Workin' Girl

Hi Friends! Sorry, it's been a while. Pathetic as it sounds, it's taking my body some time to adjust to getting up early and working 8 hours every day after having been off for an entire month! I've just been too tired to do much more than, well, NOTHING when I get home. And unlike previous positions I have held in the past, for the most part I remain relatively busy all day at work. I LOVE this lab though :] It's so clean and organized and well-run, and everyone is SO nice. I've been very busy trying to glean as much as I can from the previous study coordinator (Kathleen, whose last day is TOMORROW! Yikes!), while also trying to learn some lab protocols from the other tech as he works on them. So I'm constantly flitting back and forth between the two of them and watching them work. I've done a little of my own hands-on work, but nothing much so far - I'm still in the learning phase. I really need to review my statistics knowledge, not to mention teach myself how to use the crazy statistical software that we use to manipulate the mountains of data collected through our study. Kathleen has been trying to teach me the most common tasks and give me some tips and tricks, but I know that once she's gone I'm going to need to spend countless hours fooling around in the program to really get proficient with it. There's really no replacing this woman - she's just amazing - but I want to be able to be helpful when other lab members need data assembled! My boss approved a statistics course for me through the Hopkins School of Public Health (though it isn't until the January mini-mester), which is based in the software that our lab uses, so I'm hoping that'll be helpful and get me on-track. It will also satisfy the statistics prerequisite that I need for nursing school.

That's right folks. I'm applying to a master's-level nursing program for next Fall! I'm really excited about it :] I still have the option to return to medical school next year, though as I've intimated before, I REALLY don't foresee that happening. This new lab is actually full of clinical fellows (MD's doing research), and having a glimpse into their daily lives REALLY doesn't help the medical school case. It has definitely reinforced my feeling that being a doctor requires far more career commitment than I'm willing to give. Anyway, I'm finding that nursing really seems perfect for me - for my future goals, my personality, and the position I find myself in right now. I don't know how I missed it before... it's so obvious to me now. It allows me to enter a patient care profession, while keeping SO many options open to me and giving me tons of flexibility both now and in my future career. There's typical bedside nursing (in a VAST array of medical specialties and sub-specialties), clinical research, advanced practice degrees down the road, cool specialties like environmental or public health nursing, process improvement research... It's just so exciting to me. It's basically everything I wanted out of a medical career, minus the whole "signing my life away" bit. The program I'm shooting for is a 16-month accelerated Clinical Nurse Leader program at the University of Maryland School of Nursing (across the street from my medical school!), which is a master's generalist degree that will qualify me to take the NCLEX (licensing exam) to become an RN. Here's hoping...  :]

In other news... my birthday is on Thursday. Yipeeeee!!! Eh, not quite as exciting as birthdays used to be ;] We have plans to go out to several dinners (just the two of us, mom, dad, etc), and we're going to the Baltimore Beer Festival in Canton on Sunday with some friends. And my hubby is taking me shopping, because I need (er, want) some clothes. And that, my friends is SUPER exciting!

Alright, this workin' girl is beat. Time to wind down for the evening.