week five
july 11 - july 15


Monday, July 11:

This morning, we had a meeting with the Baystate Medical Team to go over what I had made so far for the Adult Outpatient Chemotherapy project.  We made a lot of progress, discussing the agents involved and exactly what artifacts were passed around.  We even got a few celebrity appearances: Julie, the Triage Medical Assistant, and Nancy, the Business Office Supervisor (the BOS).  They came into the meeting and provided completely different perspectives on the Chemo process, so it was obvious I had a lot of work to do.  It's okay--this is an iterative process, and it's more important that I get the correct process with the right exception handlers than I get it in a timely manner.  We tentatively scheduled a walkthrough visit for this Friday afternoon because very few patients would be there, if any at all. 

I need a haircut!!  And we had a LASER lab BBQ on Saturday.  That was really fun!  I made a peanut-butter chocolate pie, which I didn't think would turn out too well but ended up being just fine.  How can you go wrong with peanut butter and chocolate, right?  The food was good, company was great, and we got to play pool.  And they made me play the piano....boo!  But I was glad we got to have the BBQ while I'm here in Amherst.



Tuesday, July 12:

Made some changes to AO Chemo today, based on what I heard yesterday.  I also went to Rachel's Blood Transfusion Process walkthrough, which was really helpful because at every step, we evaluated the use of LittleJIL symbols, and I got a much better understanding of the handling of exceptions, and when handlers are or are not needed.  I took a lot of good notes, so I'll be sure to use those tips in my own AO Chemo process diagrams. 

I also met with Lori today for our weekly meeting.  We talked mostly about graduate schools (again).  I guess it's just always on my mind, and she's so knowledgeable...after every meeting with her, I feel more confident that I'm doing the right thing here by learning about graduate school and research in general.  I'm not entirely sure what I want to do in graduate school, but I like Software Engineering a whole lot.  It makes sense, I get to work with people, and I can apply what I'm working on to an actual product.  Very exciting stuff.  Anyway, Lori and I talked about the things I still need to do to prepare for graduate school, and made a long list of schools I'm slightly interested in.  I say 'slightly interested' because I don't know enough about any one school to even decide if I'm interested in it or not.  Being this far away from home, I really miss my family and friends.  I didn't think I had anything holding me back in Maryland, but I'm quickly finding out that there is no place like home.  I don't know if I want to go really far away for graduate school, only to start all over again in a city that I don't know away from the people that I love.  I wouldn't even consider applying for full-time jobs far from home because everything I need is right there...I guess I'll just apply and decide later?  That sounds like a decent plan...




Wednesday, July 13:

I missed the Process meeting today!  I thought it was at 3, but it got rescheduled for 10 instead, and I'm not on the mailing list so I didn't get the memo.  Boo!  Other than missing that meeting, I just worked on some AO Chemo stuff, and I brought a lunch and packed some really stale Doritos.  Very disappointing.  But I'm all into packing my lunch these days to save money...tupperware is where it's at!  And I'm going to see the Fabulous 5 tonight!  Or the Fantastic 4, whatever my roommate wants to see.  I want to see just about EVERY movie that's out right now...there's just the problem of finding somebody to go with me.



Thursday, July 14:

The Fabulous 4 was horrible...so disappointing....that's my thought for the day.  But it's gonna be a good day because my Dunkin Donuts has my order memorized...so as soon as they see me, they have my medium raspberry cream and sugar with an extra splenda all ready!  Cool!!


Anyway, I did a lot of "real work" today.  Worked on the AOChemo diagrams a little, and I sent 2 for Lee to use in a proposal to an insurance company for additional funding on the project.  Rachel thought they were the most interesting from the AOChemo process, so she and I tweaked them a little bit more to make them appropriate for the paper.  I'm glad my diagrams were of some use!  Today, I also started making a glossary of terms I'm using in my process so that it will force the vocabulary usage to be consistent, including the action verbs, agents, artifacts, and exceptions.  I hope it will be really useful instead of more confusing.  I'm going to meet with Raunak next week to talk about the agents in the process, including the team of agents part which is particularly tricky.

I had lunch with Maria today...that girl is cool!!  And we're going to take Laura, the other DMP student out to lunch before she's done for the summer (by the end of July). 
 


Friday, July 15:

Friday Friday Friday!  Woo hoo!


We had our weekly Medical Process meeting this morning, so that was interesting as always.  Beth came in and provided her perspective as a Nursing Instructor, and she brought some diagrams which she called "algorithms" and other ones she called "processes".  There is a definite language barrier between the field of Medicine and Computer Science.  Apparently, an "algorithm" in medicine is a very high-level plan of action: "if the patient has <this symptom>, perform <this treatment>, else perform <this treatment>".   The "process" is the description of steps involved in <this treatment>.  From a Computer Science perspective, it just seems like both are algorithms, but a "process" is just at a lower level with more detail, and an "abstract" is a broader, higher level algorithm.  It's important that we speak the same language, or the right language, depending on who our audience is.  Like when we write papers to be submitted to medical journals--we'd better make sure Medical Professionals can understand what we mean by "algorithm", and not to misinterpret its definition.  Heather is going to give me a demo of FLAVERS, which is a tool used for LittleJIL analysis, next week so that I can get a full appreciation of the other tools available in our lab.  Rachel is going to show me more about PROPEL, the Property Elucidation tool, when she gets back from vacation in two weeks.  Two weeks will be August!!!!