Metro riding fool!

This past week I spent more time on the metro in one week than I've EVER spent! My daughter had engineering camp so I was back and forth on the metro between her camp which was at one end of the line and my job which is at another. Now I usually enjoy the riding metro because I hate driving, but after last month's metro accident which resulted in the death of 9 people, I've been a little more cautious and concerned when riding. Especially since they have on going electrical "issues".

This was also the week which I had a challenge on my job which in my opinion reeked of sexism and of course, I knew it was coming eventually. One important fact of working in an academic environment, even one with a military flavor, is that you'll come across many foreign Physicians and Scientists and unfortunately, many of them bring views which goes against most of what America stands for. For example, it's a pretty well known fact among people who know me well that being a woman has been far more of an issue than being Black has ever been, especially in the fields of Science and Medicine. I won't go into specific details about what transpired, but suffice it to say that my integrity was called into question by a foreign PI and that by the end of the week he had egg on his face. Here's the thing about me, I've grown accustomed to folks thinking I'm un or under qualified for my job, my major, or whatever else people like to imagine so with time, I've learned to handle these issues like a champ. But when my integrity has been called into question, that's an issue that while I can maintain diplomacy, I always make it crystal clear that those types of accusations will be dealt with. And expeditiously! Fortunately for me, I've established the kind of rapour with my supervisor and her supervisor such that when this PI decided to go way over my head, I had support for which I'm extremely grateful because this hasn't always been the case as in the last job I had where I was wrongfully fired. And I admit I was very angry about it because people have the power to destroy a persons professional life over a situation that had I been a man, I'm certain it would have been handled completely differently.

So with all that said, on Friday I was informed that there's talk of making my position a Research Assistant Professorship, which is pretty amazing given that I started off as a 4 hour/week casual employee just over a month ago. In other words, if you're good at what you do and you carry yourself with professionalism and integrity, things will ALWAYS work out in the end!