New Year, New Life Happenings

I can't believe this is the first post of the new year that I am writing, sorry I fell off the blogging wagon! Happy 2021 y'all! Here's to hoping 2021 goes at least a little better than last year!

I think I haven't been blogging because I realized I'm not as honest and open on this as I am when I am journaling. It made me realize this is just another face I put up on a form of social media and I just didn't like it. So I don't know whether I am going to be more completely honest now, or if I will continue on as I have been, but either way here I am again.

Things have been really happening for me. I am going into my last week of my current job, and I am freaking out a bit. I am going to a new lab, close to where I used to work, and making quite a bit more money than I was. But the new job is an unknown.

I realized a lot of my fear is due to the fact that my now old job was my first big girl job. It was the first real lab I stepped foot in and fell in love with. It was where I started my internship and allowed me to prove myself as a cyto-badass. It was where I finally got hired before I even graduated college and was where I finally let go of a lot of my imposter syndrome, because I knew how good I really was.

It was where I got laid off, and because there aren't any other cyto jobs in the area, where I accepted a job in the biochem department. Biochem is where I continued to grow, and learn, and prove myself and my worth time and time again, working circles around many of my coworkers with years more experience than me. And continued to grow by cross training in DNA isolations, and helping with quality and personnel things upstairs.

But it was where they refused to give me a paycheck worthy of my work, where they refused to acknowledge my talent and put me in higher positions that I deserved. And it is where my last day will be on Friday. And I am terrified. It is all I have known.

But the new lab is more new opportunities and grow. I will finally be working with COVID to start out with. I know everyone who works with it hates it. But I am excited to be helping out with the pandemic. But I am also assuming that by the time I get bored with it, I will be helping out with other things by then. I know they have a ton of other molecular testing, and I will get to be helping out with reporting things out, which I love and am excited about.

This lab is still new though, only 5 or so years old, which is part of my nervousness. I have only worked for a medium/largeish lab that was already well established for decades before. But I figure every lab starts off small and new. There's no reason this lab couldn't be a new powerhouse once it gets properly accredited. They're already making a second move in a few months to a new and bigger lab, which makes me excited for the progress it has made and continues to make.

But as much as they value their people there, which also is huge to me, the insurance isn't great and doesn't start for 60 days after I am hired. I don't know how I feel about that. Actually, I guess I do, it makes me nervous. Why should we wait so long to be covered by insurance? I am going to have to go through this COBRA insurance, which is going to be pretty expensive honestly. But I can't not pay for it, considering all my meds and doctors my various health conditions require. So I am pretty nervous about that.

This lab really values it's people though, that much is really important to me. I am the type of person who will work long and hard hours, as long as I am relatively paid well and appreciated. I had neither at my old lab. But just from when I went there for my interview, I felt so valued there and I haven't even showed them what I can do! This all goes to say, treat your people right. If you don't you WILL lose even the most loyal of them.

What jobs have you left and why?