Wednesday, October 3, 2007

May I Be Excused? My Brain's Full.

Anyone remember that old Far Side comic of the kid asking to get out of class? Yeah, anyway...my brain's full. I spent the last three days at the Hale/Hartmann conference. There was an incredible amount of new research presented--most of which made great sense and a little bit of which was slightly flawed. I came to a realization while I was there...research is what I want to do. My heart really does belong in science. The problem is that when I graduated from college I took whatever micro- or molecular biology job came along without factoring in the importance of being passionate about what I was researching. And, well, doing someone else's research just isn't much fun. Lactation research though, I could TOTALLY get into. Of course, the problem comes in when you look at the whole picture. We all know scientists are (in general) not rich people. Financially, the best course of action would be to get a Masters of Science in Nursing and take on a hospital job in the maternity or NICU ward. So it kinda comes down to weighing the pros and cons---money with a rewarding job, or no money with a super fun job. That and the fact that the best human lactation research lab in the world (that I know of) is in Australia. I don't know of anyone in the US that practices human lactation research in the way I think of it (I'm not real interested in crunching stats of who does what and why, I want to look at the real nitty gritty of what is happening anatomically and physiologically when a mom and baby breastfeed). What to do, what to do?

note: I'm just assuming here that I have passed the exam and will be an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, which I won't really know until October 19 :-p

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