disappointment

Dissertation disappointment…

Danielle / DVLEsqPhotos Studying , , , , ,

I received my dissertation grade and my final overall grade, including my graduation decision last week. I can’t say I achieved my goal – I missed the grade I needed on my dissertation to graduate with first class honours, and with an A average something I never accomplished as a full-time student, by just a few points. I will graduate with upper-second class honours (a 2:1 as they call it), with “merit” – an accomplishment in its own right, but not the one I hoped for.

You can click here if you want to jump down to the link for my dissertation, which I had to keep under wraps until the grades were final.

Ultimately, it isn’t the final ranking that bothers me – it was coming so close and just missing. If you share my guilty pleasure of watching American Ninja Warrior, it is like those competitors who get the tips of their fingers on the top of the warped wall but can’t quite get enough grip to pull themselves up. Or the ones who see the clock tick down just before they can hit the buzzer. It’s the coming close but not quite being able to finish strongly that frustrates me.

Looking at grade conversion tables, I arguably have something between a 3.5 or 3.7 GPA by US standards — basically a B+ or A- average. And that is certainly higher than I have ever had as a student. I was always one of those kids who could pull Bs with little effort, so that’s what I did. Even college and law school were low B/B- averages despite spending more time doing things other than studying. I also realized, and a doctor confirmed, that ADHD likely played a huge role in that. (The doctor I met with was surprised that I made it through law school and have had a successful career as a lawyer.).

My dissertation topic was a tough one – deepfakes and the threats they pose to individuals, to society, and to democracy itself. I spent a few months in the weeds of this topic and why the law currently is not adequate to address it nor will the law alone be able to address it.

My dissertation is linked below, for those who want to read it. The paper is based on UK law but a lot of the underlying research draws upon US resources. And, I should note – I still haven’t edited or updated the paper so it does have some typos and mistakes typical of student papers.

While I am disappointed in the ultimate outcome, I can’t deny that there already have been a number of significant positive applications of and outcomes from my research. A couple months ago, I was able to put my newly gained knowledge to use in a meeting with legislators. I recently spoke on a panel about deepfakes here in LA and will be traveling to New York to speak on another panel that includes some deepfake related content. Earlier this month, I spoke on a panel at SAG-AFTRA’s biennial convention about a few topics, including an update on deepfakes. And last week, I did a 2-hour MCLE presentation based on my dissertation that I will probably present to other audiences in the future. I am told that there were as many as 100 people attending by webinar, in addition to the folks who attended in person.

And speaking of that MCLE presentation, I am proud of the internal MCLE program that I helped to develop and run as part of our broader internal education program. We have put on at least 7 programs in slightly over a year, each providing anywhere from 1 to 2 hours of credit to attorneys on our staff and providing generally useful education to attorneys and non-attorneys alike.

So there’s that…

Dissertation: Deepfakes As an Emerging Threat to Freedom and Democracy

dissertation-deepfakes-as-an-emerging-threat-to-freedom-and-democracyDownload

Where are you, polar bears?

Danielle / DVLEsqPhotos Photography , , , , , , , ,

Today was…

That’s it. It was.

We went out on Tundra Buggies – giant behemoths that must be based on some sort of military personnel carriers – to look for polar bears. We did spot one, and I did get a couple of decent pictures of it, but that was all we had to show for about 7 hours of sitting cooped up in the metal beast with about 3 dozen other people. Once again, the winds whipped up the snow and visibility ranged from poor to nearly white-out conditions. So even if bears were around, we wouldn’t have seen them. A lot of people on the buggy just fell asleep.

Tomorrow should be interesting. I’m told we are going out in helicopters. Eep!

This is a tundra buggy:

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This is the inside of a crowded buggy…

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This was our visibility most of the day:

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But we did see this bear, at least:

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An update…

Danielle / DVLEsqPhotos Life , , , , ,

I’ve been quiet again lately. It’s largely been with good reason. Well, it’s a bad reason but a good excuse.

In my last post, I mentioned that I hadn’t been feeling well and had gone to the doctor. At that appointment, my doctor posited a few possible reasons and she ordered a bunch of tests, including an abdominal CT scan which I had a few days later. The following Monday evening, I found myself in the emergency room and subsequently admitted to the hospital. The CT scan seemed to indicate a tubo-ovarian abscess – basically, an abscess on my fallopian tube or ovary – and if that was the case, it could rupture with possibly dangerous implications. Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it – it wasn’t that. But I’ll get to that…

(As an aside, I learned that Monday is apparently the worst day to visit the emergency room. So, if you are going to get sick or injured, try to avoid Mondays.)

Around 11pm, after a roughly 5 hour wait, I finally got taken in to to an exam room in the ER. I would be there for almost 4 hours before being admitted to the hospital. Around 1am, I was wheeled off for an ultrasound, including one that was quite, ummm, intrusive. Around 3am, a gynecologist came by for further examinations (again, quite intrusive, this time with a med student observing). Based on her exam and the preliminary ultrasound reading, she felt I was not dealing with an abscess but likely something else.

I was admitted to the hospital that night and would ultimately spend 3 nights. Over the next couple days, I was visited by multiple doctors, including a gastroenterologist and a colorectal surgeon, in addition to the general hospitalist. I also was subjected to a battery of tests, including an abdominal MRI (which required me to drink a large quantity of a sickly sweet fluid) and a colonoscopy (which required drinking a lot of a very nasty liquid).

Ultimately, it turned out that my Crohn’s disease was active and I had significant intestinal inflammation (so severe the doctor couldn’t complete the colonoscopy). The doctor thinks my Crohn’s has been active for quite some time and that I had just grown used to living with the discomfort. Exacerbating it was a large ovarian cyst, which explains the image on the original CT scan. There also appeared to be some infection, indicated by the fevers I kept spiking. I was given IV antibiotics in the hospital and eventually sent home with two weeks worth of hard core antibiotics that left me feeling even sicker.

I spent the next few days at home, doing little more than sleeping. I suppose it didn’t help that I hadn’t had caffeine the whole time I was in the hospital, so I was probably experiencing a little bit of withdrawal. (I have now been basically caffeine free for over a month, only drinking a small cup of coffee on a couple of very early mornings. Surprisingly, I generally have had more energy than I remember having in a long time, and no afternoon crash.)

I am now feeling more or less back to normal. In fact, I feel better than I have in a long time. But the Crohn’s is still active and, as the gastroenterologist now treating me keeps reminding whenever I say I’m feeling pretty good, I’m going to have to treat it. That means IV infusions of a biologic medication for the foreseeable future. The cyst, at least, was expected to resolve itself within a couple of menstrual cycles (estimated around 6 weeks) and the pain/discomfort on that side of my abdomen has definitely subsided, so I suspect it has at least shrunk. I have an ultrasound scheduled just after Thanksgiving to see how things look and then the doctors can figure out how best to move forward.

For now, I’m in Churchill, Manitoba looking for polar bears. A month ago, I was worried I might have to cancel this trip. So, hey, it could be worse…

Sometimes little things have a big impact…

Danielle / DVLEsqPhotos Life , ,

You never know what someone else is going through in their life. A simple kindness can brighten someone’s bad day, while a minor slight can make their world crash down around them. This is a story of the latter, unfortunately.

First, a little background –

Ever since my ex asked for a divorce in mid-September 2014, just 10 days after my birthday, September has felt cursed. Maybe the curse actually began when we got married the previous September.  Since then, September – my birthday month – has proven difficult for me (with the possible exception of the time I spent in Switzerland, but even that trip had its negative points).

One of the little things I look forward to in September – a sense of normalcy in a month that has often been difficult – is our monthly departmental birthday celebration. For a few years, I was the only September, so I had my choice of birthday cakes. Now there are other Septembers, so we all reach agreement on a type of cake. I am usually fairly flexible with one caveat – no chocolate. I have never liked chocolate and I rarely eat it in any form.  So imagine my surprise when I walked in to our birthday celebration this week and saw not the strawberry shortcake we had agreed to, but a large chocolate cake.

I realize this is very “First World problems” and maybe I should just brush it off. But, as I mentioned, you never know what someone is going through. This has been a really difficult month for me on many levels and so I was really looking forward to that one little bright spot in an otherwise dark month.

This September started off so well that I had totally forgotten the curse.  Over Labor Day weekend, I went on two dates with someone who I had taken a liking to and who I was hoping to get to know better. My birthday (ironically, on Labor Day) started with brunch with a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while, then a visit to the spa for a massage and facial, and dinner with my mom. All in all, probably one of the best birthday weekends I have had in several years.

But that was the end of the positive this September. By that Friday, the person I was hoping to get to know better was out of my life (it came as a complete shock to me and it was particularly disappointing as I really would have liked to at least maintain a friendship). A little over a week later, I got some concerning test results after I went in for a physical. A few days after that, I started running a mysterious, intermittent fever combined with abdominal pain. It has been over two weeks since that started and it may be more serious than I first surmised.

I finally went to the doctor to have the fever and abdominal pain checked out on the day we had our birthday celebration. The visit raised several concerns (and a referral for a CT scan). Blood tests indicate some sort of infection and I am now awaiting the results of a CT scan. During that visit, the doctor had quite a bit of blood drawn to run some tests, which left me feeling woozy. But, as I told first the nurse, then the doctor, and then the lab tech, I was in a rush because I was looking forward to the birthday cake awaiting me.

I emailed the person in charge of cake for the month multiple times, letting her know first that I might be running late and then that I was done with my appointment and could, in fact, make it back in time for the celebration. I then rushed from the doctor’s office back to my office. At least 3 emails were exchanged – at no time did she ever mention there was a snafu with the cake.

I am sure my disappointment was obvious, although few people seemed to care – everyone else got a type of cake they liked, after all. Needing sugar after the blood draw, I grabbed some cookies from my office. “Why are you eating cookies before your cake,” a coworker asked. “Because I can’t eat any of this,” I responded, pointing at the cake. The organizer mentioned the bakery screwed up, so she got chocolate because she knew the other two liked it. She pointed out that she had gotten two fruit tarts (both of which had chocolate in them and both of which had kiwi, which I generally avoid). I reiterated that I don’t eat chocolate which prompted someone to ask if I was allergic – it shouldn’t matter why I don’t eat chocolate, simply that I made clear I don’t eat chocolate. Would it really have been so impossible for someone to at least pick up a cupcake or something more in line with my tastes? Would it have been so hard to genuinely apologize?

One of the other birthday people was stuck on a call that was running late and suddenly was unavailable until 3:15 – when I had to leave to get to another commitment. At that point, it didn’t matter to me – it was clear it wasn’t my birthday celebration anyway. My preferences and feelings had been completely disregarded by all involved.

As I noted, maybe I should let this slide by – it’s very “first world problems” and not a huge issue in the scheme of things. But, in the midst of struggling with the medical issues I am dealing with, and having the type of September I have been having, it was just really hurtful to be completely disregarded in that manner.