While I was in the hospital we had mentioned several times to people that we had a background in neuroscience. I also did not realize that nurses did not learn how to read and interpret CT scans. I had shown my scans to a bunch and one told me that they did not learn to interpret it. A couple of them realized how passionate I was when we were talking about some of the neuroscience stuff and we had a nice conversation about some of the work that I had done. I have been quite lucky in my career that I have always done work that I enjoyed. I have never had a boss that I did not get along well, nor one that I did not respect. I did not always see eye to eye with all of my managers, but that was more because of stylistic issues. I have always liked all of the people I have worked with. One person told me that people quit because of their managers, and looking back I can see that logic. I end up being friends with a majority of my bosses even though I am sure that I drive a lot of them crazy. Conforming to standards and doing things the way you are suppose to are things that I do not score high in. At my current job we had a psychological assessment done at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. One of the things I score really poorly at, on a scale of 1 to 10 was reliability. It did not mean that I was not reliable, but when you look at what comprises the score it meant that from a company point of view I am not reliable in doing what is expected of me all the time. If it was something I did not agree with or something that was not logical to me, I had an extremely high likelihood of non-conformity.
When I interview for positions that is one of the things that is most important to me, creative freedom to execute the way that I want. As a researcher that learned under Persinger that is one of the things that was taught to us. Push the boundaries. I scored a 9 or 10 on quite a few measures as well, primarily around analytical thinking and problem recognition. Looking at the results, most of it makes sense and I think it is valid. Recovering from the brain surgery, I can think more clearly now and do not struggle as much to figure out what to say. Mel tells me that I got to experience how normal people live. When I use to read an article or some content I could see multiple pathways for advancement. The last couple of months my head was foggy. That is now gone with the pressure being relieved.
As a manager I try and work primarily on individual development of my team. That comes primarily from my time in academia and developing students. With my co-op students it is amusing when my team needs to do work with them and they realize you need to be extremely prescriptive with instructions. It takes time for them to adapt and to be able to improvise. So far I have had pretty good students and any faults of them I believe was due to circumstances. I believe that the failures of my team are because I did not put them in a situation to succeed. The team has an interesting mentality where they want more responsibility and argue about workload in the sense that they want more responsibility. I try to be fair and not have someone do something that I would not be willing to do. If I needed someone to work on a major holiday they would all do it willingly to help each other out. Everyone is a very hard worker and we work as a cohesive team. There is trust that if you ask a colleague to do something that it will be done. It has made the journey this year much easier as when I ask someone to do something I know that it will be done well. The one downside of my team is their work ethic. It is insane and they will work until the work is done. I like to be a hypocrite and tell them do as I say and not as I do. As much as I appreciate their drive and work, I would prefer if they worked less. I always tell people that vacation is for suckers. That just applies to me. I want my colleagues to have a good work life balance. When I go on vacation I tend to end up hospitalized.
1.) I have gratitude for my current manager. We are friends outside of work and have a lot of common interests and align a lot in theoretical applications. I have a lot of gratitude for him because he genuinely cares about me. He has helped out with things and tries to get me to stop working and tries to make life easier for me. In previous years he assigned a lot of extra work on me, but he has been doing a lot of it this past 1.5 years. It is a lot of additional pressure on him, and I appreciate that he looks out for my best interest by taking it on himself. When he does assign tasks to me he treats me regular and not with kid gloves. It is a bit amusing though when my manager colleagues think that he is being too hard on me and reprimand him and remind him that I am going through a lot. If I am working and say I can do the task I should be held accountable. There were times when he flat out told me I could not do it and delegate to someone else. At the time it is a bit difficult to hear, but he was right. In the past I might make risky choices and then come in and help out the team if things got tough. This year I could not do that and he reminded me of it. He was right. I am grateful that he was looking out for me and looked at the bigger picture.
2.) I left the hospital because they had to reduce staff and they ended up laying off a bunch of people on the team. I was let go and a lot of people were surprised and I was more concerned about my manager at the time. If I was in their position I would have gotten rid of me as well. I was never going to stay at the hospital forever and I am sure that they knew that as well. We had conversations previous and I had always seen the hospital as limited for choices. I liked the people I worked with, thought it was low stress so I enjoyed the work. No matter what decision they made they would be second guessed for letting each person go. I am grateful that we were friends and it is someone that I still talk to now. They had reached out once they found out I was sick and have been great support. I am grateful for what I learned, even though I was probably more difficult than some of my co-workers. I am grateful for being let go which eventually led to me being at my current company where I am doing well. Things happen for a reason and it may seem like a negative to be let go, but sometimes hard decisions need to be made and changes need to be made. I imagine that I can be aggravating to manage at times, something that I know a lot of people can attest to and has been indicated on my “reliability” psychological scores. There were things that I was or am naïve to and my manager at this time protected me from some of the politics. It is something that I have been working to get better to now. My current manager helps me navigate some of it now. I hated the politics in academia and ignored it a lot of the time, which was not a good thing. A lot of my attitude is due to my arrogance that even if you want to be derogatory and try and maneuver politically that I can still win. It is not always accurate or true though in the real world.
3.) Prior to that I had a leader at the hospital who I adored as well. This person loved research and we did collaborations with other departments and with the research division of the hospital. They did not necessarily conform or follow the rules so it was like working with a kindred spirit. I loved all of the random side projects we did and when we worked together it was just easy. We understood how each of us worked and thought so it was pleasant. We ended up developing many connections with the research division of the hospital and were involved in a lot of interesting work. One of the most interesting ones was predictive modeling for C.Diff infection rates. It was a multi-year project that I had continued right to the end. There was so much additional work that I had started a side company. I would do the extra work in the evenings or over the weekends. I am grateful for the opportunity to do some research on the side. I love research and it it something that I get immersed in. I did not think that I would do research when I had taken this position. We use to have philosophical chats based on different books we read or theories. Right now, we have someone knew that joined the company that my boss reports to. She had mentioned some books to read and she was surprised when I read them right away. If people recommend books I will read them. I love learning and the pursuit of knowledge.
I have been lucky to have mentors that look out for me and whom I have developed friendships with. When I was in the hospital, the managers on the floors I was on would come visit and chat and it was great to know that I have maintained friendships after so many years. I am blessed to have met so many wonderful people and appreciate the support, friendship and comments over the last year. It is great to know that when the chips are down or you are struggling, that there is an army of people that are rooting for you and supporting you.