What I learned about the art of politics working at my last job is both simple and complex; It is simple because if one understands the nuances of high school popularity, there are many, many parallels that can be drawn between the two. It is complex, because we expect it not to be so simple and in our idealism there is much frustration and heartache to be found because it is so simple. Does this sound too philosophical for a backwards perspective on some silly job? It might. It should. It will. Someone once told me that in political bodies (note the small ‘p’) it is more often likely to find a democratic structure resembling a country club — a small group of entrenched long-term [...]
A lot of the joking aside — but not all — this week is ramping up to a particularly significant (but hardly important or memorable) one-year anniversary for me. I thought, in light of that anniversary I would find some time and some words to fill in some of the gaps around the months and days leading up to that date (in the days leading up to the anniversary) and the gaps of those months and days following that date (in the days following the anniversary.) Does that make sense? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’m going to tell the story of my job transition, from the first glimmers of project collapse to when I finally, months and month later, tucked safely into a new job, slammed [...]
I remember when I worked at my previous job, and working with folks with progressive disorders, incurable deterioration of body systems that would get worse and worse for the rest of their lives. And I remember what one of the biggest issues was around research. Here you’re probably thinking that this is a no-brainer. Find a cure, right? But in reality, no. In reality, the biggest priority of most of our research was not directly about a cure, rather it was about accurate diagnosis. And while practically this starts to make sense when one considers that (like if you’ve ever watched House) you can’t start treatment until you know what the problem is called, from a patient (or as we called them, client) perspective, diagnosis [...]
