Who are you and why are you here?

Question

^{This is inspired by this meta Worldbuilding post, which was inspired by this meta Data Science post.}

Health SE is an interesting site filled with lots of interesting people. I think that it would be great if we had a chance to get to know all of these interesting people better. This post is a great opportunity to learn about the other members of this community.

So, feel free post an answer. Introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you for a living? Why are you here on Health SE?

Everyone is encourage to post. We want to learn about you all :)

Answer 1

I'm not a nurse, but sometimes wish I were. I'd like to do more of (some of the) hands-on care of people as well as managing their health, but I'm sure I'm glamorizing nursing! :)

I live in Pennsylvania, but have lived in several states around the country. I love to travel, read, snorkel, cook, spend time in nature (as long as it doesn't involve sleeping on the ground), watch good movies and TV shows, and am enjoying learning about photography. Most of all, I love spending time with my adult children and their spouses. I'm extremely fortunate that at the moment; all my kids live within 30 minutes of home for the first time in more than a decade!

I'm here because I love medicine, and after nearly 38 years of it, I'm no less passionate about helping people; if anything, aging and having gone through the typical (and some less typical) illnesses, I am more determined than I was in my youth to help in whatever way I can. In the past I've volunteered to run free medical clinics for the uninsured, the addicted, and the mentally ill.

All my children are grown and out of the house, and I'm not able to do the more physically demanding hobbies I used to enjoy (like farming!), so I spend some of my free time here, hoping to make a contribution.

Why Stack Exchange?

I love the English language, and stumbled across my first SE site, English Language & Usage, about a year and a half ago and was hooked. I greatly appreciate the model of authoritative answers with sources, and I learned so much about the language I've spoken for most of my life (my first language was French.)

I'm hoping to help build this site into one that reaches and helps a large number of people in a way that only the Internet can.

Answer 2

I'm from Paris, France, and I'm a certified first aid man there. As a volunteer: this is not my paid job, this is something I do on my spare time.

We have different certification levels here, so for those who know/are interested, mine is PSE2, which stands for "Team First Aid level 2". On top of this I'm also entitled to pilot a rescue boat and to drive an ambulance (but only in this volunteering context, I couldn't do ambulance driver as a paid job. Not for quality reasons but for legal reasons as the cert is not the same).

Basically, what we do consists in:

• watching over sport or cultural events and give first aid to whoever needs. This includes taking victims to the hospital if needed. The typical team size varies from 2 to 50+ depending on the size of the event.
• helping firemen in their duty. No fires for us but illness, injuries, car crashes, etc. We wait at the barracks with our ambulance and we go when the bell rings. Colors are different but we actually act on behalf of the firefighter's brigade in these occasions,
• visiting homeless. If we can't change their situation, we can help maintaining a social link, help finding healthcare, help finding a shelter, etc.

And of course, this is why I'm here. Plenty of things to ask, plenty of things to learn, and a few heads-up to give :) I love to speak English on top of that, and I need to practice as much as I can, so Health SE is definitely a place to be :)

Answer 3

I currently work as a programming manager, but my first degree was in exercise kinesiology, and I have been active in sports both as a coach and a competitor for over 45 years (Currently I compete as a 4th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do). I try to keep up on the current literature and advances in sports science and nutrition as much as possible for someone who doesn't depend on it for a living.

I also worked as an Emergency Medical Technician, including 8 years in the United States Air Force as an ER medic, with responsibilities for primary ambulance detail as well as our deployable Air Transportable Hospital (Think the USAF version of a MASH unit).

I'm here on Health (Currently as a mod pro tempore) because I firmly believe that health is one of the most important assets we have as people, and that there needs to be more sites with quality information for the general public.

Answer 4

I'm Michael and I'm a moderator pro tempore here on Health SE and also on Lifehacks SE.

I live in Pennsylvania, in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I'm currently 14 years old and I will be going into high school this coming fall. I don't have any job (well, I do walk my neighbor's dog :P), but I do have many aspirations. I am extremely interested in math and science, especially anything computer-related. I love computer programming (though I'm not that good at it), but I hope to develop my skills over the next few years. I also love to play sports, mainly baseball, football, and wrestling.

After high school, I plan on going to college, hopefully at a prestigious school, and study computer science. After that, I want to go into the STEM field as a software engineer at a tech company. After being on this site, I have thought of the possibility of going to medical school.

Why am I here on Health SE?

I found this site while it was pretty late in the commitment stage. I didn't really think I'd be able to participate as I had very limited knowledge of health, but I answered my first question and thought it was very interesting. So I answered more and more and more. I've gained a lot of knowledge since I started here, and I hope to gain a lot more.

Another thing that I did on this site was participate in the meta. I had never really helped build a community on here, I've usually been just user on the main site. Helping to build this site was very interesting, as there were many problems that had to be solved.

I hope this site will be able to graduate someday. A lot of great information has been shared here, and I think that this site has the potential to be one of the best sites Stack Exchange has.

Answer 5

I'm a programmer who is going back to start on my Master's in the fall. I tend to spend far too much time playing video games and board games with my friends. I also do some volunteering for my Alma mater while I'm in the area.

As for why I'm on the site, one of my hobbies is nutrition and cooking. I spend far too much time reading up on nutrition, even if sometimes it seems like it changes on a monthly basis. One of my applications right now is trying to make a version or two of Soylent that I like, and making sure my recipe is as healthy as possible. In fact, all of my questions thus far are to make sure I'm not messing anything up. I'm almost happy with the brownie recipe I developed, but the texture is a little off, and 200 grams of brown sugar isn't healthy, but the rest of it is actually fairly good for you. It will probably pop up in questions here and on the Seasoned Advice stack exchange soon (the texture is a hair off).

As for why I'm on Stack Exchange? I'm a programmer. This group of communities has been the most important wealth of information in all of my internships and jobs, second only to my university.