Group 10 Year Level Term Life: Fill & Download for Free

10 years ago on Saturday night my daughter was invited to one of 2 parties. Upon arrival at the one she chose to go to a friend of hers said don't go in there it isn't very good jump back in the cab and we will go together to the other party.Luckily she refused. Around midnight many children were walking along close to the road outside of the party in a rural area. It was fairly dark.Along came a station wagon that ploughs into a big group of children. Bodies flying everywhere. One child stuck under the vehicle and minced into the road whilst there was another impaled onto a steel post amongst grape vines many rows in from the rd.In all there were many children injured seven died and the boy that my daughter didn't go out with was critically injured and fought for his life for months. Luckily he survived.The driver turned out to be on drugs and had been drinking. On top of all that he had a child sitting on his knee at the wheel. He also fled from the scene leaving his 2 young children.The aftermath of this horrific senseless accident left all of our children so scarred. We live in a small community with only 5 secondary schools and a few private schools. Not much else for 100s of km. So all of the children new each other well. 5 of the children went to school with my daughter in her year level and the one above.I noticed that many of the children gave up on any future thinking. Many of my daughters friends couldn't come to terms with what happened. Many of the children found it extremely difficult to plan past a week into the future. A large % didn't go onto University. One of the few that did was killed instantly in motor vehicle accident 2 weeks ago. She was fresh out of college. Moved to the town she was killed at to follow her dream career.

Yes! And I am curently. Here is my story…Just over 10 years ago, in December 2009, I came down with pneumonia and was feeling very bad for several weeks despite taking powerful antibiotics. So I went in for a new X-ray and that time they found something suspicious in my left lung. A biopsy (a horrible broncoscopy performed while I was conscious!) showed it to be non-small cell adenocarcinoma, malignant lung cancer. Further scans showed that it had spread to my pelvis and several vertebrae in my spine, including one in my neck. That meant it was stage 4. Yep, stage 4 lung cancer in me, a non- smoking and otherwise healthy woman of 46. WTF!!!It was shocking, devastating, horrible news and both I and my family were terrified. I was immediately set up to start a powerful course of chemotherapy and radiation for the lesion in my C2 neck vertebra. Although I was very happy to start chemo and be doing something to fight the cancer, chemo was brutal and made me feel awful in ways I’d never experienced before and can’t even explain. Imagine having a severe hangover and extreme jet lag together with debilitating fatigue and dizziness. My blood platelets plummeted and I had to get transfusions, my blood count fell to dangerously low levels and required transfusions, my mucous membranes were damaged and my nose bled constantly, running and dripping down my chin and onto my clothes. Everything tasted bad and eating became a major chore. My hair grew thinner and thinner and my skin became pale and grayish.And while all of this was going on I continued to manage my own business and take care of my children as best I could. My husband was, and is, hugely supportive and helpful. But my extended family lives on the other side of the world and we had zero outside help from anyone, which made things extremely challenging at times.I received (and am still receiving) excellent medical care and, because I live in Sweden, it’s not costing me anything extra since it’s financed by taxes. Thank God for that. Having cancer or any serious illness is bad enough without having to be overwhelmed financially by the cost of treatment. I responded well to the brutal chemo, which lasted for less than six weeks but took years to fully recover from. It was only meant to short term and they cut it shorter in my case because I had already shown some improvement and was having a lot of debilitating side effects from it. I was then given intravenous treatments with Avastin, an anti-angiogen that prevents new blood vessels from forming, thus preventing the tumors from growing. That worked for over a year and had no unpleasant side effects, but eventually the lesions showed some minor growth so that I was switched to a long-term maintenance chemo drug called Alimta every three weeks with a type and dosage aimed at keeping the cancer in check while giving me a reasonably high quality of life. It was far, far easier to live with than the initial chemo but still left me feeling tired and vaguely nauseous all the time, with particularly severe effects on the 5th day after treatment.In the mean time, my mother in the US had read an article about a new targeted treatment for lung cancer that was being tested around the world and wondered if that might be something I could try. So I asked my doctor about it and he said that it was only for a certain mutation of my lung cancer type so that they would need to test me and send the sample to the drug company’s laboratory in Belgium to to see if I had that mutation. Fortunately, they were able to use material from my previous biopsy so that no new procedure was needed.And they found that I did have the mutation! I never thought I could be so happy about something like that, but I was elated because it meant I was eligible to take part in the study. So I was enrolled and all participants are randomly assigned to either the group being given the new drug or the control group receiving an existing treatment, in this case Alimta which I had already been using for several years. I naturally ended up in the control group and continued on Alimta for about a year until the drug, which was known as crizotinib during the study but was named Xalkori, was approved and became commercially available.So I was immediately switched to Xalkori, which is administered orally in the form of capsules, not intravenously. It was a lot easier to live with than the chemo in several ways - it didn’t affect my appetite as much, it didn’t cause as much fatigue and I no longer had to go to the hospital for intervenous chemo every three weeks. I took it for about a year and a half but then scans showed some minor progression of the cancer so I was switched to another new drug called Zykadia (certinib) that works in a similar way.I started with the maximum dosage, 5 capsules, which made me feel pretty awful, but settled on a dosage of three capsules per day. Like Xalkori, it’s easy to live with and the main side effects for me are a slightly lower appetite and that some foods/beverages don’t taste like they used to. The drug is also kind of hard on my stomach and I often have acid indigestion and need take omeprazole (Prilosec, Losec) everyday to keep it under control.I get both CT scans and bone scans regularly, get blood samples taken every three weeks and get intravenous doses of a bone strengthening substance every 3–4 weeks. It has become a way of life and I am used to it by now. Cancer doesn’t have to be an immediate death sentence, even when it’s stage 4. New drugs and treatment regimes are really making a difference and giving people both longer to lives and, crucially, higher quality of life.As many people know, the greatest suffering in cancer often comes from the traditional treatments given to combat it. And if you know that the awful side effects of the treatment are only temporary and may be effective, you can learn to accept the suffering as part of the treatment. But new treatments are having very positive effects while also giving patients much higher quality of life, which is the real difference. Because what kind of life do you have if you feel like crap 24/7? Exactly.So what I really want to say is this - If you or someone close to you has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, there is plenty of hope. Depending on what type of cancer, how much it had spread and which organs it has affected, there are effective new drugs and treatment regimes that could possibly keep your cancer from spreading further and give you a longer and better life than was possible earlier treatments.So don’t give up, and be sure to read up and ask about new treatments, studies you can take part in, etc. One of the most important thing I have learned during these 10 years with cancer is that it’s super important for patients and their families to play an active role in treatment - ask questions, tell healthcare professionals what you want and need, stay informed and up to date about new treatments and studies, and be a strong and active advocate for yourself or your loved one. Good doctors respect and welcome patient input because it helps them to help you.Living with cancer is like living with any chronic illness, whether it’s diabetes, MS, rheumatism, etc. You take medications, get treatments, have regular appointments with doctors and nurses and pretty quickly get used to that way of life. It’s doable, people! So don’t just freak out or give up, there is plenty of hope. I was diagnosed with incurable stage 4 lung cancer more than 10 years ago and thought it meant the end for me. But instead, I have been given many more years in which I have been able to work, travel, grow as a person, have good times with my friends, visit and make new memories with my beloved mother, siblings and extended family, and, mostly importantly, raise my three children to adulthood and be the mother and wife I want and my family needs me to be. It’s been a bumpy road but I’m still alive and kicking and very happy to be here! Cheers!UPDATE 27 November 2020: Hello, friends! I wanted to update you on the current situation. This spring my scan showed that the cancer had spread to my brain - a few tiny lesions scattered around. This is extremely common with the type of lung cancer I have and I have been expecting this for some time. I can’t feel the lesions at all, so they are only affecting me emotionally at this point. Because if the new lesions, I was switched to a new medication called Alecensa that is better at crossing the blood-brain barrier than Zycadia. I take two capsules in the morning and two in the evening.The only side effect is major water retention, like about 11 lbs/5 kg, which is annoying but livable. My once so slender ankles are a just distant memory now and diuretics are my friend, sob sob. But seriously, I was a bit freaked out when I found out it had spread to my brain but I do actually feel fine so it hasn’t affected my physically. My latest scan showed zero growth, so yay for that!As of this month it is 11 years since I was diagnosed. I still have just as much cancer as I did then, slightly more in fact, but aside from various aches and pains from my bone lesions, I feel pretty darn good! Still going strong at 57!Lots of love to all of you cancer survivors and unite families. These are hard times with the pandemic keeping families apart, and I wish you all the best of health and happiness to get us through this crisis.

The late economics Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, who spent much of his life in the study of AI and ML, was fond of quoting something called the “10,000” hour rule. Roughly, this states that to master any subject, you need about 10,000 hours of practice to become world class. This number was documented in the best selling book called Outliers:Outliers (book) - WikipediaFor example, the Beatles played in Hamburg, Germany, from 1960–1964. When they went to Hamburg, the Beatles were perhaps an average British rock group, but when they returned, they were the “Fab Four”. They spent roughly 10,000 hours of playing 1200 concerts to become a world class rock group.As another example, Bill Gates got access to a computer at age 13 in 1968. and spent roughly 10,000 hours programming it, before he became a world class programmer and co-founded Microsoft.As Herbert Simon was fond of quoting, Mozart, perhaps the greatest musical prodigy ever, was writing music at the age of 5, but his music became world class roughly 10 years later, when he was in his early teenage years. Again, perhaps the 10,000 hour rule applies, even to geniuses like Mozart. I recall in an interview the famous Indian sarod player Ali Akbar Khan stating that he began his training of Hindustani classical music at around the same age as Mozart, and it took him about 10 years of playing every day before he began to attain mastery.Let’s assume, therefore, that you need 10,000 hours of concentrated study to become world class at “mastering machine learning”. How much is that in years needed? Well, if you work on machine learning for 20 hours a week, that’s about 1000 hours a year, and so, you need about 10 years.So, an average PhD student spends perhaps 5 years of time on his or her PhD thesis, and then another 5 as an assistant professor teaching and doing research. By the time they are ready to come up for tenure, they are (or should be) world class in the field.This 10,000 hour rule (or 10 year program) does not of course guarantee that you will achieve mastery. You will need 1) quite a bit of luck 2) some basic aptitude for the field of study 3) careful planning to focus your energy on the subfield you want to achieve mastery in.When I began my career as a machine learning researcher, the first meeting I went to as a graduate student was in 1985. There was no NIPS meeting, but there was an ML workshop. The workshop was held in a resort for senior citizens (!) in the picturesque Pocono mountains, and about 40–50 researchers attended. Contrast the 1985 meeting with the 2017 NIPS conference in Long Beach, to which 8000 researchers attended. Clearly, whatever research strategy I adopted for achieving some measure of success in 1985 needs to be revised to address the new reality of ML in the 21st century.Keeping that in mind, I offer the following advice to those who are willing to subject themselves to this “10 year” ordeal of achieving mastery in their chosen profession, say machine learning.You must be absolutely committed 100% to working in the area, and there can be no half-hearted attempt. There is simply no room for dilettantes — you want to get to the top of the field, it’s an all consuming passion that will get you there, not an occasional part-time quest.You cannot view work as “work”, but rather, you must view it as “play”. This is a lesson I learned early from my PhD advisor, who worked as hard as I have ever seen anyone work, but he seemed to be always having fun. It has been said that if you truly find something you love doing, you never have to work again another day in your life. There’s a lot of truth to this. You want mastery in a field, this is what it takes. Every hour of effort is an hour of “fun”. Otherwise, you won’t have what it takes to become world class (at whatever you do).A great stroke of luck for me was being able to attend lectures by folks like Herbert Simon at CMU on topics like “What is research?”. In this talk (HS never used slides ever, but spoke with some notes prepared on a small piece of paper, and usually filled the room), he articulated the general principles of what it meant to be successful in research. I have found many things that he said to be true over the years I have done research.A field like ML requires a great deal of background in math and related topics, but you can’t postpone doing research while you attain mastery in the math needed. You have to simultaneously do research in ML, while becoming an expert in the necessary math. This is a tricky balance, because you will always find your background to be weaker than ideal. Over the decades, I have gotten used to this, and it does not bother me anymore. Every time I start a new research project, invariably I find I have to learn some new piece of math, and I just accept that as part of the “fun” and challenge.Somewhat paradoxical to point 4, the most influential ideas are simple. So, if you want to really have an impact, it is likely that your best work must be of a sort that can be explained in simple terms. So, while you dig deep into some math topic, always remember that ultimately the solution must be explainable to in an intuitive way.Research is unfortunately ultimately only a (small) part of one’s success as a researcher. You must be able to write well enough to communicate the results to the community, and be able to speak well enough to give coherent presentations. The better you get at writing and presenting, the easier it will be to spread your ideas. There is no easy path to mastery in writing and oration — it requires practice, practice, and more practice. Take every opportunity given to you for writing and speaking, and never shy away from the possibility of giving a lecture to your fellow students, your local university in your home town, a workshop, etc.The choice of topic matters a great deal. It is usually very difficult to achieve success in a field that has many researchers already working in it. Unfortunately, ML in the 21st century is exactly such a field, with tens of thousands of active researchers. Many of these people are world class researchers, with highly impressive backgrounds. How can you complete with folks like this who have years of experience and mastery over complex types of math, whereas you are still beginning your research efforts? This type of challenge should not deter you, of course, but it does mean that you need to be careful about what you work on.My favorite example of an ideal PhD student and subsequent researcher is UMass PhD student Richard Sutton, who graduated in 1984, and is now a world class ML researcher and AAAI Fellow. Rich chose his PhD thesis topic wisely, and instead of doing supervised learning (as everyone else was working on), he chose to work on a completely new field, reinforcement learning, and the problem of temporal credit assignment. This was a brilliant choice, and even more amazing is that after 34 years of working in this area, he still continues to work on temporal credit assignment. So, he’s spent roughly 30,000 hours thinking about RL. It is safe to say he understands this problem at a level probably far deeper than almost anybody else on the planet (well, perhaps I should include his PhD advisor, Andrew Barto, who has spent even longer thinking about RL). So, persistence pays. Once you pick a problem stick with it. Browsing half a dozen research topics each year is not a good formula for success, even if it increases the number of papers you can publish.At the end of the day, your true impact is not measured by the number of publications you get in conferences like NIPS. It is measured by how much impact you have achieved in the field, how influential your ideas turn out to be, how much your work is built on by others, and what your impact outside ML has been.OK, we are at the end of the 10 step policy for achieving mastery over ML. When you have achieved success, what should you do? You should spend some time, perhaps an increasing amount of time, on advising younger researchers, and helping them achieve success. Professors normally have a legacy in terms of their PhD students, but all researchers can have an impact on advising junior researchers through internships and other avenues. Spend time writing a good book on your field — all said and done, ultimately a good book has a much longer shelf life than any academic paper.OK, there’s my longwinded reply to this question. Hope it’s useful!