I just had a brain fart... that head guy that asked me back to my first lab... was from Rochester, NY - there is some med school research going on there, isn't there?
On the two year training thing and then a pit job at a big reference lab... I dunno. You already have a degree, right?
Might depend on the reference lab. Back in my day competence mattered, though it mattered to the lab if we could have as many of us with what were ASMT certifications as possible.
J_B knows much more about the recent lab world than I do.
Oh, and on fun, I had almost too much fun to bear, but then that was the late sixties and seventies.
Kicky, I can see you doing that little yap-yap-yap hand puppet thing as I say this, but I'd highly recommend that you try something non-creative before putting two years of study into a non-creative field. I really think you'd go batty with something that wasn't at least a little bit creative and autonomous. (Can something be a little autonomous, or is that like a little pregnant...?)
And I know you are creative, Kpants. It has just not been fostered in a create-reward sequence. No one with your thread starting ability is without a creativity gas tank.
I just caught J_B's post, which I defer to. I was a lab technologist before automation, creak, had the degree, etc., and worked in the interesting end of it. The people who were lab techs around the same time at the research place moved on, either to get their doctorates or to switch fields...
Here's a tip, completely free of charge, Kicky. If you want to see how a lab operates, to go in as a visitor, do this: call up a few labs in your area and tell them you're a free-lance writer, working on spec on an article about medical laboratories and the latest innovations in their work. You'd like to visit their lab to include it in your article and could somebody show you around. They'll lay out the red carpet for the publicity and you don't even need ID as a card-carrying jouranlist because you're free-lance.
I like that. And then... write the article, and give Merry acknowledgement, and then you can both work it into a book, ala Barbara Ehrenreich... but since I said that, I want credit toooo.
Oh, and Soz can edit, you can do the graphics, of course, including the cover. D'Artigan can do PR, Eva can arrange all the tours...
I'll be the shill at the bookstore openings..
D_B can do the science consulting. There must be more for this bandwagon...
The good part is that you don't actually have to write a single word. If anyone should ask later what happened to your article on labs, just say you had to drop the project, couldn't get a publisher interested, whatever. Writers work on projects that never get published all the time. But the PR flack at XYZ Laboratories will bend over backward in the hopes that this article could put XYZ on the map.
Ooooh, good idea, MA! Have you done this sort of thing before?
littlek wrote:Ooooh, good idea, MA! Have you done this sort of thing before?
More than once, k. It seldom fails to work.
Be a Carnie. I have conections :wink: maybe I could get you in
Thanks, MA. That really IS a good idea. I think I'll use it.
I looked at some biology and chemistry text books at the giant Barnes & Noble near Union Square (the largest book store in the world, suposedly), since that's what I'll be learning if I go into the medical technology program...kind of intimidating stuff. Plus statistics. I took that way back when and got a C in it. I don't remember much of it, so I'd probably want to take that again.
Hmmmm....I really like the idea of this field though. It seems tailor-made for someone who wants to be able to move from one city to another at will. I see lab tech positions everywhere.
Of course, bartending is everywhere too, but being a lab tech seems more like a real job with a possible future.
kickycan wrote:
Of course, bartending is everywhere too, but being a lab tech seems more like a real job with a possible future.
Yeah, and you can do it when you're too old to get tips just for being sexy.
Good point, Freeduck, since that time has probably passed already.
Kicky, do you already have a degree in something else? I ask because with that degree, no matter in what, if it is a BA, you might be able to take the Med Tech two year degree and possibly get certified as ASMT, which I think opens more doors. Naturally I'm not sure if that's true now, that you could get the asmt, or that it opens doors, but maybe.
I have a bachelor's degree, but it is in something completely different. What's an ASMT? I thought it was the NAACLS through which you had to get certified. If I do this, I think I'm just going to go for the Associates Degree in Med Tech. It seems like, from the very few people I've talked to at colleges, it's not much of an advantage to get more than that, as long as you know you want to be a lab tech. What doors do you think it might open to get ASMT certified, whatever that is?
Well, I don't know re ASMT, if that even exists any more, but the info in the American Society of Clinical Pathologists site is useful - it describes what it takes to be a med technician and a med technologist (which I was). It looks like if you have a Baccalaureate and med tech training... you then have background qualification for the higher rating.
http://www.ascp.org/bor/medlab/careers/
