Quote from my notes below:

Strangely it took until Portola last weekend (~1.5 months post defense) for me to feel like I really have graduated - it was so nice to be in a festival environment with close friends and really being able to enjoy myself without the ever looming deadline of my defense.

I did it. I defended my dissertation, got married twice, went on a honeymoon to Bali, and somehow transitioned from student to employee. This year had more major life events compressed into it than any other, and I’m honestly still processing all of it.

Things I accomplished:

1. Defended my PhD dissertation (with a film crew!)
2. Got married twice (India in February, US in May)
3. Went on a honeymoon to Bali
4. Published and presented my IEEE BIBM paper in Istanbul
5. Presented to professors and funders at the Helsinki meeting
6. Attended Going Digital BHT conference in Phoenix and built my network
7. Submitted sleep quality paper for review
8. Co-authored and published a pre-registration template
9. Started part-time consulting with a digital mental health startup
10. Began staff researcher position at UCLA post-defense

Things I thought I’d have done by the end of September:

1. Secured a full-time industry job (2 months of applications, 0 interviews)
2. Known what I wanted to do post-grad with more certainty
3. Updated my website (I kept saying I would…)

What’s next:

1. Find a full-time role in digital mental health (targeting Series A startups, 50-100 people)
2. Potentially move to Chicago to try the midwest
3. Wrap up research projects and manuscripts
4. Successfully transition from academia to industry

With two weddings, a honeymoon, and my dissertation, attention has been on me pretty heavily this year. I’m honestly very thankful to see the love and support from people in my life, but I’m also so excited to have the time and space to celebrate others and come out of my self-centered hole.

The job hunt has been humbling. Two months of applications with zero interviews. It turns out showing strong credentials for a PhD-to-industry transfer is really hard on paper. I’ve gotten solid leads through conversations, but most companies have no positions for me. I spend 30-40% of my working hours on job hunting only to feel like nothing is happening. But I’m trying to reframe the next position as an experiment rather than what I’d built it up as - a defining moment for my career.

Looking back at five years, I’m proud I made it through. The imposter syndrome never fully went away, but I learned to work alongside it. I found a therapist. I kept surfing. I got married to my best friend. And somewhere between practice talks that ended in awkward silence and null results that made me question everything, I became a scientist.

From my acknowledgements slides of my defense

Friends

Shar

Family

Noodle

Notes

Below are real time, minimally altered notes taken during the past year. They capture my thoughts and feelings as they happened, organized by season and date range.

Fall 2023

September 5th to October 18th

Life Context

Been a lot of concerts, hang outs, surfing, hitting the gym, drinking coffee, and wedding planning. Went to see Kaytraminé and had an amazing time at Portola. Definitely a little concert-ed out for now and going beginning to refocus on grinding. I was working hard during all that, but I think the standard I held myself too had slowly shifted lower and lower until about last week I realized it just was not acceptable. I can and will do more. Massively cutting back on drinking during nights out, that really is delaying my body progression and interfering with work-life balance.

Research

My submission to IEEE BIBM was accepted as a short paper! This is going to be my first publication in my actual field of research. Its crazy that it took me over 4 years to do. The feeling of excitement faded quickly, I don’t think I really felt that happy about it, almost disappointed I haven’t already done more.

Anomaly detection related research is one of my methodological innovations, but unfortunately seems to keep not panning out. I’ve dedicated so much time and analysis to seeing where its utility lies. Anomalies that are picked up do seem interesting, but it seems like those days aren’t particularly influential to anything longer term like a self-reported survey. A key next step is relating it to EMA bursts and seeing if short term mood and other shifts relate to detected anomalies.

Lots of travel planned for the next couple of months: Ensanada for bachelor party at end of October, early November heading to Nashville to help out with a meeting for the professors funded by the Wellcome MCPsych program, mid November to Arizona for Going Digital Behavioral Health Tech conference, and in early December I go to Turkey for IEEE BIBM. Bout to be quite the fall quarter.

I’ve spent another chunk of my time working on a paper consolidating the fields position on next steps to improve digital sensing research for mental health. Its been really interesting thinking big picture about where the field should go. Most ideas are not mine, and it was great to have the workshop in march that got many of the stakeholders to put their thoughts down. This exercise of consolidating and rewording the insights of people much more experienced than me has been really interesting. Both fun and daunting.

Career

I’ve been talking to many people now about what I wanted to do post grad. While I thought I knew I wanted to work at a Series B company in digital mental health, it seems like the company I want to work for can’t exist. Either way been good practice at continuing to build an intentional network and scope out things. I really thought I’d know what I’m doing by now, especially given I’m planning to graduate in less than a year.

October 18th to December 17th

Life context

Been surfing a lot more these last 2 months, and I’m finally seeing some progress. I still suck, but I can now consistently catch and ride waves on my mid length board going a direction and not just straight. I’ve also started finding strength training really boring and have gone 1-2 times a week in favor of 2-3 surf sessions and 1-2 yoga sessions.

I’ve ignored doing a lot of wedding planning for a bit, felt kind of like most things were out of my control or like i’m waiting on other things before I can continue my own responsibilities. Everyone else (my mom, fiancée, her mom + aunt) has put in a lot of work towards it.

Research

Lots. of. Travel. I’ve had my best and worst conference experiences in the last month. Going Digital’s BHT conference in phoenix was great, definitely reaffirmed my desire to work in the behavioral health technology space and was able to learn a bunch + connect with people that will be important for me moving forward. IEEE BIBM in Istanbul, Turkey was a let down. It was nice to explore Istanbul, but the conference itself suffered from incredibly poor attendance with most speakers not even showing up to give their talks. My talk went well and was by pure luck done to a full room of ~20+ people, which was unexpected given most rooms had 3-5 people in them.

This last week I’ve returned from the main travels (Nashville, Phoenix, Ensenada, Istanbul) and feel like I can finally sink back in to actually doing research. Hoping that this month I’ll make real progress on the analyses I began pre-November but its really stagnated. Struggling to understand where to take this moving forward now that Anomaly detection hasn’t worked.

Iterated on drafts of the manuscript that is consolidating thoughts on how to move digital sensing for mental health forward. Figuring out the right place to publish and adjusting format/positioning of the manuscript accordingly.

Career

Did some really useful networking in Phoenix at GDBHT 2023 - feel like I’ve begun to see a path to getting a job I’d want to have after graduating. Its been good being able to talk to founders of some of the cool startups working in behavioral health tech and begin to understand how I could slot in. That conference was more industry focused than academia, which was actually really nice because people were very open to talking to a student since I was one of the few people not trying to sell them something. Also noticed that the people there were way more social just at a baseline. I still have only a rough idea of what I’d like to do post-graduation which is scary because in theory I’m planning to graduate by August.

Winter 2024

Dec 18th to January 13th

Life Context

Hurt my back in a mysterious incident while surfing late 2 days before driving back to the bay area for christmas time. Still healing 2.5 weeks later but its mostly back, have avoided surfing since and started doing more calisthenic type workouts and yoga to try heal the thang.

Wedding planning has gotten more and more real. Starting to learn Sangeet dances, India wedding invites prepped and sending out soon. Trying to find out the fits and such also taking up time. Had a relatively large scare/emergency in our friend group that we’re all still kind of recoiling/recovering from.

Research

I’ve continued to feel kind of lost but been chasing information on the relationship between wearable data, self-reported sleep, and depression symptoms. I think a story is emerging and my advisor thinks it could be grounds for a substantial paper. Presented at a lab meeting in the more psych/genetics/stats side and felt the whole time like I had no idea what I was doing - but the feedback helped fill in many of the gaps. My advisor confirmed I do still seem on track to graduate in August if I can get the work done, I was surprised since I hadn’t met with him in a while and felt like I had so little to show given all the travel and scientific confusion for the last hot minute.

Making progress on a paper about how we can make research using consumer devices for mental health actually reproducible, scalable, and productive. Been strangely tough for me to implement revisions but the process has been useful and reshaping how I’ve been conceptualizing the state of the field. Glad to be in a position to work on this paper.

Career

Had some calls with recruiters but also been kind of ghosted by connections I’d made that I felt really solid about. I still don’t know exactly what I’ll do post grad and very anxious about that, but trying to reframe the next position as an experiment rather than what I’ve built it up as – a defining moment for my career and my first step actually changing the world for the better in a big impactful way.

Jan 14th to Feb 28th

Life Context

Got married 🎉 just returned from India. What a flurry of an event, Feb 10th flew out, got back last night (Feb 27th). Prior to leaving its been deep grind mode, working a bit on each weekend, almost reaching burn out but pulling back for intentional relaxation, meditation, etc., to ensure balance. Ive been waking up at 6am every day (before going to India) even weekends and that has been pretty critical to maintaining more balance.

Research

Confirmed a clearer timeline on graduation (end of August). Went to Nashville end of January for the potentially last Data bootcamp for MCPsych. Been trying hard to put together the manuscript I’m planning to submit to Nature Digital Medicine. I think there is “something there” in a good way finally, but getting the write story continues to be a struggle for me. I’ve been very agressively avoiding any excess responsibilities outside of direct dissertation goals recently. Had to turn down some really cool opportunities as well. Really weird position to be in, makes me question how much I do want to graduate ASAP, but also that questioning does make me feel more strongly about it. I love the work I’m doing, I no longer want to do it as a student.

Spring 2024

Feb 29th to April 8th

Life Context

I spent a lot of the first 2 weeks after getting married both a little sick and a little burnt out from the wedding. I’m surprised by just how burnt out I was and how it effected me. I just didn’t do much work. I think a key limiting factor was I didn’t have clear deadlines and deliverables, since I had only made enough to get me through what needed to get done in India. I also lacked the brain space to think clearly in a big picture way and create those granular tasks, as a consequence I was working very reactively based on my email inbox or not at all. I also didn’t budget that time to be spent lounging so I also had to sell my Coachella ticket because I no longer felt like I could responsibly go and still have time to have a second wedding in May and honeymoon in June. Been more consistent with actually going to the gym and surfing at least once a week. Much more wedding planning to do though.

Research

Feeling much more productive now, got Cal Newports timeblocking planner, went to the graduate student writing centers “writing retreat” for 3 days in spring break that got me a nice spot with my dissertation, and have made good progress figuring out the story thats emerging from my data analysis. Also beginning preparation for an analysis we hope to present at a meeting in Helsinki in May (3-days prior to my second wedding). This is my first experience actually working on a pre-registration for analysis, its really interesting and feels academically rigorous.

Career

I’ve settled on spending at least 3 months after I graduate working as some type of staff researcher in my same lab. I do really want to have time to look at some of the interesting results I won’t get to based on the bigger Apple study data and It will give me dedicated time to train someone and transition out my responsibilities. I also won’t have to job hunt as hard while writing my dissertation. My advisor and others involved in this are ironing out the details and seeing what the salary and title would be still.

April 9th to April 30th

Life Context

Lots of wedding planning. I’m excited for the wedding. but also very excited to no longer be planning a wedding PART 2. Days tend to be work + workout until like 5-6, home by 7, cook dinner in to wedding planning, sleep 10-11, wake up at 6 → repeat. I am very narrowly avoiding burnout but succesfully avoiding it at least. There was definitely no way I could have gone to Coachella and still been a functional human being this year.

Research

The time-blocking planner has been pretty instrumental to my productivity recently. I’m working long hours but able to at least rest for 30-40 minutes a day of intentional leisure because I’m super productive during my actual work day. Its helped me make sure I allocate time to tasks that are important and short duration but could be pushed until later. Normally my main big task would override anything not immediately due. I find that returning to my big task is more productive after spending intentional time on something else for a bit.

These last two weeks have been strongly dedicated to creating a pre-registration for a treatment effect prediction analysis. This is by far the most interdisciplinary project I’ve ever worked on - we have 8 different modalities of data (phone + watch, EMA, self-report, like 4 different types of brain imaging, video/audio/transcripts from an interview). Doing a theory informed analysis on ALL that data is so incredibly detail oriented at a scale I’ve never encountered. I know now that I am detailed oriented up til a point. I’ve had to double and triple check so many of the intricate details and almost always find 1 or 2 things off. As a consequence though I’ve been unable to finalize my NPJ digital medicine sleep manuscript → its so close but the revisions I got from co-authors are almost all in except 1 co-author. It will take me time, but the deadline for this current analysis is soon.

Career

When we go to Helsinki to present the work, I’m going to be one of the only students presenting to an audience of mostly high level professors in my field and funders. This is an amazing opportunity and I actually am assigned my own slot on top of the slot for the professor who was awarded the funding for UCLA. That being said learning about the opportunity has me stressed. The timing could not be less optimal. I fly to Helsinki May 10th, fly back May 15th, drive to my wedding venue May 16th. I’m proud of myself for still making time to be physically active (including surfing) and sleeping >6.5 hours per night in the midst of all this.

Strangely people have been reading my website blog posts from years ago. I really really need to update the website, I’ve spent some time on it but not enough to push a new version. I’m really glad people like the content on there, I feel bad I haven’t posted in years even though I do have the content in my notes drafted.

May 1st to Jun 11th

Life Context

The US wedding was unequivocally the best 36+ hours of my life. From the Sangeet through to the end of the afterparty was just amazing. I didn’t expect to feel quite so much the entire time. So grateful to have the tight knit community we have that made it all so special. Post-marital time I had a bit of a slump in work while I recovered, but now its wild that I have so much time. I don’t have to do that much after work, been surfing 3-4 times a week and starting to cook more again.

Research

The week before my wedding was chaotic in that I had to prepare to present to a room full of professors and travel across the globe to Helsinki to do so. The presentations went very well, proud of the work our team was able to show. Early May was definitely the hardest I’ve had to ever work during the duration of my PhD, and that too it was for projects not directly tied to my dissertation.

Since then I’ve been going back at writing/revising dissertation chapters. Have sent 4/6 to my advisor for review. I have two other manuscripts I’m revising from co-author feedback still. We’ve also begun preparing for the main analyses to come out of the OPTIMA study - its weird that they feel like a “side project” to my dissertation even though they will likely be the most impactful papers I’m co-authored on. I think I’m on track, but my bold plan to take a 10-day honeymoon between now and my defense date is getting me a little nervous.

Career

The Helsinki meeting felt like a kickstart to my networking wheels. Able to make some great connections and warm introductions to companies I’d like to work at or at least talk to. Have some part-time things in the works to start when I graduate that im excited for. The current plan is directly post dissertation I’ll work as a research staff for 3 months and begin my real job i January-ish. Goal is to work at around a 50-100 person startup in digital mental health and ideally move to Chicago for a year to see what the midwest is like.

Summer 2024

Jun 12th to August 13th

Life Context

I’ve been surfing a lot recently. Like 2-4 times a week, its been really fun especially since we get a decently big crew to come out every time (2-5 people). Shar has also been coming out very frequently with us - thats been nice, everyone is getting so much better now. Had a spectacular honeymoon in Bali, got back and after some recovery time was back on the grind to graduate. Its harder now to separate whats life vs research as the two are more and more related as I approach my dissertation. This last week Shar has gone above and beyond to make the 7 days pre-defense special. Leaving me cards each morning with little surprises and gifts and relaxing plans.

With two weddings, a honeymoon, and my dissertation I feel like attention has been on me pretty heavily this year. I’m honestly very thankful to see the love and support from people in my life, but also am so excited to have the time and space to celebrate others and come out of my self-centered hole.

Research

I sent my dissertation for review on August 2nd, exactly when I needed to (two weeks pre-defense). It felt like I left for the airport, had checked my packing list many times, but still felt like I forgot something. That feeling hasn’t been resolved, but is ignored now in prep for the defense. The defense feels so inevitable, like an impending glacier slowly but surely moving across my timeline. On thursday august 8th I had given a practice talk to my advisors lab, more (non psych) clinician and machine learning focused group, that was somewhat familiar with my work, and it went well. They had interesting questions and some more minor considerations. An hour later I presented to a more genetics/psychology/statistics focused group and it ended in a long awkward silence. After asking for advice I was told there was just too much and too little, it was difficult to follow the story and results were splattered quickly and moved on from. That left me with a big ole knot in my stomach for a while - super tired after presenting for almost an hour twice in a row. It was really useful feedback though, it also highlighted for me just how different the various audiences who will view my defense will think. I implemented changes and gave another practice talk Friday and that seemed to go well, a colleague who had been at the Thursday talk confirmed it was much better and implemented the suggestions well.

I’m worried the talk which currently runs ~50 minutes is still too long. I wanted it to be 45 but there is too much important content that I do want to go over. Its been hard balancing showing scientific rigor with neat storylines and concise messaging. A lot of people are planning to attend both virtually and in person, and that definitely has been a big motivation to make this good. The med schools media team is also going to do a little spotlight video on it for their instagram. Really glad I’ll have footage and sending them content has been a nice way to reflect on what brought me here.

One of the papers I’ve been the most excited for is the digital sensing workshop. We are very close to getting that out, waiting on 1 co-author comments but otherwise just formatting for submission. Sleep quality paper is sent to reviewers, had the pre-registration template that I co-authored get accepted and published. Feeling better about my academic paper trail nowadays. ILIAD protocol paper was sent out, we’re working on analyses for OPTIMA as well. I think I’ll get a lot of high impact co-authorships in this coming year.

Career

I’m really grateful that I will start part-time consulting with a startup in digital mental health after my defense. Its exactly the kind of experience and credentials I’m looking for in order to better market myself transitioning to industry. Also will be doing some part time work for a colleague at the University of Arizona, they’ve been really supportive. My full time job until December will be as some type of staff researcher at UCLA wrapping up my projects and onboarding anyone that might benefit from my knowledge. Also grateful that I can spend some time without the pressure of graduating to package my work so others might be able to use it, especially codebases.

Today is Tuesday, and yesterday was the first time I’ve really had time and headspace to think about jobs after I graduate. Reading job postings and looking up blog posts on PhD to industry pipeline has been surprisingly exciting. I think… I’m looking forward to the next step.

I need to update my website omg.

August 14th to October 6th

Life Context

No more big life events! I’m done, I defended, it went well, there was a film crew, I am now ✨an employee✨. Strangely it took until Portola last weekend (~1.5 months post defense) for me to feel like I really have graduated - it was so nice to be in a festival environment with close friends and really being able to enjoy myself without the ever looming deadline of my defense.

These last 2 months since graduating I’ve massively upped the amount of social activity and travel I’ve been doing. Went to Cincinatti to visit, went to the bay area for the first time in 6 months to see my family and Shar’s family, went to Sequoia national park, saw Hans Zimmer live, went to Portola music festival, ate at a recently michillen starred resteraunt in a food court (very LA), surfed a whole bunch, nights out, and mornings slept in.

Side-note: weird that I don’t have dental insurance anymore.

Research

I managed to wrap up the research for my defense in time, but now have moved on to the post-defense-wrap-up. A key paper we’ve submitted and is under review is related to the digital sensing in mental health workshop. I’m also finishing the momentary EMA manuscript although I’ve been pretty slow about it. Other key projects are related to predictive modeling for the MCPsych related projects, that is trying to predict the efficacy of LIFUP in participants using different data modalities and combinations of them (only passive digital sensing, only imaging, etc.,). And finally I’m working with a postdoc to take some of my code and analyses and apply them to a larger dataset. Hoping for a relatively easy turn around on those although its been busy for the postdoc recently so I have low expectations on that one.

Career

The job hunt has begun. I went in to this thinking I should be looking for product management type roles at roughly Series A (50-100 person) startups in digital mental health. However, the point of the earlier stage was so I could have some structure but the flexibility to work beyond my job description, so it would potentially make more sense to enter as a more technical role (e.g., data scientist) and go from there.

Its been 2 months and I have had 0 interviews or much of anything from standard job applications. Gotten some solid leads and great conversations with people in digital mental health companies I’d be interested in, but most have no positions for me. I do think its still better for me to try to get a job through talking to people rather than bulk applying because its very hard to show my strong credentials for a transfer to industry on paper.

I’ve also beens surprised with how time consuming job hunting is. I spend almost 30-40% of my working hours on it only to feel like nothing is happening. The downside of speaking to people is it is slow and unpredictable in that scheduling with busy people is hard.

I’ve joined a job search council (Phyl Terry’s Never Search Alone system) and thats been somewhat useful but the group has kinda fractured. It is going a bit slow for the pace I’m looking for given my impending end-of-December deadline to find new employment.