deer-in-headlights style, steps on the accelerator, and zooms off in front of me. You think I’m exaggerating? I wish I was.

I continued along my usual path, which for the next several minutes was pretty uneventful, until I hit Executive Boulevard. Like a Silicon Valley office park (seriously, it’s like I’m back in California everytime I go to work), this street has driveways leading to each building complex about every hundred feet. Thanks to crosswalks and the somewhat bewildering fact that hardly anyone seems to actually turn into these driveways, it’s generally pretty safe. Although, like California, you have your usual set of people who don’t signal when they turn, what makes things a little more suspenseful in this part of town is that rare breed of people who do the opposite: they signal but don’t turn.

Fairly harmless other than sometimes making me wait unnecessarily, these people fascinate me. I just can’t figure out the motivation. I’ve gone through several possibilities. Maybe it’s left over from a curvy road or an earlier turn, but that doesn’t really apply when the road is stick-straight and has been for quite some time. Maybe they hit it accidentally during a rousing session of driver’s-seat aerobics, but wouldn’t you notice the sudden clicking, or I don’t know, the fact that your hand hit something? Maybe they’re just overachievers, all prepared five hundred feet before the actual turn. That one’s a possibility, I suppose. Unlike the ones who don’t signal at all, these guys definitely aren’t lazy; they’re actively doing something they don’t need to do and gain no benefit from doing. Maybe it’s like my jaywalking, just their little way of doing something they’re not supposed to do before beginning a long day at work. After all, drivers need to rebel once in a while, too, don’t they?

don't even know what to say

Anyone who's ever taken a psychology class would be able to tell the story of Kitty Genovese and the societal observation it gave birth to, known as the Genovese effect or the bystander effect. Her story is not easily forgotten. According to Michael Dorman of NewsDay, her 1964 murder in Queens - witnessed by 38 neighbors, none of whom acted to help her - became "a symbol of Americans' failure to get involved." Two weeks after the murder, the New York Times' Martin Gansberg described that failure to get involved as an example of the callousness and apathy of the big-city environment.

But why am I writing about this today? Today, on my way home in my own big-city environment, my mind occupied by trivialities like my upcoming thesis, I saw the Genovese effect proven wrong. It was about an hour ago, and I'm still shaken, but I'm hopeful. Two men were hanging around the benches near my home metro station, and as usual, I took care to avoid eye contact with the loiterers, thinking you could never be too careful after dark in the city. As I got closer, I noticed that there was a third man on the ground. The back of his head was bleeding freely, and his eyes were closed. Glancing up at the two men who were standing, I noticed a little ruefully that they were not in fact loitering, but discussing what to do.

I stopped to ask what had happened and what I could do, and thinking about it now, I'm so glad it didn't occur to me to walk on. Apparently, he'd hit his head pretty hard and fallen. Neither of his helpers knew him, I realized, as he regained consciousness and looked up at them in confusion. Within a few minutes, and with the support of nearly every person who passed us and stopped to help, an ambulance was on its way, and we'd propped up his head with a towel from a nearby building, coached him not to move, and enlisted a security guard's help. The man was conscious and talking - though a little incoherently - and it looked like he'd be okay. Though I didn't do anything useful but summarize the situation for the security guard, it was only after her arrival that I felt I could leave.

And I wasn't the only one, I was happy to notice. All but one of the passersby stopped, and not one of us who stayed felt comfortable doing nothing to help. And thanks to the help of total strangers, I'm pretty sure he'll be okay. As unfortunate as the event was - and I still don't know what he hit his head on or how - it's so good to confirm my faith in the people around me. I saw tonight that we are basically good, even if we lose sight of that once in a while. In a big-city environment, we're so ready to isolate ourselves with iPods and the Express on the morning commute, and so quick to clutch our bags when a friendly tourist smiles or says hello. But when it counts, we do care about and help each other, and even better, we don't think twice about it.

gchattiquette

Isn't it funny how a website or piece of software can acquire a personality? I came across this article a while back that discussed the different types of kids - back then, it was mostly kids - who used Facebook and MySpace. The past couple of years, I've seen the same sort of thing happen with instant messaging applications. AIM's the one you keep since you've had it since middle school, Skype's the one you downloaded when your close friends started studying abroad, and gchat's the one that's sort of legit, the one you can sneakily use at work. Because hey, I was just checking my email! It's not my fault my friend decided to IM me.

Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course...

However, there's one pesky (but sometimes, so convenient) thing about gchat with great potential for awkwardness. You know what I'm talking about. That option that for most of us came with the default settings, which Gmail phrases as "Automatically allow people I communicate with often to chat with me and see when I'm online." Combined with another default setting, this one called "Show in chat list: Most popular", this means that exchanging emails with someone can put them in your chat list, and you on theirs. The kicker? If your usage of gchat is uneven, or if your friends are always online and theirs aren't, you might not even know it. It's fine in a lot of situations, like when a friendship develops naturally or you don't want to be so obvious as to "want to be able to chat with" a crush. But when that person is the random guy who bought your couch on Craigslist or the HR contact at the company you want to work for, this may not be the greatest thing.

Which brings me to my story. A couple of weeks ago, Michelle Obama came to speak to the employees of the federal agency where I work. After standing in line for an hour and in the room for another hour, and seeing her for an (oh so worth it) fifteen minutes, I came back to my office cube ready to share the excitement and discuss what she wore and what she said (yes, in that order. This is Michelle O. we're talking about, after all). Naturally, I changed my gchat status to "I saw Michelle Obama today!" In the flurry of IMs that followed in the next few hours - it was the most popular I'd been in ages - I noticed a couple of interesting things:

• First of all, the chat list unevenness I referred to earlier came up. One group of my friends, when planning an event, tends to send out mass emails and "reply all" with anything they have to say. As a result, though I hardly know some of them, I have exchanged a number of emails with all of them. Their IMs asking about Michelle were what first alerted me to the fact that I can show up on someone's chat list without that person showing up on mine. I wondered how many previous status messages they had seen, mentally going through what I may have unknowingly revealed in the past few days.
  
• Secondly, people have two distinct ways of responding to an interesting gstatus. They either refer to it explicitly, saying something like "you saw Michelle? I'm so jealous!"; or they take it as part of the context, saying something like "awesome!", which would make no sense if, say, my chat list was minimized (as it often is) and I forgot what it said (as I often do). To draw a Facebook parallel, it's the difference between writing on someone's wall in response to an interesting status, and commenting on it directly.
  

So, readers, what other gchattiquette rules have you noticed? There's got to be plenty.

high school never ends

Bowling for Soup had it right. In their 2006 single “High School Never Ends”, the pop-punk band sang, “And you still don’t have the right look, and you don’t have the right friends, nothing changes but the faces, the names, and the trends…high school never ends.” Whether a person’s role in that social hierarchy can change is a question I’ll leave for another day, but I think we can all agree that several years out of high school, the hierarchy still exists.

You see it all the time. Instead of going to the office today, my division of about 12 people had a day-long retreat. It wasn’t quite as cheesy as it sounds – no trust falls or awkward icebreakers, thank goodness – but there was time for a little reflection and honesty. During a discussion of lessons learned this year, one of my coworkers said her biggest lesson was that she “just didn’t fit in.” As I’d gotten to know her over the previous months, I had sensed a frustration in her general demeanor and under-the-breath comments, but to hear it stated so candidly and in words a teenager might use made it much more real, and much more poignant. It wasn’t a matter of time, I knew. She’d worked there for years and felt that way; I’d worked there eight months and felt perfectly at home.

It’s just as apparent in our personal lives. Last year, one of my friends often confided in me about the group of students in her graduate program. Of the 20 or 25 students, there was a “core group” of about six or seven, and my friend began the program as one of them. They’d spend nights and weekends at each other’s apartments, and as my friend said with some hesitation, spent a good part of their conversations making fun of their classmates. As the year went on, she told me about how one girl got systematically excluded from the group. Whether it was consciously planned or unspoken, that girl gradually stopped being invited, her calls stopped being returned, and she eventually found other friends. Hearing the story, I felt like it was something out of Mean Girls, but these students were in their early twenties at least.

Sadly, but perhaps not too surprisingly, my friend was the next one to be pushed out of the group. I saw her spend several Friday and Saturday evenings choosing outfits but waiting for a phone call to be returned before changing into them – a phone call that many nights, never came. Like her classmate before her, she eventually decided to find others who appreciated her more.

But that insecurity never goes away, I realized. This past weekend, the core group seemed to change their mind about my friend, and invited her out with them for the first time in several months. She was genuinely excited about it – and she is not an excitable girl. I watched the same scene from last year play out again as she mused over what to wear and when to leave, and crossed my fingers that they’d be nice this time. Luckily, they were, but what struck me more than their sudden change of mind was her sudden change of mind. Once they wanted her back, last year’s inexplicable rejection seemed forgotten. I cautiously asked her about it, and she explained to me that while she did remember what happened, “with this group, it’s better to be in than out.”

It’s a pragmatic answer, yes, but there’s no way feelings don’t get involved. You could see it in my coworker’s avoidance of eye contact while she admitted to feeling left out, and in my friend’s disappointment in not being called back. And yet we persist in wanting to be part of these groups that reject us – why? And why do we blame ourselves for what is more likely the sum of group dynamics, chance, and self-preservation? I’m definitely guilty of it myself. When I get rejected from anything, be it a romantic prospect or a job interview, the first thing I do is wonder what I did wrong. The second thing I do is resolve to win the person over. It’s completely unhealthy, and we should be beyond it, and we know it.

Easier said than done, though, right?

another great quote

From a seminar on health communication I went to a few days ago...

"The internet is the first thing humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand. It's the biggest experiment in anarchy we've ever had." --Eric Schmidt, Google

the great text purge

I was chatting with a friend yesterday, catching up about our respective weekends when she gave me some unfortunate news:

[friend]: i got dumped again last week

She explained the story, we commiserated about the inexplicable things guys can do, and then began discussing future steps and attractive new prospects. And then she said something that got me thinking:

[friend]: and then i was cleaning out texts from him

Oh man, I thought, understanding how that goes. With the evolution of mobile technology, email accounts with unimaginable capacity, and Facebook records and traces going back a few years, severing a relationship is no longer so simple as the stereotypical exchanging of borrowed items after a break - that cathartic throwing out of pictures together, old gifts, and other mementos. These days, there's a whole host of other records of the past, mostly casual little things you wouldn't ordinarily bother to save if your computer or cell phone didn't do it for you.

It's usually a good thing - great when you want to return to and savor a funny moment or an unexpectedly sweet conversation. But what happens when you don't? It's an interesting dilemma. One option is to go through the electronic equivalent of throwing everything out and delete all texts and emails, de-friend him (or her) on all the social networks, and so on. Unless it was a real heartbreak, though, that seems a little extreme. And presumably, the relationship was good for most of its duration. Wouldn't deleting absolutely everything be a rejection of those good times, too?

Unfortunately, the alternative can be just as awkward. Having a former love interest's texts lounge around your inbox and their gchat status hover at the top of your contacts list is an unnecessary (and just plain annoying) reminder that they still exist, especially in the immediate aftermath. Later, though, it becomes part of your history. Once you're over it, remembering a date who thought you looked great that night or some affectionate teasing about your rival sports teams - it can be nice.

So comment away, kids. What approach do you take?

Today calls it quits. now it's your turn, viewers.

(second migrated post from Target Population. original post available here.)

I was sipping my coffee and watching the Today Show earlier this week when hosts Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira introduced a new miniseries within the show called “Today Calls it Quits” (available here on AOL Video). As I saw over the next several minutes, the series – produced in partnership with national nonprofit the American Legacy Foundation – aimed to help smokers kick the habit by providing medical information about the dangers of smoking and the benefits of quitting, concrete solutions and tips, and helpful resources.

As a public health student and former American Lung Association intern, I was immediately intrigued. In its first installment on January 29, 2009, the show followed two current smokers through interviews and laboratory demonstrations in a doctor’s office. Their experiences were interspersed with conversations with other health personnel that explained the immediate and long-term benefits of quitting smoking. At one point, after seeing on a filter the chemical effects of smoking a single cigarette, self-proclaimed social smoker Maurizio reacted simply but honestly. “Wow,” he said, pausing for a moment, “that scares me.”

Maurizio’s reaction and self-preservation speak to just one of the benefits of quitting that the American Legacy Foundation hopes to convey in the series, according to their press release. With two initial installments broadcasted on January 29 and 30 and on-air follow-ups scheduled for March, the series profiles three parents and other adults who aim to quit for other reasons as well, such as setting a good example for their children. In addition to TV, the effort includes online components and partners as well, including placement on the Today Show’s homepage, online chatting capability, and links to quit plan website BecomeAnEX.org.

The kind of information presented on Tuesday’s installment was nothing new – a filter blackened by exposure to cigarette smoke is a familiar image from our elementary school science and health classes, and I recognized the benefits of quitting from a popular poster accompanying the 2004 Surgeon General’s Report. What was new about the campaign, however, was its form. Antismoking public service announcements (PSAs) have been around for ages, as have socially conscious episodes addressing health issues as part of popular sitcoms and family dramas. Much has been said in recent years about the health communication potential of telenovelas – how they have been used to bring up issues and convey health information, and how they can further be leveraged.

But this was my first exposure to health messaging within a fact-based show. Its placement caught me off guard, as I’m sure it did others, and in our era of media oversaturation, getting the audience’s attention by surprising them is a great first step. It included the personal stories of a variety of individuals, aiming for and achieving relatability. The resources included at the end of the segment gave viewers something concrete and measurable to do. All in all, it seems to be a promising, innovative effort and I’m curious to see what will come of it.

first, do no harm. what next?

(migrating over a couple of my entries from my grad school's public health blog, Target Population)

When entering medical school, one of the first principles taught to aspiring physicians is primum non nocere, or as we may more commonly know it, “first, do no harm.” While it obligates doctors to avoid intentionally or unnecessarily risking their patients’ well-being – something we can all agree is positive – determining what sort of treatment they are obligated to provide is a little trickier.

CNN reported on a recent study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, which found that 45% of internists in the Chicago area had used a placebo in clinical practice at some point in their career. Placebos, usually in the form of sugar pills or another inert agent, are traditionally used as controls in studies testing the effectiveness of new treatments. The aim is to avoid patients reporting symptom improvement simply because they received medication and expect to feel better.

This “placebo effect” was mentioned in the scientific literature as early as 1920, and has been documented and tested since Henry Beecher’s 1955 paper “The powerful placebo.” Its strength is still being debated, but according to the JGIM study, 96% of physicians believed that placebos could have therapeutic effects, and up to 40% believed that positive physiological effects were possible for certain health conditions.

However, the fact remains that only 4% of those who used placebos in clinical practice admitted it to the patients involved. While knowing that your medication is inert would certainly diminish its potential effectiveness as a placebo, what about the motives involved? The majority of physicians administered them to patients who were upset, in order to calm them down. But once the patient is calmed down, what prevents doctors from admitting to the treatment after the fact? The ethics of keeping the patient in the dark even then is at questionable at best.

starbucks wisdom

Saw this on the back of a co-worker's Starbucks this morning and I thought it was a gem:

"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating -- in work, in play, in love."--The Way I See It, #76

strictly an observer

Today is Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. May he rest in peace.

As someone who stood up openly for the rights of others, his legacy makes me think about my own way of dealing with injustices, from the big ones that shape people's entire lives to the little ones that make or break their day. When it comes to conflict, I tend to be an observer. When the stakes aren't high - and let's face it, in my fairly mundane life, they usually aren't - being an observer is way more fun. It's a lot easier to make snarky comments, egg on both sides, and note lapses in logic and consistency when you're an outsider. You're everyone's confidante and no one's enemy. You don't have to worry about it. It's a pretty good life.

Most of the time. As Penny Lane said in Almost Famous, "...never take it seriously. If you never take it seriously, you'll never get hurt. If you never get hurt, you'll always have fun." But on days like today, when we honor MLK and other symbols of today's safer, more equitable (though far from perfect) world, I wonder if forgetting the fun and letting yourself get hurt once in a while can be a good thing. I should give it a try.

oh so exotic

Last night, I was chatting with a friend about music, and he mentioned how he thought M.I.A. and the lead singer from CSS ("Music is My Hot Hot Sex" from that 2007 iPod commercial) were similar. I asked how - I love M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" but that iPod commercial usually prompted me to either hit the mute button or brush my teeth, depending on the time of day - and he said they were both exotic female singers. A quick Wikipedia check showed me that one was Indian and the other was half-Japanese.

Being a second-generation Indian born and raised in Northern California, neither sounded all that exotic to me. But it happens all the time. I can't tell you the number of times I've been at a bar and some guy has excitedly said to me, "Are you Indian? I studied there for a year," or "I have an Indian friend," or something along those lines. And I never know how to react. I mean, really? Am I supposed to be impressed by that? Does it make it more likely that you'll make friends with another one, such as me? (Is friendship what you're really looking for, anyway?) Now if you said you had a movie star friend, you might have my attention. Don't get me wrong, I've read the Game, I know you're trying to make a connection, and I appreciate that. But a simple "hi" will do. This sort of thing is actually a turnoff.

It happens in other situations as well. Several years ago, I went to a picnic with my mom and little sister. We didn't really know anyone, and being at that funny early teenage age where we were too old to run around with the kids, my sister and I got roped into awkward small talk with a (well-intentioned, I'm sure) lady there. It ended up being half an hour of awed questions about our ethnicity peppered with random facts from her old history books. Like the bar guys, I'm sure she meant well and was just trying to be friendly, but there was plenty more to talk about. My sister and I are not boring people, and whatever happened to the old standby, "So what grade are you in?", anyway?

And it can have stronger consequences than annoying a potential new acquaintance. A friend of mine was dumped a few months back by a guy for whom, she was convinced, she was "his wild Asian oat." That theory hadn't occurred to me - I was more inclined to simply call him an all-around jerk, out of loyalty - but it made me wonder. If it was true, how far can the novelty of being exotic go? How far should it go? What happens when it wears off?

And what are the morals of this sort of novelty, anyway? I have to admit that I consciously seek out friends who are different from me; the novelty of their experiences, personality, and hobbies makes them interesting. Is my choosing them for those criteria any different than their choosing me for my ethnicity? In short, are there more and less appropriate reasons for choosing a friend, or do the ends justify the means?

Overheard at Work #2

"I had a long island iced tea...they put so much alcohol in that! It's probably just a little bit of iced tea and the rest is alcohol! But anyway, I had a ball, I had a ball..."

I don't think it needs any context :)