Friday, June 19, 2015

This is a man's world.


*Image from the Crimson.com
When I reflect on the many "challenges" in my career, gender issues are at the top of the list.

Take this dumb a$$ comment by a Nobel Prize winning Scientist about women in the lab:

"[men] fall in love with them, they fall in love with [men] and when you criticize them, they cry."

I mean really, dude? And this kinda brings to my mind my suit for a boss, but so far I'm doing a great job making of it work. But then I'm so stoked about all "Internal Medicine" things I'm learning, that there isn't too much I'm going to let ruin my experiences while I'm here! ;)

Moving on, there are two very distinct things I notice as an "implant" to my new home state of Texas, one is how freakin' nice EVERYONE is and two, how freakin' large almost everyone is! Yeah, everything is bigger in Texas but I didn't expect the people to be bigger too despite a very large (no pun intended) immigrant population. Now before some of you get in a huffy about the many "well nourished" people I see/meet/know in Texas and mention in this post, understand I'm looking at this situation strictly from a future Physician/Scientist perspective, and NOTHING else. In my mind, anyone at ANY age that wants to train to become a Doc for the state of Texas should be given an opportunity because the need is great and getting greater everyday! So with my IM focus (combined with Peds, lets not forget that), I think I'll have a very friendly and nice population of people in desperate need of future Docs/Researchers like me!

Other news on an extremely sad note is that my father-in-law is terminally ill with cancer so there's an extra amount of stress to what I've been dealing with regarding my family that has been in the background of my expereinces here since we relocated to Texas back in 2013. I also have 2 Aunts with breast cancer so to say the least, life is pretty sad from a family perspective. And those things which I obviously didn't mention until just now have set me back mentally in a BIG way. But it's also been a strong source of motivation to stick with my plans to address health disparities in my career as a Physician/Scientist. Sure, I totally get that in the time since I started this blog, I could have finished my training by now, but the fact is that I'm on MY life timeline NOT ANYONE ELSE'S!! And the fact of the matter is that I wouldn't change a damn thing about my path to this point. Everytime I learn something new particularly as it relates to working with other folks in healthcare, I'm reminded that these lessons before med school are for a purpose, and that one purpose is to one day make me the best damn Clinican/Researcher around!!!

Lastly, I've decided not to take ANY classes toward my doctorate until Spring 2016 so that I can focus on learning the mountain of things I'm learning on this gig and to prepare for the new MCAT. I still havent't set a schedul for the MCAT yet because I'm busy with the clinical gig, but I realized that the time is getting close to where I need to have something in place. Yeah, I'm still doing the random verbal questions here and there but I haven't looked at any other subject beyond what I do to prepare for tutoring students (yeah, I'm still doing that too, LOL!!). I also need to think about a volunteer gig for next year after learning that I can't volunteer at my current hospital (conflict of interest?). So it's never that I don't have anything going on when I'm not regularly blogging au contraire, I probably have too much going on. And I wouldn't change a thing about it! :)

Yep, this is a "man's world" especially when it comes to the medical profession and scientific research, but as JB said, "It wouldn't be NUTHIN without a woman"!!!


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