I had the chance to attend a training on the exposome at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health last month. If you didn’t know- Columbia has a summer series of workshops called Skills for Health and Research Professionals (SHARP). Basically, it is a dream series of workshops that I wish I could attend: Bayesian Modeling for Environmental Health, Climate Change and Health Bootcamp, Community Exposures and Health, Environmental Mixtures. Really cool stuff. It was also held in NY and I was able to partake in some of my favorite retail experiences (shopping in stationery and fabric stores- so BONUS!!).

I attended the Exposome Bootcamp because I am on board- I am fully committed to the understanding that exposures in our physical environment shape our health, for better or worse. The problem, is that while I understand, appreciate, and know this- I do not have the knowledge to show this.

Like, I don’t have a grasp of the data, the methods, the issues, etc. And so I was hoping for a workshop that would help me build a bridge between what I know (social science) and this area ( basically at the intersection of environmental health, toxicology, pharmacology, chemistry, and genetics). I feel like this bootcamp was not good for that- but, I have some ideas on how to get there. How to build that bridge myself. And, importantly, the workshop did give me some vocabulary, which is always useful.

It’s something I sometimes forget when it comes to learning… nothing worth learning can be learned with one resource. One class, one workshop, one book. They are not meant to be the end-all, be-all source of learning on a topic. But rather, a layer of knowledge and expertise that is built deliberately and over time.

I’m excited to get through teaching this term, so I can start active work on further learning in this area. Still want to attend all the workshops though. Because that is who I am.