Busy, busy, BUSY!!!

Very brief update today, these days mainly doing family stuff while trying to balance a "flare up" of my GI situation which will from this point forward be referred to as flares, LOL. The say medical types can be the MOST noncompliant folks ever and this is at the heart of why I'm dealing with "flares" right now. So I have my daily meds reminder now programmed into my blackberry to decrease having this problem again in the near future.

This week my life has/is pretty much the following, take kid to engineering camp at local university, study for MCAT, interview for employment (gigs, not jobs :( ), and study for the MCAT. Speaking of the MCAT, I've taken this week to do science review which pretty much just boils down to Chemistry as my entire study "schedule" has been shot to hell and back now! But my verbal is tight, as in I don't score below an "11" tight, so I still feel pretty good. My review also reminds me of how my 2 summers in med school were nothing but repetition and repetition and repetition, but repetition of things I LOVED learning about. So having been so academically "high", it's a struggle to have to know "trivial stuff" like what changes, protons, neutron, or electrons, when a element forms an isotope?? URGH, but I'm kinda getting a kick out of doing this since this is exactly what I'll be expected to do in med school (repeat that is) and practice makes perfect!

Okay, gotta get back to the books, have a great and safe holiday weekend!

Epiphany on the beach

From Thursday to Sunday I was on Myrtle Beach, having the best time I'd had in a VERY long time! It was somewhat of "girl's weekend out" in that along with my daughter, I went with my Sister/Best Friend, her 2 nieces, and her oldest niece's best friend. It was Senior Week for my sister's niece who along with her BFF, had just finished high school and yes, it was CRAZY with young people! But so full of life and energy!!

Anyway, we had a suite right on the water where I took the above pic, and NOW I understand the fascination people have with the beach. Sure, I've been to the beach more times than I could count in my lifetime, but I had never actually stayed on the beach. Truth be told, it had never occurred to me to stay on the beach since in my adulthood, I'd never been a fan of the beach (like many other Black women, I have that "hair thing" going, LOL!!) But I enjoyed myself so much, I'm already planning my next trip for later this summer.

So I got up every moring to the sound of waves crashing at the shore (we left the door to the patio wide open), then laced up my sneeks for my morning speed walk. The last night we were there, I got up at 4 AM and let's just say it's REAL interesting the things that go on on a quite, somewhat dark beach, LOL!!! I decided not to go walking since it was still kinda dark, but I really enjoyed the hour or so I spent just relaxing on the balcony, watching the water roll in, and thinking about my life over the past few months.

Since I resigned from my position earlier this Spring, which was followed by my "new job" moving to Ohio, I've been thinking a LOT about the kinds of environments I work best in, as well as the things I need to improve upon, and I feel like I had yet another epiphany in this regard over the weekend. While I've had a tremendous amount of success as a Scientist, I realized that to have the kind of success I think I've earned in the future, I'll have to significantly change who I am as a person. What do I mean? I'm the kinda person who after running a successful gel after 100 times of trying, will spike the ball in the end zone so to speak to celebrate my success. The problem is that the majority of the Scientists I know have little that resembles a personality, so this type of "celebration" would be and is highly frowned upon. So I learned early on to adapt my personality to survive in other words, have far LESS personality. Now I'm realizing that in addition to that, I need to NOT work for certain types of women and since it's hard to know the type of person a woman is going in, I need to do my absolute best to avoid a woman boss altogether. As many people know, women are entering the science fields in numbers larger than men at some graduate programs, so avoiding having a woman boss, is getting harder and harder to do. And while I'm okay being a less vibrant person in the lab, I'm NOT willing to go out of my way to make working with certain kinds of women a success at this point. As an example, if there's a woman in the group with a very strong personality (which some others usually call a bitch), SHE is the one I tend to get along great with (birds of a feather flock together, LOL??) And by "bitch" I mean, she expects/demands perfection from her work and can get real snippy when things aren't going well in the lab. She's highly educated and VERY secure, which comes across to some as arrogant. And she and I tend to be peas in a pod, LOL!!! The kinds of women I need to avoid are those who are insecure, lack self-confidence and who likely got ahead due to their connections, sleeping with their bosses (yes I had one like that in the past 5 years), and all those other no work/skill related reasons some women tend to ahead. Worse, she's usually a dumb ass, she knows it, and is intimidated by ANY woman who's smarter than she is. She is also usually less attractive due in large part to the fact that she never wears make-up and tends not to care much about her appearance (one 10 year Vet I worked with had a couple broken/crooked teeth). Now it's understandable to me that mentioning things like make-up and teeth seems crass in a convo about careers, but women like this are out there making life hell for ANY woman who's the opposite of them. And THESE are the women I'm going to avoid at all costs at THIS point in my career because over the past 5 years, I've simply had enough of them!!!

So what's my epiphany? My epiphany is that as long as I work as a Scientist alone, I'll never be truly happy because I have to change too much of who I am in order to be successful, especially as it relates to working with certain kinds of women. I also realized that I would be doing myself a HUGE diservice staying in a field long term that offers very little contact with people outside of the folks I work with, because I am and will always be a "people person". So that means I'm probably 50/50 on staying in pathology, though I know Paths that see patients. And if I stay committed to the field, I'll VERY likely be one of those does procedures like core biopsies of women's breasts or thyroid biopsies (which was the worst experience for me ever!).

At any rate, I'm VERY happy with my life these days and will likely have some VERY promising job news to share real soon!

Princess MD

From my early days as a premed, one thing has always been crystal clear and that is people will say whatever they need to say, ie LIE, to get what they want. And I'm not saying that every premed lies their way into medical school, but as time has gone on it sure does seem that not only are people not ashamed of lying their way to "success", there seems to be the air of expectation that such behavior is normal.

Case in point, the recent NYT article by an Anesthesiologist who posits that women doctors are essentially ruining the practice of medicine with their decisions to 1) Work part-time and/or 2) Quit. While I agree that certain specialties in medicine should NOT allow for part-time practice, like surgical subspecialities, I do believe certain other Docs, like Internists, should allow for part-time work options. Now it appears that part-time work for the average Doc is somewhere around 30-40 hours, which seems like a decent amount of time to keep one's skills up.

Not surprisingly, when I posted my response to this article on the largest site for women MD's, premed, med students, I was a woman alone (suprise, suprise). And in the almost 10 years I've been a member of that site, I've regularly disagreed with many of the women on that site for reasons which boil down to one thing IMHO. When I ceased being Miss RHS in 1984, I stopped "wearing a tiara" on my head and became a "real" woman, LOL!!!! But apparently theirs are and will forever be glued to their heads.

I totally "get" that because of my career success as a Scientist and my husband's as a company CEO/Engineer, our kids our going to grow up with a different sense of what they can and can't achieve in the world than if we were in a different socioeconomic level. But despite the fact that we have a Black president (who claims his blackness, there were a few who didn't) for the "first" time in the history of the US, I know that because our kids are Black they'll, NEVER be able to take anything we can provide them for granted. Unfortunately, many women particularly those who grew up with 1 or 2 parents as Docs, didn't get that memo.

One of the things I've learned on that site (which is ironic because a woman of color owns it) and others like it, is that it's okay to talk about "Black privilege" AKA affirmative action, but that if you want to see a collective group of panties bunch up in the crevices of a LOT of butts, try talking about white, female privilege. IMHO, neither men or women of color could "get away" with what these women are doing to medicine in great numbers, without serious professional consequences. And when you have a collective group of women who feel they can sashay in and out of medicine for frivolous reasons, you see this privilege in all it's shinning glory. Now for clarity, I'm NOT talking about women who have special needs children, sick family members to take care of, or anything related to things OUT of our control, and the fact that I even had to clarify that on that site, is indicative of just how pathetic some people can be when they feel their toes being stepped on. I'm talking about the woman who wants 3 or more kids IN DIAPERS, and who expects to complete a residency in OB/GYN with NO issues or special accommodations. So many times I want to say "do you people believe/practice birth control"?, 'cause when Shenanae with her 3 kids, who serves the fries at the local Mickey D' starts to complain about her job, that's what these people would suggest to HER. Now why IS that?

Many times, I've been told that I'm anti-women which is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard considering I have 2 X chromosomes too. I'm VERY much pro woman, but anti- selfish, self-certered, the world revolves around me witch, because I'm old enough to know what many of those privileged folks don't know and that is in work place settings, we're ALL judged by the actions of people who look JUST LIKE US!!!! It's clear to me, that as long as these "Princess MD's" are getting what THEY want, they couldn't care less of a damn about the rest of us, they've got theirs. That's why when I met with one of the deans of a local med school for a chit chat a couple years ago, I agreed with him 100% that med schools should admit FEWER women. I mean really, do you think ANY of these women indicated in their interview their desire to quit medicine after they had 2 kids and couldn't "handle it"?? And please spare me the they didn't know how mother hood would affect them speech, that's weak, crass, and complete BS!!!! So you're smart enough to get into med school, but can't anticipate that motherhood can be unpredictable and challenging? Yeah right!

And that's what this is really all about to me, having some honesty and integrity when you're interviewing for med school, residency, and beyond instead of just flat out lying about your "commitment" to medicine. Because while you're off laying on a beach somewhere during your "break" from medicine on your husband's dime, there's a single Mom/Dad attending working their ass off who could really use a break.

Small reminder of the task at hand

For my graduation, my Dr. sister/best friend gave me the gift in the photo, in one of my favorite colors.

Nothing like a constant stream of motivation to stay focused on the task at hand!

Okay, I'm not mad at Physics anymore :) !!!

If you've followed my blog over the years, you may recall that the first chapter in my Physics review has ALWAYS been the bane of my MCAT prep. Now finally, after a couple weeks of reviewing just that one chapter, I'm finally doing well enough to move on the other things, after having to put everything but verbal aside to get through this chapter successfully.

Jobwise, I've been everything from laughing so hard my sides hurt to made as hell angry as I've had to think about how the job market is going to hell in a hand basket courtesy of the recession (depression). Case in point, I was offered a job in NC doing histology at an "intermediate" level which required a 50K DROP in pay!! Yep, you read that right, this one company offered me a salary for a job that required both a degree AND experience that pays a salary I haven't made in many years!! TO DO SCIENTIFIC WORK!!! URGH!!! Luckily for me, the options in Metro DC are better salary wise, but the idea that so many employers expect something but want to pay peanuts, is more than pissing me off royally!

Most disappointing for me career wise is that I haven't been able to secure another fellowship doing either cancer research and/or bioinformatics, but I'm gonna hang in there because the fact is that I picked the absolute worst time of year to be looking given all the new graduates in the system over the past few months. But I'm quite hopeful that by September when the dust settles, something will come through.

I also received a letter from the admissions office of that southern DO school I mentioned in a previous post and while I wish I could make that happen this year, I know that this year wouldn't work from a family perspective. Plus I really need to finish what I've already started in Bioinformatics first and not get back into the habit of starting programs and not following through and finishing them.

%&*^ Physics!!!!

Please fill in the above with the appropropriate 4 letter word.

Thank you and that is all for this post!

Gigs, Jobs, and Careers

It was an entrepreneurial female cousin of mine that broke down for me the difference between a gig, a job, and a career. A gig is something you're skilled in, but you take only when it's absolutely necessarily. Your enjoyment level of said gig is best qualified as "meh". Gigs I've had in the past include working at the mall, grocery store, and at fast food joints. Today, a gig for me would be employment as a Histologist, and so far, that's primarily all I'm interviewing for these days (and I'm NOT complaining). And here's a perfectly good example of where having ADD (aka a lot of professional "variety") of the career has been a VERY good thing!! A job for me would be being employed as a Scientist because while I've thoroughly enjoyed the majority of the Scientist jobs I've had, it's not what I've always wanted to do, the thing I could do well no matter how tired I am, or how crazy I felt my family life had driven me (DON'T ask, LOL!!). The very good thing about jobs is that they tend to pay well, with good benefits, so folks tend to be satisfied with having one and stay there until retirement. Or as I like to say, MANY folks "settle" here for reasons which are especially obvious in a recession. Then there's a career which is obviously how I see medical school and residency. And when I think about med school, I think about the 2 summers I spent attending a local med school, taking classes with med students and how exhausting yet exhilarating it all was!! And it's these memories of having 21 lectures on ONE test for example, that keeping me plugging away at my goal!

Speaking of goals, I've thought a TON about Mi's question to me and one the thought I've had a lot is the "what if" conversation in my head. For example, what if I applied to the post bacc biomed program of the DO school that has recruited me every time I've taken the MCAT (the past 10 years), boosted by the positive feedback I received from them this past Tuesday? Of course, their question to me was like Mi's, "why don't you apply this year", and my response is the same, "I ain't ready" this year. But a few classes taken part-time with med students might be something I could seriously consider if the opportunity presented itself but realistically speaking, it's VERY late to try to get accepted for this Fall. However, if I applied and were accepted, I could start in the Spring of 2012 if a seat came up.

The question now becomes is the fact that this school just happens to be located in one of the 2 cities my family has narrowed down our relocation to, just a coincidence????? Things that make you go Hmmmmmmm.

Moving on to the MCAT, I didn't get much done this week science wise though I did do well with what I did get through, but my verbal is still looking VERY good, "9's" on the EK exams, and "11's" on the AMCAS exams. I'd also always heard that generally speaking, you can add 2 points to your EK exam for a measure of how you'd do on the real thing, and I'm consistently finding this to be true. But as far as my overall studying goes, I was feeling a little burnt out again, so I'm not beating myself up about the fact that I took it easy study wise this week since I can't learn a thing when my mind isn't "right". But I plan to make up some ground this weekend, so I'll be all good by Monday!!! :)