It's amazing how life works out. For as long as we have known, Aaron was going to be going active duty in the Army after he graduated from school. He did ROTC has an undergrad at BYU and has been on an educational delay to get his PhD in psychology.
Aaron has always been a lousy sleeper; he wakes up feeling worse in the morning than he did when he went to bed. He always figured he had sleep apnea, but we've never been able to get a sleep study done. Well a couple months ago he finally had a sleep study set up. They had him do a take home one, and we were surprised when they came back and said he didn't have an apnea at all. The doctor started asking him questions about his sleep, and after a few questions she said she suspected narcolepsy. Well this was definitely not what we were expecting since you hear narcolepsy and think of someone who just falls over asleep whenever.
Turns out narcolepsy is a disorder of REM sleep. People with narcolepsy spend much of their night in REM sleep and aren't getting as much of the needed deep sleep, which explains why he never felt rested in the morning. Normally after falling asleep your brain waves slow down and you spend about an hour and a half in NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep which is followed by REM sleep. With narcolepsy you enter REM sleep within 5 minutes of falling asleep.
Aaron had to do another sleep study to determine that he does in fact have narcolepsy. He did a whole night study followed by a day study. After a night of restful sleep they monitor you during 5 twenty minute naps. In 5 out of the 5 naps Aaron fell asleep, with an average sleep latency (time to fall asleep) of 5.5 minutes. In 3 of those naps he entered REM sleep.
Turns out that a narcolepsy diagnosis is a no go for the Army. So with only 2 months left until graduation we found out that he wasn't going to be going active duty, and we wouldn't have a job or any source of income. Earlier in the year Aaron was talking with a guy in our ward who studies political science, and Aaron mentioned he knows Bayesian statistics. Turns out he had a friend that was looking for someone that knew Bayesian statistics and Aaron's name came up. Long story short, they collaborated on a couple projects together and he eventually offered Aaron a job with the RNSC (Republican National Senatorial Committee). Well this was when we thought we still owed the Army, and he had to turn the job down. Aaron quickly got in contact with him when we found out about the Army not working out but by then the job no longer stood. He was able to pull some strings and Aaron ended up getting an offer to do statistical modeling for the Republican National Committee (RNC). The only catch was it was a contract job and would only last through the next election period in November.
The same friend from church also mentioned Aaron to another friend of his in DC with a political consulting firm called 0ptimus. They were also very interested in Aaron and paid for Aaron to come down for an interview. Aaron was super impressed by them, but at the time he was still waiting to hear back from the RNC. Once he had an official offer from the RNC, 0ptimus made a counter offer. After much deliberation and going back and forth we decided to accept the offer from 0ptimus. They are located on Capital Hill and are running some major political campaigns. Aaron is so excited, and we cannot believe how everything has turned out. He has gone full circle now and is back to working in politics (his undergraduate degree from BYU is in Political Science). It's funny how none of this would have happened though without psychology and coming to Yale (which we felt was very inspired by the Lord). It just shows that if you put your trust in the Lord and continue to follow his guidance, everything will work out in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment