Monday, December 16, 2013

I'm impatient

I'm doing an animal study for a new device of mine today. It will be myself, a tech, and one PhD student in a hospital lab. As I'm sitting in the waiting room (I finished my setup rather early, so I'm drinking coffee and eating yogurt) I realized again how much I hate waiting. As humans, we wait. We are social creatures that need interactions to survive. Whether this interaction is meeting up with a friend for lunch, or waiting for a doctor's appointment to look at a mole, timing never works out and someone is always left waiting. I'm sure some statistics guru out there has published something on the probability that two people given a specific meetup time will be there at the exact same time. My guess is it's less than 5% of the time you arrive within 10 seconds of one another. 

This particular study is an interesting one because I am the sole person responsible for this product. I was allowed to deviate from the industry-team concept and pursue this myself. If I had no idea how to cut-down an animal then I would probably even do the animal part of this myself. It's an interesting project because it reminded me more of grad school in terms of how solo I've been. The solo nature of the project is why I'm doing the study right now when no one is back at the home-lab.  I've gotten this project done very quickly because of the solo-nature, as well. This animal study is the only waiting I've had to do other than parts from vendors. And waiting for these hospital personnel to get here is so damn frustrating.

Waiting right now also reminds me of waiting for faculty search committees to get back to me. And because I'm an impatient butt, I can't bear the waiting!  I've been told my impatience is my biggest personality flaw, but have been told that it's also an asset because it allows me to get things done quickly. Unfortunately, there are so many things out of my control. So I'm stuck waiting. And I definitely don't have the patience to learn patience. And as the holiday season approaches fewer things will get done. The one thing I've learned to do is occupy myself. If I didn't have a smartphone, laptop, book, etc, waiting would destroy me. With the holidays coming up, my mind will also be occupied with tidings of joy, and relatives I can't stand talking to. 

Now if I had some annoying relatives to talk to in this damn hospital lobby. 

5 comments:

  1. I went though the same thing with job applications, although for industry. Just keep going at it, and trust that recruiters out there know what the heck they're doing!

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  2. Even if you are antisocial you end up waiting. Have you never been hunting or fishing before?

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    1. Haha. I have been fishing and it's quite relaxing. I think this is because whether I catch a fish won't change if I eat since I always bring backup food. I'd imagine it wouldn't be as relaxing if I didn't have backup food...

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  3. I've been told my impatience is my biggest personality flaw, but have been told that it's also an asset because it allows me to get things done quickly.

    LOL! Same for me. Not sure there's a cure. For me, cutting back on coffee marginally helps.

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    1. Cutting back on coffee=naps. Sleep=serious loss in productivity.

      My favorite comment about my rapid pace was after an interview. The recruiter said the most common comment was that I was "passionate". He said it with this trailing inflection indicating that it was off-putting. Then he said the next most common comment was "it's a good thing we work in the medical field. [this candidate] will have a heart attack, but get so much done before resuscitation"

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