Update from the ACPM conference

So I was going to write about significant events for each day of the ACPM (American College of Preventive Medicine) conference, but I got too lazy. Here's significant events of the first two days:

1) Met my new residency director. LTC Cersovsky, the current WRAIR residency director, will be getting promoted (as happens in the Army) sometime this year, so MAJ Mancuso will be taking over. I got to meet him, and everyone who has worked with him says he's a really nice guy and very smart, so that'll be a good experience.

2) Met another OSU alum in Army preventive medicine. MAJ Schnabel is a 2002 OSU College of Medicine alum who is currently the director of the Global Emerging Infection Surveillance at the Army's research facility in Kenya. He has done some pretty exciting things with disease surveillance in Africa, which really makes me want to have his job someday. He now makes five OSU alums/future alums I know in preventive medicine in the Army (one resident at Madigan, one resident at WRAIR, a staff member at WRAIR, him, and me). Pretty impressive for a school that doesn't emphasize preventive medicine in the curriculum at all.

3) Impressed the MSS (Medical Student Section). We had our annual MSS meeting this morning, and the members who were there seemed rather impressed with stories from PNG. One of the girls had done some public health work in Tanzania and also sees herself doing a lot of international medicine in her career, so we had a very long talk about that while socializing tonight.

4) Discovered that I get to add another publication to my CV. The project I worked with at WRAIR during my preventive medicine month has been made into a poster (CPT Ahluwalia, the resident--and OSU alum--I worked with that month will be presenting).

5) Been invited to join in another research project. Another WRAIR resident (CPT Manos) invited me to join in a project that involved WRAMC interns (of which I will be next year). It'll probably lead to a publication in a few years.

6) Been welcomed to the RPS (Resident Physician Section). CPT Ahluwalia is the RPS president, and I think he's grooming me to follow in his footsteps (being as I'm a fellow WRAIR Buckeye and all), so he's been taking care of me during the conference and talked me into coming to the RPS meeting and is trying to get me to run for an officer position (as an intern!). He's also been trying to convince me to go to Johns Hopkins for my MPH, which is what he did.

7) Networking, networking, networking! I'm meeting so many interesting people with very interesting careers in the field, and I'm getting very excited about the possible things that I can do, both in the military and if I decide to leave when my commitment is up (in eight years).

So far, it's a really great conference, and I'm looking forward to learning more tomorrow. As for now, it's time for bed.