I need to pay a little attention to work for the rest of the afternoon but want to play email tag or grab coffee sometime?

Oh yes, please! I've been meaning to suggest getting together anyway (pesky life just keeps getting in the way), getting to pick your spicy brains, too? Bonus!

P-C, I haven't followed the job search closely, due to meatspace distractions, but have you considered not just medical writing, but medical *publishing*? There are lots of medical magazines out there, as well as publishers such as Rodale, which is in Pennsylvania, that feature a huge number of medical/health-related books. I've seen lots of ads for editors that require medical or scientific background for those kinds of jobs. Just a thought.

I haven't given a lot of serious thought to it, either because I think there's less money in it or I'd still like to feel like part of the community of people actually involved in drug development. But it is a thought.

{{{beth}}}

{{P-C}}

{{beth}}

Y'all are both having bad weeks and need much punctuation.

Y'all are both having bad weeks

But...it's only Monday.

...Fuck.

Life *is* pesky that way.

My brains are mostly just soft-boiled today as we still don't have A/C working here. But I can dab some Cholula behind my occipital lobe and spice things up a bit.

My brains are mostly just soft-boiled today as we still don't have A/C working here. But I can dab some Cholula behind my occipital lobe and spice things up a bit.

Or go for ice cream (guess about where I'm caught up to in Natter?), to chill 'em back out.

I'm really wanting to try to transition more in this direction career-wise. Any advice for someone with a degree in Liberal Arts (and zero urge to acquire one in English) looking to aim in a more edit-y/proof-y direction? (ie software I need to learn beyond being excellent in Word already, resources, etc.)?

It sounds like you already have some decent experience, between actual job duties and helping your friend with a newsletter, which is good. My advice would be to check out journalismjobs.com and idealist.org -- they've given me every job I've ever had. Taking one-day classes in HTML (and other web stuff -- I don't know it myself, but job listings would tell you what's in demand), Quark, PhotoShop and Adobe InDesign/PageMaker wouldn't hurt, but a lot of the software stuff can be learned on the job if necessary.

Good luck!

Post duly marked!

Thanks Lyra!

The tail end of Monday is moving ever sooooo slowly.

Does that seem right to you?

P-C, there has been much great advice here, so I'll keep this short. This appears to be a sucky Monday all over, but I think yours takes the cake. You can get out of it, though, and following some of the advice I've read here would be a good start. Whatever decisions you make will be just fine as long as they are yours.

I am officially stressed. What if I fuck this up and pick the wrong person?

vw, if it turns out that you've picked the wrong person, then you'll deal with that when you find out. To a certain extent, there's really no way to know now. You're doing everything right with interviews and applications, and it sounds like you have better than even odds of getting someone good to great.

I'm too lazy to go back and check and make sure I'm on the right day, but I think I am in under the wire, so happy birthday vw!

For my crappy Monday, everything started off crummy, but we finally got the lens that we were supposed to get a year ago, and I still love my hair, so I guess things can't be that bad! I'm hoping to have hair pictures this evening, but I'll have them at least by tomorrow.