If At First You Don't Succeed Go Back And Tell People About It

I recently got a phone call from one of my old teachers asking me to come back to school and talk at assembly. "Just talk about what you do and how you got where you are".

I reluctantly agreed and when I thought about what I should I realsied that I'm probably not the right person for the job. I mean I failed classes, I wagged tutes and lectures, I ended up with my degree by default. Great! How is that meant to inspire the youth of today.

It then dawned on me that here I am: a gal who almost failed maths stage 2 and now through her maths is doind a PhD.... weird.....

It got me thinking and I came up with this:

Hi, my name is Kara Martin. I started at collegiate in 1994 as a very nervous Grade7 student in Kilburn House. I left in 1999 as Kilburn House Captain back when Kilburn House was next to the PAC.

When I was little I wanted to be a princess but seeing as they didn’t offer those kinds of subjects at school and uni I have ended up as a PhD student. This is a bit of an insight in to how I got here.

School, for me, was a bit disheartening. I had quite good internal marks and I tried to study hard for my exams. I had thought I’d put in enough work but I didn’t leave with the results I had hoped for. I was an extremely disappointed leaver. I really wanted to do physiotherapy on the mainland but as my results were no where near good enough I enrolled in a science degree at the uni of Tas.

With physio in mind I decided to enroll in human biology, chemistry, zoology and maths of all things because I’d heard that the first year course in statistics was quite easy. I really hoped that I could get good enough marks to transfer to physio the next year.
Again things didn’t quite go to plan and I didn’t get the marks I needed and even failed human biology. I decided to give it one more shot and in second year I enrolled in biochemistry, zoology and maths (again not sure why but I had achieved fairly good marks in the first year course so why not). Again lack of study was my demise and I failed biochemistry. I took that as a sign that maybe I wasn’t meant to be a princess or a physiotherapist and did a few catch up subjects in economics to complete my degree. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in zoology and maths halfway through 2003.

Looking back on my degree I realized that I’d spent my uni life slogging my guts out to achieve mediocre marks in Zoology but had achieved really good marks in maths for a lot less work. Either my maths subjects were all really easy or perhaps I was actually good at it even if I do still count on my fingers.

To my absolute amazement I applied and was accepted in to Honours in maths at UTAS and after a year and a half of classes and writing an 80page book I came out with first class honours. Maybe I was on to something with this maths thing.

I really had no idea what I wanted to do next but thought that I may as well apply for a PhD scholarship. I knew that my uni marks weren’t that good but I was really hoping that my honours mark would get me through. I ended up applying at both UTAS and also at the Menzies Research Institute.

I got a call one day from the head of the statistics unit at the Menzies Research Institute Dr Leigh Blizzard asking me to come in for an interview. He told me what I had feared most. My honours mark was good but the rest of my uni marks weren’t good enough. Sorry no scholarship. Instead of just dismissing me with a better luck next time attitude Leigh responded to my enthusiasm and really believed in me and my ability. He suggested that I apply for a job at the Menzies. He told me that I wouldn’t get the job as they were looking for someone who already had a PhD but that I should apply anyway to show the Menzies that I was serious about studying there. Of course as predicted I didn’t get the job but the guy that did couldn’t start til 2006 and in the interim they were looking for someone on a casual basis to fill the spot.

Leigh and the Menzies decided to take a chance and employed me as a biostatistician. Now I should explain what exactly a statistician is but that is a long and boring story so instead I’m going to tell you about what I did while I was employed at the Menzies.

I got the chance to work on the Tasmanian Cancer Registry. They had noticed that the rates of lung cancer in females were increasing and they asked me to see if I could find out why.

The first thing I did was get all the data on lung cancer from 1978 to 2003 and I calculated the rates of lung cancer in the population each year for those years. I graphed the relationship between time and lung cancer rates and added a trend line to show that the rates of lung cancer in females were indeed rising. When I looked at the data on lung cancer rates in males I saw that the rates were decreasing. Why could that be? It was proposed that we look at the trends of smoking in males and females.

Just as I was getting in to it my time was up at the Menzies but my co-workers have since discovered that the rising rates of lung cancer in women are due to the rising numbers of women who smoke compared with 20 to 30 years ago. The scariest thing is that there doesn’t seem to be a fall in the smoking rates for females and Tassie has one of the highest number of female smokers in the country. Obviously the moral of that story is that smoking is bad for you nudge nudge wink wink. This is just a typical example of the things that I got to do while I was at the Menzies Centre.

One particular day that I was working away in my little cubicle I got asked if I wanted to go for a coffee with some colleagues. For once I decided that I would. Over coffee we chatted about what I was going to do when I finished up at the Menzies. I said that I had hoped to do a PhD but I needed to get a scholarship. One of my colleagues told me about a scholarship he was offering and asked if I was interested. I was. I applied and was finally accepted and after a bit of a holiday in Europe I started my PhD 3 months ago.

I am doing my PhD at the Menzies Research Institute on a project called TASCOG, which stands for the Tasmanian Cognition and Gait study. The study as a whole is looking at the effect of ageing on our abilities such as walking, balancing, thinking, reasoning and physical activity. I’m investigating the relationship between walking and thinking and then relating that to falling over and the risk of falling over.

My part of the whole project looks specifically at gait initiation. That is how quickly you can start to walk. Every Friday I see up to six people aged between 60 and 85 and ask them to start walking as quickly as they can when a buzzer goes off. They have to do that when they are just standing still waiting for the sound. Then I ask them to count backwards in 3’s from a given number but to still start to walk as quickly as they can when they hear the buzzer. To show you what I mean I’ll get Mr Bester up here.

INSERT DEMO

Essentially the older you get the slower you react to the sound of the buzzer and it gets worse when you have to think about something else. In the case of counting backwards and a buzzer why does that really matter? What happens tho when for example if counting backwards to take your mind off walking is a cute guy walking down the street and the buzzer is a car horn or a cyclist telling you to get out of the way? Then it does matter how quickly you react. And if you can’t help but fall over during this process then you are definitely going to get squished. All in all I hope to help to decrease the number of older people who fall over and injure themselves.

So here I am 24 years old with a maths degree doing a PhD in a medical field on a project that involves walking. I work with doctors, neuropsychologists, other students and physiotherapists. Even though I haven’t reached my dream of being a princess yet I am studying in an area that involves physiotherapy. So no matter what goes awry there are many ways to achieve what you want from life. Be prepared to mould your ideas as life changes and take every opportunity you get given. Even if it is just coffee.

I'm quite happy with it. Success!!! It was a really bizarre feeling going back. I had to sing hymns and my school prayer. The one thing that really struck me tho was how small the place was. My school hall used to be the biggest scariest place on earth. It is now a little hall with a bunch of small faces staring up at you. Weird!