A Change Will Do Me Good

I’m alive! Yes, I see its been a whole YEAR since I last posted, and you might be wondering what’s up and if I’ve given up writing….well….it’s been quite a year, and 2017 is going to be very exciting I hope!  I’ll be moving on from my postdoc in the new year, so the past ~8 months have been solid paper-submissions/revisions/rapid missing data generation. My fellowship funding (from the Army) is running out at the end of the month, after getting 2 no-cost-extensions to spend the money over a longer period of time, and after a little over 5 years of post-doc’ing I am ready for a new challenge.  With the news today that my IBC paper has been accepted for publication in Oncotarget, I get to check off one more item on the list of loose ends🙂  I’ll do a post explaining it more later once it is online officially!

Unfortunately, right now the timing is not perfect for a direct transition into my new position at MD Anderson, however I am lucky to have a few people who really believe in me, and who have worked around the current restrictions to make it happen circuitously.  I will be transitioning into a permanent staff position at MD Anderson in the IBC clinic, as a member of the clinical research team, where I will get to directly work with patients. Direct patient impact is one of the key characteristics of what I have been working towards since graduate school, and my volunteering with the IBC Network only made this desire more firm.  I truly feel this move gets me pretty close to the center of the picture on the left🙂

Soo…as of Jan 2, I’ll be doing a short 2nd transition postdoc in my new department (Breast Medical Oncology) until the position can be officially posted/I can be hired, but in the meantime I’ll be getting up to speed with the specifics of clinical trial management (i.e. learning my new job). It’ll be quite different from bench work no doubt, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy all the “newness” – new challenges, work routines, colleagues and variety of short- and long-term rewards that often seem so far off in lab research. I’m sure there’ll be things I miss from the lab too, but overall I’m excited and think this will be a positive career move for me.

With a job that is more around normal office hours with remote work possibility, I hope I’ll have even more time for writing, volunteering with the IBC Network, and perhaps some more travel and fun stuff.  However, as has been been my attitude regarding research throughout grad school and postdoc, doing my work well will still be my top priority, so don’t expect me to be partying every night.

With that news….3 busy last days of post-doc wrap-up to go!  I’d better get off to bed, since Tuesday am is coming up very soon.