California here we came!

Still catching up on the good ole' blog. This one is all about our trip to California this summer! With the exception of the stress leading up to the trip and the return flight it was actually a pretty great vacation!

To start, the whole trip came about because I (Garrett) had signed up (aka was signed up by my friend Ryan—who often volunteers me to do crazy and time-consuming things) to participate in a statistics competition. It just so happened that the competition was being held in San Fransisco, CA, just an hour away from my home town, and that I had been awarded a grant to participate. Since the school was covering my expenses, we were so close to home, and we only had to pay for a flight for Michelle (Anderson flies free), we decided to make a family trip out of it! Unfortunately, somehow we didn't take very many pictures.

Let me take a moment to explain how the competition works, talk about the results, and then vent about how stressful it was! THEN I will get back to the rest of the trip and how relaxing and great it was!

The Competition
The competition is called the Slobada and Bulkowski Cup and functions as part of the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) annual conference. I was a member of one of six teams chosen to compete (out of thirty teams that applied from universities across the country). Our team, "the Outliers," (I know, we are nerds) was the first team to represent Clemson University in the SPR Cup. Woot, woot, we are so cool. :) In addition to Ryan and I, Zeynep G., Li-Hsin Chen, and Kellie Walters were also on the team, however, for reasons I will explain later, the brunt of the work fell on my shoulders...and nearly crushed me!

The way the SPR cup works is that each team is given access to the same large, publicly available data set and given two months to develop a unique and compelling research question and then answer that question using an advanced and edgy analytic approach. In the competition, each team has ten minutes to describe their question, analysis, results, and implications in an engaging way. Since our team was made up of all leisure scholars, we wanted to stay within our wheelhouse and decided to explore how a mother's PLAYING with her child mediated the relationship between her mental health and her child's risk behavior over time—basically, we wanted to know if play/leisure is important to a child's health and well-being. We used a complex form of a statistical approach called second order latent growth modeling, which at the time I had never even heard of!

As I said before, I ended up doing most of the work on the project since one of the team members decided to do his comprehensive exams (cough, cough, Ryan—the team captain and one who started this whole thing), two left the country (which I felt like doing about halfway through the analysis), and one had too many other commitments (and admittedly wasn't that great at stats anyways). Needless to say, I pretty much spent all day, every day, doing stats for two months and lived in the lab/office across the hall from Dr. Moore's office. Dr. Moore is one of our teachers (as his pupils we sometimes call ourselves "Moore-ons") and he acted as our faculty mentor and my personal, guardian angel throughout the project. Without his help and Michelle's support we (aka. I) never would have been ready for the competition. In fact, I basically re-learned a whole semester's worth of material in about a single month and did nothing but stats until I could do the analysis in my sleep.

It was a great learning experience but I think I shaved off a few years of my life due to stress. The worst part came three days before the competition. We were running our final analysis and expected to spend an hour or so talking about the results and casually discussing the conference. Five hours later, when the analysis and results still weren't making any sense, we departed our separate ways in a panic. Our plan was to regroup on Monday with Dr. Moore, figure it out, and then fly out on Tuesday! I couldn't wait so I went home and spent the next four hours trying to figure out what went wrong. I was able to do it! We had entered and interpreted some data incorrectly and that was throwing us off. I completed the analysis, let the team know that it was fixed and the results made sense, and then crashed. If I ever had a testimony that there was a God and that He loves us, it was in that moment. I felt like my skills had been sharpened and my brain made clear and I was very thankful in my prayers that evening. At that point, having done the majority of the work and put in hundreds of hours I handed everything to Ryan and said "I'm done" and let him figure out the presentation. He was working on the presentation right up until we had to submit it but he did it, and we did it!

In the end, we got third place! I was just glad we didn't look like total buffoons. We held our own and represented Clemson well. That said, I was so tired of stats that I didn't even bother staying for the awards ceremony. I was so fed up with stats that when Michelle volunteered to brave San Fransisco traffic and infrastructure to come pick me up early I jumped at the chance. Thank you for rescuing and supporting me my lover!

The Vacation
Our post competition time was amazing. We swam in the pool with Anderson who is bound to be a little fish and was screaming and splashing and loving every minute of it. Michelle and I were able to go on a date in Davis. We had forgotten how much we missed the diversity and culture of California cities (having now lived two years in a small, rural town with no real "downtown" and very little to do aside from watching football and eating bbq).  The humidity (or lack thereof), temperature, etc. were perfect and it was sooooo good to be with family. We got some good game time in as well, and brushed off our Phase 10 and SkipBo skills.

Jenny and Matt also came up so they could be there while we were there (THANK YOU) and it was so good to see them to. We went with mom and Jen to do some thrift store shopping (a must) and all came out with some good finds (It was fun to watch Jen at work :) ). 

The Flights
The flight there was surprisingly low-key. Anderson was a little squirmy, but did a great job with nursing and sleeping. He also managed to have eight dirty diapers by the end of the day, five of which happened mid-flight. Those bathrooms are so inadequate for changing diapers of squirmy babies!

The flight back was pretty low-key as well, although there was significantly more wake-time. I think not being able to fully walk and move around helped ease the stress of the flights, since Anderson couldn't try to break free and run down the aisles. One downside on the way back is that we were in front of another large family. One of the kids, probably aged 5, sat behind me (Michelle) and was intentionally kicking the seat. Which kept waking Anderson up. Fortunately the parents were sympathetic, having their own baby, and soon switched places with the kicker.

We got into Atlanta pretty late and loaded up the car for the drive home. We made a quick stop to pick up some food, and then drove home. Anderson slept almost the whole way home, made the transition to bed smoothly, and then slept until 8:30 the next morning, which was a huge blessing! All in all, we loved the trip, spending time with family, and how it felt like real vacation.