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The Adjustments of The Real World


I just finished the second week at my very first “real” post-undergraduate job. I work as a Health/Hospital Lab Tech for UCLA’s lab in Brentwood, and though I was prepared for the transition to the real world from an academic one to be difficult, I was still surprised from the needed adjustment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m eternally grateful for having my job in this hire-frozen economy, and even more grateful that I’m working in the health and science field as a recently graduated student. The opportunity is amazing, though the adjustments were hard to settle. The hardest thing to adjust was my sleeping schedule. Gone are the days that I could stay up until 1am and be late for my 8am class.

My schedule is as follows in the lab:
At 7am, which is when work starts, I organize urine, stool, and critical fluid-streaked media plates in numerical order as each patient is assigned a number, and each specimen from the same patient is assigned a number. These plates are to be “processed” and the Clinical Lab Scientists record the findings into the computerized health system.I then dilute urine solutions and run them in the Vitek machine, which reads cards placed into the solution made and prints a report for the clinical lab scientists.

UCLA is known for making their own MIC (microdilution) trays, which are used for inoculations. The trays are kept frozen at negative 70 degrees and take 30 minutes to thaw out before we can use them, so I take a count of all the needed trays of different types before my lunch break to give them time to thaw. After lunch break, I dilute all the specimen solutions in tween water, invert the tubes, and then run the MIC machine until 4 pm.

The second hardest adjustment is the 40-hour week. By Friday, I feel like I’ve run miles up and down the Big C trail. On my first week especially, I was nostalgic for the days when Thursday nights were the start of my weekend; Fridays seem to last forever before work ends these days. There have been days where it’s felt like med school was so out of reach, days where I wonder what I am doing and why exactly I am where I am. Those days are rough, especially after working for 8 hours, and being stuck in traffic for 2. But despite these hard adjustments, I’m still very much grateful as I’m learning new techniques and gaining clinical experience for my application. The key now is to stay highly motivated and to save, save, save. I try to remind myself that all of this is part of a journey toward a dream I’m not willing to let go of, and am more than willing to work hard for.

I met a friend on the second day of work, and after realizing we had similar goals (He wants to go to vet school) he told me, “We’ll remind each other about our goals every day from now on. Especially on days we’re extremely tired.”
Each time I pass him in the halls of our lab or run into him in the elevator, he says “What’s up, future med student!” And I reply with “Hey there future vet student!” as well as a big smile on my face for the rest of the day. Well until I hit the 405 at 4pm anyway.

Aimmee Chin
posted August 16, 2009 2:31 PM

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