Work is Fantastic!

I am so excited because I got recognized in a big way at work! It will take a little explaining....

So yesterday was our monthly "journal club." Everyone in the lab is emailed a journal article to read ahead of time and then we all meet to discuss it. The article is usually something relevant to our research. In the meeting was everyone in the entire lab, including the head of the lab David Schwartz. He basically IS the lab. Without him, we don't exist. He started up our lab about 2 years ago. He secures all our funding, he hires everyone, he is the boss and makes all the big decisions. He is a very important person in the entire medical/research community as well. Right now he is thinking about becoming head of the department of medicine at University of Colorado. That is a HUGE job! Basically anything with his name on it is highly regarded in the scientific community. I haven't had a lot of interaction with him yet. Though he is the head of the lab, he is a very busy person. He isn't actually in the lab very often. More often he is in meetings, in his office, or at conferences. To me, he seems kind of like a rock star in the research/medicine world.

So, back to the lab. We're all in journal club discussing this article. I brought up a point that David thought was really relevant and important to our discussion. We ended up going back and forth and discussing it for quite a while. He thought it was a great point and agreed with me completely on it. By the way, none of the other student interns said one word during the entire meeting (or any other meeting for that matter). So I had a feeling that I kind of impressed him. I was willing to speak up when none of the other students were, and I brought up a relevant, interesting, and valid point of discussion. My direct supervisor, Judy, told me at the end of the meeting that she loved how I asked questions and participated. I went home feeling very proud of myself.

Then, at work today, Judy told me that David was impressed with me. She said that after I left for the day, David went to talk to Ivana (Ivana is Judy's boss and David is Ivana's boss). So David went into Ivana's office and told her that he wanted to keep me. As in, when the summer is over or when I graduate, he wants to hire me! This wasn't a job offer of course, it was just him speaking to Ivana. But that is AWESOME!! Even more so, because I have made it clear to Judy (who has then told Ivana) that I really want to work here after I graduate. And Ivana told that to David! Judy also loves me and she really wants me to stay on. We work really well together and I just fit in so well in the lab. So I impressed my boss, and her boss, and her boss on top of that. Even if I don't end up getting a job in the Schwartz lab after graduation, any recommendation letter with David Schwartz's name on it will count HUGE getting me into PA school or any other graduate program.

So as you can tell work is going amazing :-) I absolutely love it. I love all the people, I love the work, I love what I'm doing. So much so, that I volunteered to go tomorrow night at midnight. That's the thing with research- when you have a time point you have to hit, then you have to do what it takes. Since I live only 10 minutes from work (Judy lives almost an hour) it will be really easy for me to pop in, take care of the time point, and go home. It will only take 30 minutes at the most. And as Daniel pointed out to me, when you want to move up and get a raise and get a promotion, it's things like this that put you ahead of everyone else. The other students are not speaking up in meetings. The other students are not volunteering to come in at midnight.

Another thing I did today to further my career, is that I volunteered to help Laura take care of our mouse colony. David Schwartz recently fired a research technician. His job was to take care of our mice. He put in orders, kept things organized, and kept track of our mice. It appears that he stopped doing his job some time ago. And when he stopped doing his job, a certain strain of mouse was allowed to breed out of control. The result is that our lab now has thousands of mice that we will never use for research. We didn't ask for these mice to be bred, and we have no use for them. Now there is a huge room somewhere in the Biological Resource Center with mice that are just sitting there. Some of them are 2 years old! That is ancient! We usually use mice when they are 8 weeks old. And for every mouse that sits there, the BRC charges us. National Jewish has a full-time staff whose job it is to clean cages and take care of everyone's mice. They charge us to take care of our mice until we need them for research. With thousands of mice just sitting there, we are being charged $18,000 EACH DAY for those mice that we will never use and don't even want. All because this research tech didn't do his job and make sure that mice were not breeding uncontrollably. That is just ridiculous. David was very upset when he found this out. So tomorrow Laura and I are going to the BRC and getting rid of any mice that are not specifically designated for a current research project. It will be a massive undertaking.

I love my job :-)