Laughter is the BEST medicine!!

I heard someone say that they often laugh to keep from crying and based on the week I just had, I'd say that's probably a VERY good idea for me.

First things first, I interviewed for another job on Thursday, 24 hours after seeing my "new" job desciption in writing. The short story is that it looked NOTHING like what was discussed in my interview. And that's okay for me as long as I'm learning something, as I blogged about a few weeks ago. But when I find myself in a position where learning will be "difficult" as in FORGET about dissertation options among a couple other VERY important educational things like tuition reimbursement, I have to seriously rethink why I'm earning a salary I haven't seen since the late 1990's. Then there's the fact that the folks with this other gig REALLY seem to want me, so much so that they contacted me twice after I told them I was working elsewhere. And I also couldn't get their last email about working with them out of my mind, which made perfect sense when I got the "real" story of what my job duties would be in my current gig.

The other things that happened/I learned about my current gig this week are so "out there", I'm going to wait to mention specifics LONG after I'm gone from this group. Suffice it to say that I'm literally the laughing stock amomg people I've shared my "story" with, if there's a 1 in a million chance of a particular situation occuring at someone's job, it's VERY likely happened to me. So rather than cry woe is me, I've decided to put my best face on it and laugh with everyone else with the knowledge that my job experiences to date, are going to make me one hellva Doc one day.

Overall though, I'm feeling rather jaded about the idea of a research career especially in the context of what I observed this week, and I'm reminded once again, of why there are so few Black folks doing research for a living. What I AM feeling more excited about is the interface between Health Informatics and Healthcare. In other words, I'm giving more thought to what are feeling like more attainable professional goals given all the things I see/hear working at a top notch research organization. The fact that this new(er) gig is directly related to Health Informatics is just another plus. A SUPER, DUPER PLUS!!! :)