Hi all! I'm a Phd Candidate in anthropology, studying the physical effects of stress in childhood and stress involved in living as a recent immigrant in the US.
I'm also a cellist and a (bad) gardener. I use R for my statistical and graphic purposes.
Je parle français et/y hablo español
Nice to meet you all!
If it can help, as a non-recent US immigrant (>6 years), I'd say the first years were actually less stressful. In part because Obama was still president, but also because politically I didn't know as much about the USA as I do know.
Additionally, I'm soon going to reach the term of my work visa after the last renewal process and I'm not sure I'll get the permanent residence granted, so the uncertainty about my future is also a source of stress right now.
@hypolite Salut! Thanks for sharing your thoughts! That definitely makes sense. I have been speaking with people who immigrated to the US for the past 1.5 years and when the election was really ramping up, conversations about life in general definitely changed.
@eholdsie
hiiiii!!! as a non-programmer (me), I'm curious how difficult it was to learn R? I do a lot of data analytics with my work and while the numbers make sense to me, I know a lot of people relate to more visual representation...
@MissSnarkerson I’m a non-programmer as well. I like playing around with coding, which helps. R does have a real learning curve but I think it’s pretty intuitive. Plus as it’s free and accessible, a lot of people are using it and willing to help. A lot of R is google.
I definitely recommend it though, it makes some pretty graphs 😄
@eholdsie My brother-in-law told me I needed to get into R just because of how much I ****LOVE**** pretty graphs, lol!
Thanks for the response - I'm guessing I can find a learning course somewhere....
@MissSnarkerson definitely! Also people do a whole bunch of tutorials and lectures on YouTube, I was just watching some for an analysis I’m working on.
@eholdsie welcome! Mastodon isn’t quite like any other social network I’ve been on, but it’s a cheery place, mostly. I’m glad you’re here. I highly recommend searching for hashtags for the topics that interest you, like #anthropology or #cello or #gardening (maybe #gardens). It’s often a good way to find people. You can even pin a hashtag to a column of its own if you like.
Tea? 
(that’s a custom emoji on my instance; don’t worry if you can’t find it on your keyboard.)
@gannet ¡gracias! Will do - this has been a lovely experience so far, thanks for the recommendations!
@eholdsie de rien! (My French is very rusty, but I actually speak some, unlike Spanish.)
@eholdsie howdy!
hopefully your motivation for multiple pursuits will rub off on lazy weirdos like me. 
@eholdsie Your area of study sounds very interesting. Do you find that immigrants share a lot of the same struggles?
@stringlytyped yes and no. There’s a lot of individual variation - some people just take things in stride. But so far a lot of what I’m seeing is that struggles are shaped by poverty and location (ie rural vs urban), which are also strongly influenced by documented status. Still conducting interviews so we’ll see.
@eholdsie My parents immigrated to Canada when I was a baby, so I've seen first hand how different people handle the situation differently. My father, aunt and uncle all settled in Canada quite happily (although it was very difficult in the beginning), while my mother couldn't handle being away from her country and her family. Ultimately, she moved back.
@eholdsie Hello! 👋