Summer breeze, makes me feel fine!!!!!

MCAT Bio Ct. 3 Score 12. And that's a paltry amount of MCAT study for this week.

One of the things I'm going to have to master REAL quick is how not to drop the ball when I'm stressed the hell out. But then I imagine that most people probably wish they had the same skill, still it seems so many type A, premed folks have NO PROBLEM doing it "all". Of course, things always look so put together from the outside......

I ended the week, pretty much how I always end my weeks most days, having got a LOT done at work in an area I'm not only pretty good at but throughly enjoy as well. The stuff with Bully PI is simply more of the type of $hit that I'm going to have to get used to dealing with, since there's always been some rabid female chicken lurking in every employment situation I've ever been in. Bottom line, I can't allow a bullying rabid female chicken to distract me from what's important right now, and that is to stay focused on Med school, THAT'S IT!!! Ironically, I had a conversation earlier today with a young black female scientist who's concluded that there's just a LOT of ass kissing in Science and I'm thinking if I asked a young Black female in every other field, she'd probably say something similar. The thing is that being Black, as I've said many times before, isn't the primary problem I've had, but being Black AND female, well that's a different story. But hey, what's a Black female scientist to do?

Now though, I'm kinda wishing I had applied to med school because I'm certain that when I get my scores back, I'm gonna be kicking myself!! But I'm trying to tie up some loose ends in my personal life first and well, if I haven't learned anything by now, it's that my life needs to be as ordered as possible if I want to succeed.

Okay, I

You gotta know when to walk away........

So after speaking with my advisor from grad school, I decided to send my Supv the protocol for her to do as she wishes. But I'm also going to pursue the harassment/bullying issue too.

Now, I'm fully aware that doing so will not change one bit the ire bully PI toward's me now and in fact, now that she has what she wants, I may REALLY get the boot sooner than I ever imagined!!!!

Oh well, all I know is that God has continually had my back in the long run in situations like these, so I anxiously await my new employment opportunity!! :)

And again, to ANYONE considering getting a PhD without also getting a clinical doctorate like an MD or PharmD, DON'T unless working is a sea of constant bullshit is your cup of tea!!

Putting a Bully PI in it's place

Step 1 - Lab director creates a novel protocol (that she should have at least tried to publish months ago).

Step 2 - Bully PI wants copy of said novel protocol to put in it's paper, without of course, acknowledging that it was written by me and came from my department.

Step 3 - Make appointment to speak with EEO office at job.

And there in a nutshell is how my life is going these days. Tell you something about some people, especially butch acting females in positions of power. They can be far worse than ANY rabid dog you've EVER seen.

So having it communicated to me that if I don't give it up I'll loose my job, I've decided that NOW is a good time to exercise my new attitude for standing up for myself for once and for all against Bully PI. Now, you may remember that I mentioned how bad it can be to work for people who are motivated by money ie in big Pharma but what I'm learning military style, is that working for people who are motivated by being promoted can be just as tenuous.

All that can be said now is that I guess we're gonna see how this all plays out, because that doormat position I've taken numerous times in my research career where my ideas were stolen from me, is no longer a position I'm willing to take. In this situation, I've quadrupled the amount of money my department makes in a year, they now offer services they didn't provide until I came on board, and on the side, I developed a novel staining protocol. I was promoted twice since I've been there a little over a year right now, and I have very good working relationships with the PI's where I work, lemme reword that, with one frequently noted exception. In other words, my shit is more than together on this J-O-B and if the end result is that I get fired because I'm not gonna be shit on by Bully PI anymore, then so be it. But Imma raise holy hell on my way out the door!!!!!!

Generation "I don't wanna work but I wanna get paid"

This week was absolutely exhausting and not exhausting because of work and study for the MCAT which is going well. It was exhausting because I requested and was given a first generation minority college student for an Intern, and let's just say, that you really should be careful what you ask for sometimes.

The first problem is that BOTH her parents and I work in the same general location which basically means that I see her parents a hellava lot more than I should (and next week, Imma' need to check this situation because it's HIGHLY triflin' AND unprofessional!!!!). Second, because she's the first in her family to go to college, she spoiled. Okay, my kid is spoiled too but she isn't a brat by ANY stretch of the imagination because I don't play that! So the first 2 weeks were great, and I realized that this kid could major in anything she wants. But because she's looking for the easy way out in life, she choose Psychology for a major. Now I really don't intend to put down other majors, but Psych is one major that if it isn't being combined with something like Secondary Education or Social Work, is a COMPLETE waste of time from a job perspective. And in thinking about this 19 year old college kid's situation, I'm reminded of why project 3000 by 2000 was unfortunately a failure. For the uninformed, Project 3000 by 2000 was a goal set by AMCAS in the early 80's to graduate 3000 URM medical students by the year 2000. Of course, the problem is that despite the enormous opportunities minority students have had, there are FEWER of them pursuing majors in the sciences, engineering, math, health care fields, than there has ever been and as a person who was the first minority and/or minority female in a couple science departments, I can't tell you how disappointing this fact is for me personally. As if everything I went through was wasted since there isn't anyone that looks like me coming up behind me.

Okay, so people should be able to major in whatever they want, but if anyone is paying attention to this recent recession, Psych majors are one of the lowest paying and least employable majors out there. Case in point, a cousin of mine finished Magna cum laude from a NC school in December 2009 with a degree in Psych, and is currently employed by Target. Now my sister works for Target too so I'm not downing target, my sister is a Pharmacist. HUGE difference in pay!

Getting back to the young lady in my lab, I'm trying to decide how much time I want to spend (or waste) motivating her to pursue a major that she is perfectly academically ready to pursue, knowing that she will likely choose the stay on the easy road. Interestingly, so many of my friends in academia tell me many minority college students are also choosing the easy road as if a Bachelors degree in whatever is really going to cut it in the future. I say these days, a Bachelors degree is slowly but surely becoming the equivalent of a high school diploma and that smart parents are not only telling their kids of what is to come, but helping them prepare for it as well.

At the end of the day, I'm reminded of just how far behind other racial groups URM students tend to be and of how difficult it is to change a mind set that is just happy see a kid make to college in the first place. Nowadays, I'm feeling like Oprah, who says that shes only interested in helping kids motivated to both receive her help and succeed.Okay, enough of my rant about that......

My MCAT prep while not outstanding, is moving along. I finished Bio 2 and 8, with scores of 10 and 12 respectively, repeated Chem 1 and scored an 8 (BOO!!), and will review Chem 1 again tomorrow and complete Chem 2 as well. As for verbal, I read a few Neuropath papers just to mix things up a bit and also some other major newspapers. You know it's funny all the opportunities to fine tune your verbal skills that are out there!! I also realized that as far as my study schedule goes, I'm a little ahead having giving myself 12 weeks to complete a program designed for 8.Unfortunately though, because I was so stressed at work this week, I was too tired when I got home to study more, and actually got more done during my lunch breaks than I did when I got home. Healthwise, I've had a bit of a setback, with my broken right toe from 2 years ago starting to cause me problems (could it be the 5 inch high heels, LOL??) so now I'm resolved to another summer of tennis shoes and stationary bikes for exercise.

Finally, my daughter graduated middle school last week where she received an award signed by President Obama for being one of the top students at her school. Obviously, we're VERY proud of her!!! And other good news, I finished the requirements for my MS today, and will soon officially become a Georgetown Hoya Alum!

Keeping it movin!

So I breezed through the first chapter of Orgo with a 10, but I've been stuck in Chem 1 ALL week. Why is it that the "easiest" subjects cause us the most problems? I ended up with a "7" in Chem AFTER the review which is pretty pathetic for a bunch of reasons including the fact that I have 2 degrees in Chem and used to be a Chem tutor as well, LOL!!! Now, I'll have to double up on Chem 1 and 2 tomorrow to do something that resembles trying to get caught up! No worries (yet), I should still be able to review everything before my August 19th test date, but I'm leaving the door open to moving the date up to some time in Sept just in case.

I also got a call back from a local hospital about lab positions in Pathology and I'm seriouly considering both, although I only offically applied for one. While I certainly enjoy my work now, I don't play musical chairs real well when it comes to my career, and I'm not the kinda person who could be comfortable not knowing if I'll have a chair when the music stops so to speak. So well see what happens, I'm driving a pretty hard bargin salary wise contrary to what some employers feel I should be doing in a so called recession, but recession or not, my skills are what they are and I'm not gonna short change myself because Bush 2 screweed up the economy!!

Well I'd better get to bed, I've got a marathon day of studying to do tomorrow!!

Da*N!!!

Nothing much to report today, except a "10" in the BS and VR sections. I haven't finished either Chem I or Physics 1, so I'll have a LOT to catch up on next week, Da*N!!!! :(

Amendment to MCAT study plan

So after 3 days of reviewing, I've decided that the new study plan is as follows. I'm going to review 1 chapter each week of General and Organic Chemistry, Physics, and Biology. I'll also complete 1 chapter of the EK verbal reasoning book. On Sundays, I'm going to take a 1/2 of a full length MCAT exam based on the older MCAT exams (which I already have), reviewing both right and wrong answers.

FYI, I'm primarily using TBR for all subjects except verbal and Biology where I'm using EK. I've also got my 1001 EK questions in each subject on "stand by" in case I need some extra practice.