People of Honor

This week was a very keen reminder of a scence from the movie Men of Honor, a story about the first Black Navy Diver. If you're ever seen the movie, you know it's a wonderful story but sad commentary on how directly racism effected the career choices of Black folks in the 1940's, espeically those in the military. And as much as I'd like to say things have changed, I really can't say that at all which is why I always have a very difficult time encouraging mimoirty students to enter career fields where they're not well represented.

Of course, the incident I'm referring to at work involves the interview killer. And the scene I'm referring to in the movie is the one where the main character played by Cuba Godding Jr. is many feet under bone chilling water and has to assemble a tool while there, wearing a 100 pound diving unit. After he has had a few minutes to get situated under water, a bag with tools and the parts that make up the more complex tool is lowered to him and he has the difficult task of putting it together in a certain amount of time. In some freezing cold water!!! The problem occurs when his bag is cut just before it's lowered into the water (NOT part of the test!!!), which then requires he search the bottom of a muddy body of water for the tools and the parts to make the bigger assembly. IN DARK COLD WATER!!!!

Unfortunately, he almost almost dies from hypothermia trying to put the complex tool together, but he does it knowing that he'll be kicked out of diving school if he doesn't. And that's exactly what the interview killer is doing to me, making it extrememly dificult to do my job by purposely not giving me what I need to get my job done. For example, I tell her I'm doing IHC which requires charged slides and what does she give me, uncharged slides. I tell her I need 10 images from her database, she gives me 6 and I have to scour 283 pages of images to find what I need. I tell her I need a kidney cancer tissue block to use as a positive control, she gives me normal then pretends to act suprised when my stains don't work. Now the word is that she's extrememly intimidated by my skill level and work ethic. Whatever! Personally, I think anyone who would work for a company 15+ years yet be too lazy to get a BS degree that the company would have paid for is IMHO, a royal idiot!

Now I wish I could say this is the first time I've ever been in this situation either at work or in school, but it isn't. In fact, I'm an expert in dealing with this and overcoming being set up to fail, is a skill I've mastered. But I do have to admit that at age 45, I'm sick as hell with dealing with it.

Moving on, this was a VERY productive week at work for me obstacles aside, and I also realize that for the most part, I work around a pretty cool and smart group of Scientists. And THAT, along with the other positives of this gig are what I'm going to do my best to focus on!

649 days.....................

I can't get NO satisfaction!!!!!

Surprise, surprise, Path's NOT happy in yet another job, LOL!!! Actually I should rephrase that (especially as I contemplate buying another car rather than a new transmission). I'm VERY blessed to make a decent wage for a company that pays well and has GREAT benefits!!! What I do for a living is 'aaight!

So it looks like my job duties are changing from Path assistant/IHC specialist to scut worker, LOL!!! Okay, it's not really that bad, but I see the handwriting on the wall with the decision to hire someone else (A Dr.) for the job I was told I was primarily hired to do!!!

No problemeo, except the "timing" is a little ironic given the fact that 4 times in the past few days, my Supv told me and I quote "You don't need to answer in this kind of detail because you're not the Pathologist/Principal Investigator on this project". In other words, YOU AINT GOT NO PHD OR MD OR DVM so stop talking like you do, LOL!!! Well that's cool except that when I present my poster before the ENTIRE company next week, I'm betting that based on my project (primarily immuno based biomarker research) that someone is going to expect me to know the difference between a T-Lymphocyte and a B-lymphocyte, between a receptor and ligand, and other things DIRECTLY related to my project. Of course since "interview killer" ALWAYS refers to him in the interpretation of path images and other "science" stuff (which I rarely do because Robbins Path and Juniqueira Histo have been my absolute best friends since 2005),now I'm supposed to do the same? Not exactly what he said he hired me for, but okay. Now the department needs to hire someone from the outside to do what I already do? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, well alrighty then!

Of course there's more to this story, but suffice it to say that I desperately miss working in an environment where I would be celebrated NOT criticized for wanting to know more and do more and actually going the extra mile (translated weekend work) to accomplish both! I miss working for people who when viewing slides with me at the microscope, saw my questions as the inquisitive nature of a person REALLY, REALLY interested in Path and not as some challenge to their own knowledge. But alas, it looks like med school will probably be the next place I experience that, though I'm VERY, VERY aware that insecure people are everywhere especially on med school's faculty (did someone say Surgeon)!!!

Now where da' hell is my MCAT score so we can expeditiously get this show on the road?!?!?!

651 days and counting!

Have a "broweed"??? It's not your ordinary brownie.

It turns out DD is being teased/bullied for not wanting to "pass the duchy on the left had side". And I'd really like to say that I'm shocked, but I'm not. 51% of all teenaged drug buys occur "in da' 'hood". Guess where that other 49% occurs?? Yep right here where I live, in the county of one of the highest per capita incomes in the US. Not only that, there's an unspoken "no snitch" rule in these kinds of neighborhoods too. Now, whoda' thunk all that?

So of course we had the looooonnnnggg talk parents have with their kids when these issues arise and at the end of the day, we're very proud she didn't cave in to peer pressure. And given that she has so many adults to answer to, I think the "village" that's raising my kid is gonna be there to make sure she does the right thing and to reward her when she does. After "the talk", she did what she had to do school wise (with my help of course), and now her grades are up, though it's going to take a miracle to bring them all up to at least all 'B's.

Movin' on, I've been very busy at work this week prepping a poster for a meeting and while it's usually VERY exciting, trying to use Microsoft 10 to do it has been one big pain in the rear! URGH!!!! At any rate, I'll be posting a few images from my poster to bore my readers who are not future pathologist to death real soon, LOL!!!

Now can someone tell me whos dumb a** idea it was to put "bud" in a d*mn brownie?!?!?!

These are the times that try Mom's soul..........

I feel like I went from one stressor to another and I'm once again wondering how in the hell do Moms with teenagers make it through med school, with the kids turning out Okay? URGH!!!!

One month into school, my future Engineer/PhD geologist is now flunking her honors classes in Bio, Algebra 2, and Government. But has a perfect 100% average in Chinese and 97% in English? WTH????

Now if she suddenly decided to be a Chinese language interpreter for the UN one day, I'd FULLY support that as long as it was also either as a Scientist, Engineer, or Health professional. In words, I ain't paying for no "soft" degrees like dance, english, or psychology!! And with the way the world's shaping up professionally, folks majoring in soft areas are gonna find themselves competing for fewer and fewer jobs as time goes by. At least, that's what I think. Having said all that, I have a degree in a "soft" subject too, but I combined it with a hard core science because I wanted to eat regularly when I finished college, LOL!!!!

But my kids academic dilemma (which will soon be resolved after I put the "hammer" down), reminds me of where Black kids are today when it comes to academics and college majors. There are fewer American born Blacks majoring in science, engineering, medicine, and technical areas than there's been since the 80's, and the numbers are decreasing a LOT every year. OTOH, Blacks from Africa are happily applying to college programs in these areas in record numbers every year. So what I want to know is, how in the hell did American Blacks get to this place academically?

Moving on, I promised one of my loyal readers I would discuss what I finally ended up doing to prepare for the MCAT. And I changed my "strategy" so many times even I get lost trying to think of what I think finally worked for me. SO here's a list of a few things I found helpful:

1) I finally accepted that I was being tested on being able to identify the best answer not necessarily the right answer, and as a future Doc this makes a LOT of sense. When treating a patient, there may be several approaches one can take, but being able to identify the best one for that particular patient requires being able to see the broader view of things.

2) I timed EVERY SINGLE PASSAGE I DID which is why on the real thing, I finished with time to spare for the very first time on EVERY section.

3) I ended up eliminating the EK 1001 series questions for all the subjects except Bio and the reason I reviewed the Bio was because it was set up passge style. The MCAT hasn't tested significantly in discrete question style in over 20 years, so I realized early that practicing those type questions was a bit of a waste of time for me.

4) I repeated my difficult subjects over and over and over again until I had them down pat. Luckily for me, this wasn't required for the majority of the subject areas of the test. And when I saw those difficult area questions on the MCAT, I didn't have a moments worth of hesitation about answering them.

5) I spent twice as much time understanding wrong answers than right answers and I believe this is going to pay off on the real thing.

I guess time will tell if this worked or not, but as my sister/cousin would say, I'm going to speak a 30+ score into existance!

The perfect post MCAT meal.............

Ever since I can remember, the filet-o-fish had been my absolute favorite Mickey D's sandwich. So after taking the MCAT this afternoon, what did I crave despite living in an area with some of the best and finest restaurants in the world? A filet-of-fish sandwich, a small order of fries (which I NEVER eat), and a medium strawberry-bananna smoothie courtesy of McDonalds. Yummy!!

So how was my test? Well.....I really don't have any complaints and unlike the last time I took the test in 05', I wasn't interrupted during the test! In fact, after the verbal section, I almost broke out into the "cabbage patch" I was so happy with how felt I did.

Since I had done every MCAT question I'd practiced timed, I had NO problem with timing and finished each section with ~ 5 minutes to spare. The chemistry of the PS section was pretty straight forward but the physics was well, physics is not my best subject so I'll leave it at that. But I felt very well prepared thanks to TBR to make an educated guess on all the problems except 5 where I was forced to mark "C", and keep it moving. The biology related questions of the BS section were easier for me and also very straight forward which essentially translates into the fact that everything on the test I'd seen before. The organic was a lot more challenging, but I still feel pretty good about my performance on this section.

Overall, I feel pretty good about the test and think that verbal will be my highest score, followed by BS, then PS. This is a BIG change from when I previously took the MCAT and I scored the highest in the BS section.

And with that I'm going to end this post, while I enjoy spending the next few days behaving like a normal human being!

Get 'yo mind right!

The next few days are going to be ALL about staying focused and positive. The last MCAT exam I took had the following breakdown: BS-11, PS-8 (too much physics!!), VR-12. And that's gonna be it for me with taking exams until the real thing. I should also mention that my PS score would have been in the 9-10 range had I not changed answers (I know you guys are sick to death of mentioning that, LOL). So besides telling myself I'm gonna break my fingers if I dare change any answers on the real thing, I'm feeling pretty good.

So tonight I'm gonna have a "Woo-Saa" moment with NO study/review, in addition to visualizations of me acing the exam confidently and wearing both the short and long white coat one day. I also feel real good that when push comes to shove, I CAN get into steady study mode despite family distractions (I really did wonder if I had any "get my study on" left.)

And yeah at the end of the day, I guess I REALLY still wanna be a Pathologist who also does cancer research too!

X marks the spot!!!

I know I said I was gonna stop complaining about my job and I am. So I'm just going to share a few work related tales, every now and then, LOL!!!

Why would a person who clearly isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, try to call me out during journal club, LOL??? First, I'd never worked a place outside of Academia that even does journal club so when I found out about it, I was thrilled! And ironically for my first journal club it was my coworker, the interviewer killer's time to present. Now this is a woman who has been working in Histology for 30 years, but can't for the life of her read a slide ( a situation I obviously find incomprehensible, LOL!!). So when it comes time for her to talk about the slides from her article, she passes that on to our Supv who is a Vet Path. So as he's talking about the slides, when she interrupts him to ask me what I thought about the images. BAD IDEA ON HER PART if her goal was to put me on the spot, LOL!!! See when I go to journal club, I prepare as if I'm doing the presenting because that's how I roll. So I tell everyone what I think including referencing another disease (we were looking at granulomas in the lung of a patient with a rare fungal infection found in tropical areas and I mentioned that it clinically presented like a case of TB). Now if she had asked any of the other 2 people in our group who were there what their thoughts were, my red flag of "is these heffa trying to be funny" probably wouldn't have been wildly flapping in the wind, but since she didn't, it did flap. Wildly, LOL!!! So the meeting ends with me and all the other Scientist talking science and every now and then she pipes in with something that I'm still trying to figure out how it relates the paper or what we were talking about. Now I know how she felt being in a room where most of the people are smarter than you are because that's what I happily experienced when I was a predoc fellow in the pathology department at the NIH. And I LOVED it, because I LOVE learning new things. One thing I NEVER did do there was say something just to make myself look smart because in that setting, that just would have been plain stupid. In fact, I was VERY careful when I did speak up because the Chief Path would not have a problem checking you if you said something crazy (and let's face it, life saving Dx's were on the line there so NO room for foolishness). But obviously not everyone gets the memo that sometimes is just better to just shut up and listen.

At any rate, I wonder if she'll "come at me again" with a non-question, question and honestly, it really doesn't matter if she does or not. Either way, you KNOW I'll be prepared just like last time. In other words, pimp me baby, I'll be your 'ho, LOL!!!!

Moving on to the MCAT, everything is everything as they say and from now until the exam, my biggest focus will be keeping my nerves under control. And that's gonna be a TALL order!!!