Pieces of Anna

Remember how I wrote about leaving my job and being a stay-at-home mom for the first year of my daughter's life? Well, things have changed a bit, and as of today, I am working from home as a freelance medical writer. Because I am still taking care of my baby full time, my freelance hours are very limited. Nevertheless, I believe this officially makes me a work-at-home mom! This opportunity came about when my old company that I left after giving birth offered me to work for them on a freelance basis. This was back in November, and I was not ready then. But they contacted me again in December, and this time I was up for it. This was mostly due to the fact that my daughter was sleeping through the night. I know, I have that unicorn baby that started sleeping 11 hours at night at the age of 3.5 months. But don't hate me yet because she is going through the infamous 4 month sleep regression now, and we are no longer sleeping through the night! Even though I am now sleep deprive...

Almost a year and a half ago, I wrote about contemplating a career change from research science to writing. At the time, I had no idea what my envisioned new career might be, but I wondered if combining writing and science into one job was a possibility. Just thinking about changing tracks left me scared and unsure. But, as usual, I figured doing a little "research" couldn't hurt. So, I did a lot of reading about science writing . To keep me focused and inspired about the possible career change, I arranged these books front and center in our living room, where they served as a constant reminder of my ambitious yearnings. And it worked, sort of. Over time, I became more and more excited about this seemingly monumental change. But the biggest question remained: where to get started? How do I get my foot in the door, so to speak? I read bios and articles about how various people got into science writing, and the only common theme was that there was no one straightforwar...

A month and a half ago, I left my work office for the last time. It was not a voluntary departure - I was being laid off. The truth is, I suspected that my days on that job were numbered when phrases like "cost cutting" and "restructuring" were used in meetings to explain the massive layoffs that preceded in the months leading up to the end of the fiscal year. And if I am being honest with myself, it was time to move on from that job anyway. It's just that I had pictured the transition a little differently in my head. I was somewhat mentally prepared for the diminished monthly income that was to follow. It was the emotional roller-coaster of unemployment that caught me by surprise. So here they are: the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of my unemployment. The Good I am not a morning person. The morning of my first day of unemployment was glorious - I slept in till noon, and there was no alarm clock in sight. Much to the chagrin of my early bird husband, w...

This is how I do research: Also, I'm running out of bookmarks. What a strange problem to have in the era of Kindles and iPads.

Between the APW Internship and another secret thing I am applying for, I submitted five writing samples in the past three days. I was going to write a blog post yesterday (something about our venue search), but at that point I had consumed so much coffee that my brain was refusing to cooperate. I got the caffeine-induced jitters and proceeded to run around the house, flailing my arms around like a mad woman. The following conversation happened: D: "What are you doing? Can you please act like an adult?" A: "OK."   <arm flailing continues> A: "You didn't say which species. I am an adult orangutan." Good thing D was already sitting down because he almost fell over laughing. Clearly, blog posting wasn't going to happen last night.

As I mentioned in my previous post , my naive vision of what a day in a life of a scientist might look like didn't quite correspond with reality. Here is a more realistic description of my average day. You get in to work late because you stayed up way too late last night, contemplating your life, the universe, and everything, and then you got stuck in traffic on your normally forty minute drive to work. You open your email and discover that your boss had sent you a VERY IMPORTANT EMAIL last night at seven pm. Something about a report that was due yesterday that you had never heard about until now, but it's all of a sudden your responsibility to write it and get it sent out, and of course this takes priority over everything else in your life. You sigh, realizing that your plans of going to lab early and getting something productive done on your own program have now officially been shot to hell. You stop by your boss's office, still have asleep because that morning cup of...

To be honest, when I was in high school, applying to engineering schools, I did not give much thought to what a day in a life of a scientist or an engineer might look like. There are lots of things that I did not give much thought to (like why I was applying to engineering schools in the first place), but if I were to come up with what my naive brain would have thought back then, a typical day in a life of a scientist would sound something like this. You get in to work early and pour yourself a second cup of tea (because you already had your first one with breakfast at home) while quickly checking email. You glance at the To-Do list lying on your desk and smile with anticipation of an exciting day ahead of you. Because every day in your life is exciting! How could it not be, if your job is to do meaningful research in a state-of-the-art lab? You are developing a cutting edge device that will be invaluable for treatment of cancer. Your work is contributing greatly to the world, and y...

Mathematics and engineering have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Growing up with two mathematics teachers and two engineers, I was surrounded by it. So, naturally, when it came time to make choices about my future career, I leaned toward the technical fields. Perhaps "choices" is not the right word to use, though, as options outside of engineering (or at least medicine) were not really presented to me as viable ways of making a living. Or at least, not a decent living with a steady paycheck and a guaranteed job. (Which, by the way, ha! Like any job can be guaranteed in this market.) On some level, I can understand this logic. If you are an engineer or a doctor, and you work hard, you will earn a steady paycheck (at least, this was the case when I was making all these choices). On the other hand, you can work your ass off till you have no ass left, but you might still not earn much if you are say, a writer. Sure, you can be a successful and money-making wri...