..................create your own! For the past week I've been busting my butt trying to get fellowships and grant apps completed for the early November deadlines that I didn't find out about until last Wednesday. So while eating at a local med school and feeling more and more exasperated about my inability to find a research group, I saw a positing for fellowships in Translational Medicine so I called even though I'm not officially in a PhD program yet.
The woman I spoke with happens to do recruiting for one of the graduate programs at my school and she suggested I apply for a couple fellowships and grants that I had NO IDEA about before. So I got in touch with Dr. E and my "grandpa" advisor about my personal statement and research proposal. Now, I meet with Dr. E later today, but I met with my grandpa advisor on Tuesday and man, when I left his office, I felt like I had gained another anal orifice, ROTFL!!! He started with the "get your arse to med school ASAP" speech again and ended with why I haven't found a research gig yet. But there were NO tears after I left this meeting this time, just a titanium coated resilience to take his advice to heart and do what I KNOW I need to do.
Other things going on in my life is that in between reading a TON of papers and developing a research project, I've been trying to make progress in one of my Bioinformatics courses. And I'm stuck trying to use a software program (PLINK for Genome-wide Association Studies or GWAS) in an operating system (Ubuntu/Linux) not commonly used for GWAS. Put another way, there's not nearly as many troubleshooting tips on the net for Ubuntu as there are for Windows or Mac users. But before I toss my laptop out of the window, I'm learning to take a few deep breaths and say "woo-sah":
And it ain't hardly working, LOL!! But I'm doing my best to make it work because my blood pressure is starting to creep up every now and then on a regular basis. NO CAN DO!!!
At any rate, I continue to be in what I like to call a "caterpillar" season because I feel myself growing and changing in a LOT of great ways. I previously blogged about my concern about having to participate on a project that is someone else's passion, but not finding a suitable gig not only forced me to find another way to get my goals achieved (if they won't give you a gig, get your own damn funding for a gig) but also to conduct research that will benefit people who look like me, which doesn't happen nearly as much as it's needed! What this means for me personally is that my proposed project will encompass cancer health disparities and informatics, exactly as I originally hoped!!! :)
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