BullyPI part 3, final chapter

So last week I do work for the grad student of bullyPI and lo and behold, I not only get complimented for my work, but I get an additional request to do more. Yeah, Whop-ee, who really cares, LOL?? I certainly don't, not any more at least as far as what particular people think, but I have learned a LOT from this experience. First and foremost I've learned not to allow myself to be bullied by ANYONE else at least not professionally, 'cause that $hit NEVER works to your advantage. Once a person disrespects you it sets a pattern for them to abuse you in the future and sure as $hit stinks, they WILL continue to abuse you. Second thing I've learned is how to tune out negativity and do great work while under an enormous amount of pressure. This is something I've always thought about with people in high stress jobs like Pilots and Surgeons and how they manage to stay focused while dealing with other issues in their lives. Of course, if you deal with situations like this with great frequency, it eventually shows up as hypertension, weight gain, and wrinkles, but if you have a good means of letting off some steam like working out, I think you can successfully work through it.

Other news, I have my first exam this semester and I'm excited to take it! Only problem is that I fractured a finger on my writing/dominant, so I haven't yet figured out how I'm going to fare on a short answer exam. This also slows me down at work but the new guy starts on Monday, so that should work out OK.

My MCAT study is still on track although a very slow moving one and I'm OK with that. Some progress is better than none, and I think I have a workable timeframe of when I can reapply to med schools and other programs designed to get me in med school. At this point, it's looking like a matriculation date of Fall 2012 which is ironic because that date was part of my old username, Path2012. My thinking at that point 8 or so years ago, was that 2012 would be the year I FINISHED the MD/PhD, not started it! But I'm so OK with that too because I've lived a great life in the meantime with it's normal up's and down's along the way to doing what I really want to do. And in the end, doing the best with whatever it is your working with is ALL that really matters!!!

Mom, do I have to???

So earlier this week, I attended the annual Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease meeting sponsored by ASM (American Society for Microbiology) and man, it was so interesting!!! For the first time, I took my daughter with me and she was "all good" with it until I told her she had to write a report and submit it to her science teacher, LOL!! Needless to say, I doubt she'll be attending any other meetings with me, LOL!! This time though, I made sure to have some fun too which I don't really do at meetings because I'm usually by myself. And I let my daughter talk me into getting a room on the 14th floor which meant I stayed away from the floor to ceiling windows because I have vertigo, LOL!!!

The keynote speaker was a Hispanic woman who happens to study Dengue, the virus I'd love to do research on too. She was so entertaining and obviously her research was very impressive!! And yeah, I was happy to see someone brown give the keynote lecture. Now no meeting synopsis from me would be complete if I didn't talk about the food and it was terrific! But I forgot just how wasted Scientist/Physicians are, but with an open bar of anything you can imagine, what do you expect, LOL??

Sometime soon, I have to present a topic from the meeting to the folks at my job and this is the first time this has been required at this job. My supervisor explained that I may get a little "hateration" from my colleagues because of the new changes and how happy I seem to be about them, bet hey reporting on what you learned at a meeting is what I've ALWAYS been required to do! And in typical 2 for 1 fashion, I'm also planning to do a class presentation on a similar topic to the one I'm presenting at my job, also on Dengue virus.

Anyway, all this infectious disease (ID) talk has me thinking and rethinking what I want to do before I start med school because more and more each day, I question what I'm currently doing. I was originally going to study Dengue infection in brain (love that neuroscience flava) as my primary project, but after consulting with my supervisor it was changed to traumatic brain injury in part to appease BullyPI. Thing is, I know for a fact that BullyPI wouldn't be impressed if I could $hit published papers in neurosceince, so I say why waste my time? Honestly, I really want to get back into ID because I think if I can't, I may change jobs I like it THAT much. It's the area I'd like to study if for some reason I never completed the MD and it's not coincidental that for my long term plan "B", this area of study is required for the part-time PhD in Biodefense.

So for now, I'm content to just roll with the punches, but I'll likely take at least one course/semester in Emerging Infectious Disease/Bioterrorism in the future, to complete the certificate program I started years ago. From there, who knows???

Immunology on the fly?? Ummmmkay, LOL!!!

It's Friday night and thanks to the cherry mountain dew I had with my chipolte fajita burrito, I'm WIDE awake. And I also didn't take any attention meds today, so I've got miles of energy (but no focus, LOL) to spare!!!

This past week was CRAZY busy mainly because I spent 3 hours/day in traffic thanks to snow clean up...and all the nasty, in a rush, rude drivers in metro DC. I also worked some 9 to 11 hour days because I knew I needed most of today off for a Doc appt. for my daughter and because I had some hours to make up for from the back to back blizzards.

Back to immunology, because I've never had a course in Immunology, I'm learning it on my own to help me with the infectious disease (ID) course I'm taking this semester. Man, this is some complicated stuff, but I'm really enjoying learning all the new material!!! So strange it is to realize that my career in ID began in 1989 when I did research in HIV, and now some 20+ years later, I'm pretty much back to where it all began!

I don't comment much on things going on in the world, but I'm going to digress a bit here today, starting with the crisis in Haiti. What a terrible thing to happen to an already troubled country! Hopefully, with all the money being poured into Haitain relief effort, this country will finally get on it's own feet and will now loose the title as the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Another thing that caught my eye recently were the billboards put up in various large cities by the mistress of a CEO for Oracle. Man, it just seems that between him , Tiger Woods, John Edwards, and others, monogamy/fidelity is becoming a thing of the past. This is especially unfortunate for Black women who have highest HIV infection rates amoung ALL races of women. Well as a former AIDS counselor, my advice to women, especially Black women is this: unless you're trying to make a baby, it's best to use condoms, 'cause these days, you just never know and it's pretty clear that cheaters are NOT using condoms!!!

On to MCAT studying or should I say the lack thereof, because I'm having a pretty difficult time finding time to study so now I'm going to say that once/week is about all I can do and still keep up with my classes and job. Speaking of job, bully PI is still chicken hearted having not yet responded to my email thought she's communicated with my supervisor, surprise, surprise. But when I think about the prof in 'Bama that shot her colleagues last week, you start to see things a little differently. In fact, women academics can be far more horrid to deal with than the worst skin head chauvinistic man on the planet. Yeah, give me an angry man anyday...........................

All in all, I know this is practice for something bigger, what I have no idea but this is truly trial by fire!!! However, I've already concluded that in science, the further you go up the ladder the further away from the fun stuff you get. As a Physician I will have the ability to interact with patients depending on my career choice, and I can stay "just" a Doc, and leave the admin/budget stuff to others.

Ok, I'm gonna call it quits now and hit the books!!!

Snowmagedden is done!!!! Or is it?

So it turns out that President Obama has joined in the frenzy with the record breaking blizzard that hit metro DC earlier this week and has popularized the term snowmagedden. Okay, that works for me. I was just sooooo happy to finally be able to get out of the house today and what a beautiful day it was!!! But they say more snow may be coming this Saturday and next Monday so even for a person who loves the snow, this is starting to get a little old!!!

With all this time off I figured I'd make some efforts to get caught up in my school work. So In addition to reading for my infectious disease (ID) course, I also managed to get some MCAT studying done and progress is slow in coming! But like most things that are difficult, I'll take my progress any way I can get it and I once again have to give BIG props to the TBR physics review material.

I also managed to get into the lab to run a few experiments because it occurred to me that one of the best way's to discredit a bullyPI is with excellent science. So excellent science it is, and I'll post a few pics in the next few days using state of the art imaging equipment. But in the spirit of keeping it real, I also need to mention that 99.9999% of what I'm dealing with with bullyPI has NOTHING to do with my work because this person was a royal jerk to me before I ever opened my mouth. That said, there aren't but a few reasons this person could be such a jerk to a person it (LOL!!) doesn't know and because speaking that term won't change a damn thing, I'll refrain from using it. But I will say that if I had a dollar for every time in my 20+ career conducting research I'd dealt with a similar situation, I'd be reasonably rich. I say reasonably, because the fact is that support and encouragement from white men is a big reason my career is where it is today and I'm extremely thankful.

To be perfectly honest, I'd started to question being in this position at all because I was so angry about what I was dealing with. But as one of my sister's says, the devil is a liar, so I'm gonna hang in there because I assume God knew what he was doing when he put me in this position. And as the saying goes, God don't make NO mistakes!!!!

Peace!!!

You don't miss your water until your well runs dry, LOL!!

Thanks to the record breaking snow in Metro DC, we were without power from Friday early evening until.......well the freakin' power is STILL off!! So after two days of staying wrapped up in blankets, we decided to crash over a friends house until.......whenever they turn the freakin' power back on!!!!! And the roads getting across town were treacherous so we won't be going back home until at least Tuesday. My daughter is out of school Mon and Tue, so she's glad and I suppose my classes will be cancelled too. But missing work is the LAST thing I wanted to do right about now!!! URGH!!!!

But as you can see from the photo, being cold and powerless didn't stop me from hittin' da books 'casue a girl's gotto do, what a future Doc's gotta do!!!

Ok enough about that, I've got some studying to do before I cheer on that fine a$$ Reggie Bush in the Super Bowl. Oh yeah, I hope his team wins too, LOL!!!

PI Bully, part 2

You know the ONLY thing worse than a bully, is a bully with the heart of a chicken, LOL!! I twice requested to meet with Bully PI and I haven't received a response as yet. Figures!!!!

Earlier this week, I spoke to one of my personal/professional mentors whom I met while I was a predoctoral fellow at the NIH when she was a Resident. She earned an MD/PhD, with the PhD in Pathology from an Ivy League school, completed a residency in Anatomic Pathology, then promptly pursued a career in a nonclinical field for the Feds. She's also Black. In the course of a conversation with her earlier this week, she mentioned that her job in administration is 90% politics, 5% what she knows and 5% luck. Well I personally don't believe in luck, but I was amazed at how much she felt her position was skewed in the direction of politics. And due to my experiences as a lab director, I know exactly what she means now.

As I've said before, when I deal with these "issues", the first thing that comes to mind is medical school for reasons which I've already shared 1000X. It's not that I think I can avoid political situations by going to med school because not only is that a ridiculous thought but it's impossible to do when you work for someone else. I'm simply reminded of how hard my current path is and I can't shake the feeling that I'd regret not having earned an MD if I don't give it a 2000% try. I love what I do, but having an MD and being a Pathologist would allow me to take what I'm doing to another level because of my ability to make diagnosis. And THAT's what missing now, any finding I make has to be signed off by a Pathologist, a research Pathologist who just happens to also have clinical duties at the hospital and teach medical students. In other words, he has the job I REALLY want because the PhD will only train me to do 1 of those 3 things.

So all this flip flopping back and forth between earning a PhD/studying for the GRE, really only indicates one thing, and that is that I'm not 1000% committed to earning the PhD while working full-time at my current job. There's just far too many variables in both personalities and opportunities that any one change could send my dreams of earning a PhD down the drain. When you enter a PhD program, there is no "we're gonna make sure you get out" attitude among administrators like there is in med school which may explain why so many folks drop out of these programs. More than that, I think the stress of my job combined with the personalities I must work with would be too much to balance with a family, AND a rigorous PhD program.

In other words, if I gotta put up with $hit, imma do that while in med school. And with that said, I think I need to lysol down my MCAT physics review book because the cat was sitting on it...........

Technology at it's finest!!!!

There's nothing like a bad day on the job to remind you that it's time to post on your blog again, LOL!!!

So just when I think I have a handle on things, I get sucker punched in the gut by my favorite PI, LOL!! Well in my mind, the ONLY match for Ali is Tyson, so until I get some resolution on this "issue", I've got my Mike Tyson face on!!!!

Moving on, I'm officially behind in my classes, MCAT and GRE studying which probably isn't news to anyone. But I'm making great progress on my project at work!!! Fortunately, it looks like snow again tomorrow so my kid will likely be out of school. More than that, I should be caught up by tomorrow night this time.

Speaking of kid, my daughter got her 9th grade course schedule and as an elective, she's taking an Engineering Design course (Have I mentioned lately how proud of her I am :) ???). As a result, I was "forced" to buy an updated computer because my 7 year old el cheapo Compacq just wasn't going to cut it (and I had done all the upgrading I could do, LOL). I go in thinking I'm going to get another el cheapo Compaq but was quickly convinced that doing so wasn't going to cut it as far as her engineering needs were concerned. So after looking at a gazillion computers under a grand, I decided out of curiosity to play around with the iMac, and I got hooked and broke all at the same time!!!! And that was before I'd tried all the cool features like having more than one page on my screen or typing a document then having the computer read it back to me. Needless to say, I"ll never own anything other than a Mac and luckily I shouldn't need to buy another one for 10 or so years!!!!!

OK, that's it for now. I'll be sure and let you know how my match with "Ali" goes, LOL!!!!