That was then

I was pretty unfocused coming out of high school. I had terrible grades despite my good schools and even though I have always loved learning I just never cared about grades or homework. It was a source of frustration for my teachers and parents but I was happy just to learn the things that interested me and not do much else. I didn't really do home work but I tested well, I didn't take part in school activities except for the biology club but I excelled in the labs. Because of these factors I had zero expectation of going into science.
I thought I might join the Navy or find some job on cruise ships or in the library or the forest service.
I have always wanted to do everything and never been particularly good and whittling that down.
Unexpectedly and blessedly my best friend decided to send me to college.
We had both been working since our sophomore years of high school and saved enough to (I thought) get an apartment near the University of Maryland where she was to attend. Instead of doing that however we wound up at her parents place and all the money went to sending me to Montgomery college.
I loved college. My grades went from D's and F's to A's and B's. I'd never had A's in my entire life. At first I assumed that this was a result of Public School being easier than Private School but eventually I came to the conclusion that being allowed to study things that drive me makes a big difference.
I studied Theater and Medicine and English and History and even to my shock finally started to get Math.
I am terrible at math. I decided to try to get algebra. I took it 8 times at Montgomery before it clicked, but when it finally clicked I zoomed right up through Trig and and Pre-Calc. I shuttered to a halt there but eventually I will get Calculus too.
All the time I was there I still had that focus problem. One day, nearly on a whim, I found myself in the Co-op office. Someone in one of my classes had recommended it as a good way to find a job. I had been working as a farm hand and a janitor and for a short while, while my dad was in rehab, helping to run my fathers landscaping business. I was ready for something less stinky and exhausting.
The woman at the Co-op office asked me what I was interested in and I said Biology, this mostly due to the fact that I had just gotten out of a great anatomy lecture...if she had asked me the day before I would have said Psychology for the same reason.
She pulled a sheet out of a drawer and asked me if I could get to Rockville and did I have a car.
I could and I did.
I went up to Molecular Medicine and interviewed for a job I knew nothing about, in a lab I had never imagined on a lucky day.
I was accepted as a student lab aid and began working part time in their dark room developing pictures of chromosomes from amniocentesis and leukemia patients. It was fascinating!
When the semester was over I stayed on and began doing other things. I washed dishes and did filing, I learned medical billing and how to argue with insurance companies and eventually I grandfathered my way into doing real lab work. I learned tissue culture and microscopy. I did karyotypes and I loved it.

from http://www.biotechnologyonline.gov.au/popups/img_karyotype.html

The lab was tiny. At most there were 8 of us there sometimes as few as 5. I worked there for many years and would be there still if we hand't been bought out by Quest Diagnostics. They offered us jobs in VA but the drive was too much.
I had finished my Associates in Biology by this point and moved onto the University of Maryland and I was about to be married.
At this point I took a job with the lab that came in to by all our equipment. After a year there they were bought out by Labcorp. I could keep the job and move to NC or find something else.
I did a year of temp work that was horrible (for Fisher/Mckesson (high stress military contracting and strange gross AARP contracting) and then landed at Qiagen.
 Qiagen was so different. I knew nothing about gene silencing but was offered a job as a genetic librarian. It sounded interesting and I was given the tour on the day after Halloween. The whole building was done up in orange and black and people were laughing and there were pumpkins all over the place.
I am sorry to say I took the job for the pumpkins.

Here are my husband and myself being the Zombies part of Plants vs Zombies at last years Qiagen Halloween Party.

I became not a genetic librarian (I do some of that of course) but instead a robot wrangler.
So much of what I do for work is automated and when I am not dressed like a white ninja in a clean room I am up to my elbows in some crazy robot trying to get it to behave.
Here I am doing my thing at 35 sec in (George is my lab mate and one time trainee his sweet son Mervyn got the interview).

I really enjoy the scripting and the never-bored quality of being a babysitter for  robots but I wish I were a tech again. I don't want to be a Production Associate. I make more money than a lot of the techs but I am not proud of my job.
I am really hoping that what I am learning for this class and for my boss will get me on a track that I am proud of.
I know what they want here at work. They want more back up for QC and they want to move someone out of my area because grants are down so academic orders are down and NIH orders are down and bla bla bla money. They want to do something kind for me as well. They want to help me do more than hang out as a peon. They have offered me management positions a number of times but I just don't want it.
I don't want meetings and I don't want to be the hire/fire person. I don't want to be a boss. I want to do things that are interesting. It still boils down to that. As a gene silencer I may have a small hand in curing cancer. I may help if even in only a minuscule way in the upcoming personal medicine revolution.
I think this class will move me closer to the degree that will let HR keep me on the science side of things and the cross-training that the class represents will get me enough real science to belong there.
I know what the school wants too.I have seen the degree completion stats. I know the workplace credit program is one of the ways schools that cater to returning students are  examining. The education market is in major flux and this sort of program is one of the directions it might pivot to (one of a slew). My success in the program (any students success) boosts those numbers and even my (or anyone's) failure helps guide the evolution of the system.
I don't understand so many things about what I am about to learn. I picked  my paper and power point topics based on the things I know the least. These are the things I feel flying over my head in the lunch room. I am hoping the class structure will force me to look closely at the things I can get away with ignoring. This is a lot about self improvement. I felt too shy to ask many of the questions that I have. I was afraid of wasting peoples time and I was afraid of looking stupid, but now I must ask.
I feel so lucky to have gotten into the program.

Here we go Co-op

This is a blog about my COOP 486 experience. I am writing it for myself and also for Dr. McLaughlin so that she can keep easy tabs on what I am up to.
I applied for the CO-OP program for a few reasons. The first reason was that I had a really good experience with the CO-OP program at Montgomery college many years ago. Additionally I knew that I had some major cross-training up-coming and thought it would be a good time to try the workplace learning for credit program out. The third reason is that I am dragging my feet on some of the upper level biology classes because I am honestly afraid I wont be able to pass them. I know I can do my work so this seemed like a good option for the upper level credits.

I was very confused at the beginning of the application process. It took a long long time (months) to hear back from anyone at UMUC about the status of my application. When I did this before it was very fast and informal and I was working for the program the same week I applied for it.
Partially this is because the program was (apparently) full for the summer semester when I applied and my application was pushed back to the fall. Partially it was because I had horrible luck getting a hold of anyone in teh work place study office. It was like one sided phone tag. lol
The other problem was that my boss wanted me to start cross-training immediately and I had to stall until the fall semester to get things lined up right.
Strangely helpful in all of this was the fact that I had some semi to very serious medical things pop-up during the summer so that draggng my feet became quite legitimate.

Now we are in week 2 of the semester and things seem to be squared around.
Last week I was more than a little worried about how things would go. Dr. McLaughlin didn't get my learning contract and Yuye (my trainer from QC) was so swamped that he had no time to train me.
I emailed Dr. McLaughlin about it and she reassured me quite a bit by telling me that things frequently start slowly but that they tend to pick up steam later on.
I am happy to report that my daily bugging of Yuye paid off yesterday and we set a firm appointment for today after lunch.
Huzzah!
I had been walked through the full QC PCR process at the beginning of the summer and the amount of detail seemed really daunting, so yesterday I asked if he would show me how to make the gel plates.

I hoped that this simple task would both help QC, as I can stock inventory fairly usefully, and give me a good foot in the door.
Nothing succeeds like success eh?
Today I watched the data analysis for several types of PCR plates and then I watched Yuye make and run a set of gels.
He then asked me if i was ready to make a few myself. I said yes and here they are!

They look OK to me. We shall see. If tomorrow no one complains then I will have the accomplishment to go with my current feeling of triumph.

Yay learning new stuff.