A Researcher

I thought I'd give you guys a little glimpse into what I do everyday. I'm a graduate student, so most of my day involves "research” (i.e. reading articles, conducting experiments, running simulations, processing data, drawing conclusions, determining data is meaningless, writing about it, going back to reading articles, etc…) My office is downtown at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. I’m lucky enough to have a desk right by the window where I can sit and gaze out onto Lake Michigan pretending to be deep in thought. :-)

The view out our office window is of the lovely Water Purification Plant next to Navy Pier (Navy Pier is blocked by a building). The RIC is that tall greenish building second up from the bottom right. I'm on the 14th floor.

Our lab is called Neuromechanics of Impaired Locomotion. The big scary looking robotic device is a machine used for walking rehab. We use it here for exploring what happens to someone after they’ve had a stroke and what new rehabilitation strategies we can develop to help them walk “normally” again.

It’s sometimes a very monotonous task of coming downtown everyday just to stare at my computer and get relatively little accomplished. But when I sit back and think of the big picture, I remember how blessed I am to be at such an awesome university and hospital working on cutting edge research that will {hopefully} have a big impact on people in the long run.

test driving a blog

Here it is! I have finally given in and created a BLOG.

For the past year, whenever I get a little “restless” while sitting at the computer (i.e. distracted from school and research), I’ve adopted a habit of checking several blogs of very interesting, entertaining, and creative people. And though I’m not a girl of many words or exceptional skills and talents, I thought I’d give it a try and share a bit of my life with you.

This is especially for those of you who {like me} need to take a break every once in a while from the daily routine. Feel free to take a peek into my life as I communicate who I am and the things I learn from day to day.