History and other things

So it looks like for the first time in the history of the court, a Hispanic is going to join the supreme court, and as a person with some albiet not much hispanic blood, I couldn't be more proud (and about dam time!!).

Judge Sotomayor is beyond so beyond qualified, how anyone could consider this an affirmative action nomination nominee is beyond me, but also not suprising. At any rate, this day is momumental to anyone of hispanic heritage. I just hope it doesn't take 30+ years to get the first hispanic president as it did from the time Thurgood Marshall joined the court to the election of Barak Obama.

Speaking of Hispanic heritage, I formally interviewed for the position in a path lab of a local medical school and lo and behold, my new supervisor has about as Hispanic a first and last name as I've ever seen (as hispanic as my last name, LOL!!!). And the first thing he said to me after I sat down to interview with him was that it took him 11 years to get admitted to Vet school, that's 11 years, multiple applications per year, repeated GRE exams, and after 11 years he was finally admitted to Vet school. Now here's what most people don't know. Vet school is harder to get into than any other professional school and almost every one I know who was admitted, applied at least 2 times. But 11years of applications? I mean, I don't think I've ever in my entire life heard of such a thing. Of course, most people are to ashamed to talk about it (not me with soon to be 7th sitting for the MCAT), because I think what ultimately what happens is that you realize that not now isn't the same thing as not ever. But eleven years? THAT would seriously try my patience!! Now I may have mentioned before that the position is with a local med school, so during my tour he took me to the surgical suite where a watched a robotic surgery. Not surpisingly, the interview went very well and he reminded me to stay on task with med school. Bottom line, support like that is ALWAYS very cool!

Where have I seen THIS gig before, LOL??

So in the spirit of "let go, let God", I inform my readers that I'll once again be working in a Pathology lab beginning today, LOL!! I know right, how the hell did I get back to that? You know I've stop asking myself that question, I'm just gonna go with the flow and see where that takes me!

In this gig, I'll be the only one there at first ie the one in charge, the place is filled with men, so those are definitive pluses!! And I'll be getting paid well, more money per hour than I've made in my life and I've had some well paying gigs! Starting out I'll only be clocking about 20 hours/week which is still very cool by me since I'm still dealing with fatigue/stamina issues. I'll have the option by the end of the year to go full-time, the timing of which couldn't be better because a part-time schedule until December allows me to wrap up my MS in Pharm while in school full-time. So since I haven't heard back about the fellowship, don't want a 2.5 hour commute one way or to change my daughters' school/move to another city, Path lab it is!! And not so suprisingly, my bosses who are ALL Docs at the new gig, have made it real clear that educational opportunities like a PhD in path are available should I decide on that.

So I also had a good week academically, and feel good about my MCAT study schedule over the next year. Taking my time and really doing this MCAT thing right I'm sure is going to pay off in the end.

Sign-out was very cool this week as well and I'm getting more and more comfortable speaking up with questions and such while at the scope. Man, I'm so thankful for this opportunity because I enjoy doing it so much!! This time we were joined by a few Surgeons, including one fof the few Black male surgeons at this hospital, so getting a feel for how different Surgeons work is great exposure too. I've found all too often that working relationships can trumph how skilled you are and how much you know, and in this setting being able to keep cool with a hot headed Surgeon could save a patient's life.

So with that said, my week gets off to the best start I've had in weeks!!! :)

Finally some progress!

So I'm off to a productive start this week, both physically and academically! I've exercised twice this week and haven't felt exhausted. I've also completed 2 chemistry lessons although I'm not quite ready yet to start my EK testing on what I've learned yet (I'm waiting on a supplemental book of chemistry problems I ordered to accompany the course. Once I go through a few problems sets, then I'll do some of the EK material.

In addition to the medical school and personal accomplishments, I've also made some headway career wise and it started by my attendance at the NIH career symposium on Tuesday (the NIH clinical center is pictured with this post). Needless to say, attending was absolutely worth it and just to let folks know, the only reason I didn't announce it on my blog was because I forgot about it until I received the reminder email the night before! The symposium centered on careers for physicians, scientists, or both and let me say now that it was very inspiring and thought provoking. Attendees had the option of hearing a panel of about 5 folks talk about careers at their perspective organizations which ranged from the federal government to the pharmaceutical industry (of course you know I didn't attend ANY panels from industry, LOL). The panelist then answered questions from the audience.

Now I'll have to admit. When I woke up to attend the symposium, I was thinking I'm tired of the med school rat race, I'll just get a PhD and call it a day. Then I heard the opening remarks by a Harvard trained PhD in Psych, who also happend to be Black, talk about how much serendipity played a role in her career. That was almost immediately followed by a conversation I had with a classmate of mine from grad school who although I've had many classes with, we haven't really talked much, tell me that for as long as she's known me, she could sense my passion for attending med school and becoming a doctor.

So I attended 3 sessions, one from scientists seeking careers with the feds both in and out of the lab, and the last one for MD'/DO's/MD.PhD's seeking careers outside of clinical medicine. Some notable observations were that the sessions for PhD's were filled to the brim with people who were unemployed, while the one for physicians were the complete opposite. So as I'm sitting there in the rooms full of unemployed scientists I'm thinking to myself "Hell to the naw, this would NEVER work", and like my colleague told me, I would NEVER be satisfied without clinical training. At any rate, I left the symposium with a renewed focus for sticking to the plan, however that may have been amended due to...........................

my meeting with my primary mentor/adviser yesterday. She absolutely encouraged me to stick with the MD plan but added that I should reconsider sticking with my original plan to enroll in an MD/PhD program. It's also a sentiment I heard at the symposium. Of course, this would absolutely require I retake the MCAT (surprise, surprise). But my mentor/adviser (MA) also thinks I should rethink my time line for my application to med school, changing it from this summer to next summer. Her position was that I need to be very deliberate, focused, and prepared when I apply to med school and that right now, her feeling was that I was rushing preparing for the MCAT which could permanently cost me if I applied this year and don't make some substantial improvement in my score. And as Physician, she felt that I needed to get my health in order first anyway. All good points, but nothing I was really hoping to hear because I'm getting restless and impatient, but those 2 qualities will have to go if I'm to be successful.

Of course, the question of what I would do in the meantime came up and there are a few things for me to consider. I could work full-time in a lab or some other research position, take my time retaking the preq premed courses, retake the MCAT, then apply to med school next summer. In this scenario, I'd complete my MS in Pharm in the Spring of 2010. Of course, I'll have to decide on a medical intervention for my health issues in the next few months first. We also discussed my working part-time and starting my PhD program in Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Spring of 2010 after I finish my MS in Pharm this Fall, and going through the med school application process next summer after doing all the other things mentioned previously. To be honest, I probably have a preference for #2 because it feels less like I'm sitting around tittling my thumbs. Now with this plan, the thinking is that I could take a leave of absence from grad school to go to med school, or just beg the school where I'm enrolled in the PhD program to let apply to their MD/PhD program. My MA reminded me that I had some very powerful and supportive adcoms on my side and that if I do what I need to do MCAT wise and present a logical plan for the MD/PhD, I may be able to get this to work. And the biggest incentive being that the NIH had a program for minorities that could pay for it all. Finally, a third option could be to work part-time, graduate in Fall 2009, then work full-time while applying to med school for 2011. I've got many choices, so I'm going to really think through the pros and cons of each while making sure I'm listening when God gives me insight into which is the better option for me.

So I guess that just about covers what the plan is for the next year of so, and I have to say that I feel pretty good it. Now I'm off to do my Physician shadowing at a local Pathology dept!!

Yet another minimalist week

Absolutely NOTHING to report this week on the going to med school front. I didn't complete a single lecture in General Chemistry and only did 2 trainings in Pandemic Influenza. Like the last week, I'm dealing with some tough medical issues and will need to decide soon what my next step is going to be to find a remedy.

In job news, it looks like I'm going to have to make a decision between an 80 mile one way commute to further my training in biological weapons defense and working as an uncertified Path Assistant with only a 45 minuite 10 mile commute. Honestly, I think I'm getting to the point where if I can't do the "real thing" in Pathology as a Pathologist, I'm not interested. The "social dynamics" of working in Allied Health in this capacity just don't seem to be worth it. In other words, I'd rather not work around women I out educate. Now I'm sure for some of my readers that's going to sound REAL arrogant, but for a good number of my minority readers, especially minority women, you'll know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. The fact is that there haven't been many times in my life where I felt openly discriminated against because I'm Black but gender discrimination has been far more of an issue. The fact is that being Black and out educating the people I work around has NEVER, EVER worked for me particularly in female dominated settings, which I've been fortunate to not have much professional with. For example, to this day, I still hear from a contact at my old job how much the "hater bitches" can't seem to keep my name from their mouths. But that's OK, I've got a a little legal something, something in the works to deal with that situation (I'm sure you guys didn't think I was gonna just let the shit they did to me just slide, did you?). At any rate, I don't think I'm going to make the same mistake I made last December when I could have been happily esconsced at an NIH gig instead taking the job working for a bunch of witches from hell. Even with the 1.5 hours commute versus a job with only a 45 minute commute, I'm going to choose peace of mind and regular oil changes for the next year or so because peace has NO pricetag.

This week I'll have to do doubletime to get caught up med school wise, but luckily my AMCAS is essentially done save for the rediting of the personal statement. I'm meeting with my main mentor, a Black woman with an MD/PhD who works for the feds on Tuesday to have her review it and to set up a new plan for getting accepted to med school. Despite the set back with the 5 year program, I feel good about my decision to limit myself geographically initially since I have the added pressure of helping my daugher through a difficult personal experience too that at this time I prefer not to elaborate on. So that old saying "if it ain't one thing, it's another" had become my theme song of late but hey, what can you do other than roll with the punches. Bottom line is for me to stay focused on the blessing I do have because things can always be worse.

There was one really great thing that happened this week and that was I had my formal training to be a speaker for a major national breast cancer organization. A few of the trainees were breast cancer survivors and almost all had been care givers for someone with breast cancer. Suprisingly, about 40% of the women there were women of color, so that was really great to see giving the mortality rate minority women have from breast cancer. As always, I get teary eyed when people are telling their stories but I think it's a very important cause and I can't wait until I get my first assignment!

OK, I think that's about it for today, hopefully I'll have something positive to update with this coming week!:)

AMCAS 2010

So after I finished that last post, I felt like crap so I reworked my ENTIRE personal statement from last year, and with 2 words to spare! Draft #1, COMPLETE!!!!!

Now I'm going to proceeded to spike the football, then do the funky chicken in the endzone!!!

Minimalist week

That title pretty much sums up what this past week has been for me thanks to some lingering health issues I talked about in previous posts. The unfortunate thing is that after talking to a few people who've had similar issues and surgery, it could take as long as a year for me to get back to being close to the person I was before. My biggest issue is fatigue, as in I MUST have a 4 hour nap every afternoon after only 3-4 hours of constant activity.

Despite that, I started exercising regularly this week which feels pretty good but actually only made the need to rest even stronger but I expect at this point that's pretty normal. I did complete 5 gen chem lectures and problems this week but I haven't yet taken any MCAT PS exams or done the cooresponding problems in the EK Chemistry book as of today. I've also completed 2 additional trainings toward my biological/chemical terrorism and emerging infectious disease certification, so I haven't been a complete slacker this week.

I did get some good news on the employment front. My app to a gov't agency has been referred for a laboratory fellowship related to my biological and chemical terrorism interests. And due to the nature of the position and the agency it's with, that's about all I can say about it now. If I should be selected, I would split my Fall schedule over two semesters and finish my MS in Spring 2010.

On the med school app front, I've started working on both the AMCAS and AACOMAS applications which as some of you may now is a TON of work especially when you have 300+ credit hours! I've also decided to completely rework my personal statement and have some folks active in the admissions process look over things.

This month, I'm also returning to my volunteer work in breast cancer with Komen and I'm thinking about doing some work at one of the military hospitals too.

Well I guess this just about sums up my life these days! Happy Mother's day to all my reader Moms!

General Chemistry - Please pass the Quantum Mechanics too, please!!

General chemistry from the perspective of quantum mechanics? Well the only reason why my head hasn't exploded yet is because I've had 2 semesters of Physical Chemistry with Differential Equations. One thing that becomes clear is I know why MIT students tend to blow the MCAT out of the water, lol!!

I've now completed 4 of 35 lectures of a course which equates to 1 years worth of general chemistry and to be quite honest, I'm enjoying the through review (which probably isn't a surprise since I have 2 degrees in Chemistry). In fact, I'm seriously thinking about teaching a Chemistry course at a local college sometime this summer depending of course, on what my doctors and I decided to do about my medical situation. At the very least, I may tutor chemistry a few hours/week because I really do enjoy teaching folks and it's a good feeling to see students have that "light bulb" moment.

Other than this, not much is going on. I had planned to do orgo at the same tine but quickly decided that I was about to make the mistake of rushing myself again and decided to do the smart thing and take them in sequence just as I did many moons ago.

This Wednesday, I'm going to take my first EK exam in chemistry, and as usual I'll post my progress!!