Hi-Ho-Hi-Ho It's Off to Work I Go

Go Terriers!
Give me a T.
Give me an E.
Give me an R…....
anyone tired of this yet?
Go Boston Terriers!

I love my new job and I love the institution, Boston University. I love it so much I may never want to leave…well, that might be a stretch (have you seen the weather here today? I’m melting all over my key board). Back to my point: I love BU because from what I can tell so far they do a great job taking care of employees (classified and unclassified) and seemingly make an extraordinary commitment to students with teaching excellence and educational support. Boston University is ALSO a world renowned research institution…’world renowned’…go figure. Turns out that BU is kind of an amazing institution to be affiliated with…huh. I am going to just being grateful and hope that they don’t realize who I am anytime soon and realize that they’ve made some mistake!

My first days of work so far have involved orientations, meetings, and generally getting set up at my desk and with IT. Today I spent a bit of time actually working. This involved locating and selecting literature for reading as I prepare a little mini project for a future conference. The topic involves the role of physical activity and social support in cancer survivors and how ones participation in physical activity differs by years since diagnosis and how physical activity influences cancer survivor outcomes. This is the very rough, preliminary ideas and product of my work today, but I’ll keep you posted on how it develops. But for those of you who wondered what my days would be like, today involved researching articles, reading and looking at available data. Go Terriers!

You can see here that my office is located in a very urban area, in the South End neighborhood of Boston. I take the Orange line train to get to Massachusettes Avenue, followed by a very short bus ride down ‘mass ave’…aka, Massachusetts Avenue (‘locals’ call it mass ave, so I will too) where I get off at Boston Medical Center.

From here I enter the “Cross Town” building (this is the name of my building) and take the elevator (locals call this the ‘elevator’) to the fourth floor.
Here are a few pics of my little workspace.


In my department there are real offices with doors (for faculty, professors etc), large ‘cube’ workspaces (for post docs, research coordinators etc), and smaller ‘cubes’ for temporary students or research assistants. I was given a large ‘miranda’ cube workspace near a very large window. You can see from the pictures that my workspace is ample for research and writing, and the window with view of medical buildings are perfect for day dreaming, or I mean contemplating unique analytic and methodological techniques I will use. Go Terriers!