Erin Albert's Blog

Guess what?

They are enemies.  At least according to Seth Godin in The Icarus Deception.

Welcome to my nightmare as an educator!

On one hand, I have to train students to find the best answer when it comes to pharmacy practice.  After all, make a bad choice and end up with really epic consequences.  Not good.

On the other hand, I have to train students to find creative ways to solve problems, since healthcare is such a hot mess.  This, to me, is art.

How can you train students to find both the best answers AND art?  And, how can you train them to know when to shift gears between these two skills?

hmm….

One of the very sage, fierce women lawyers I interviewed in LSL told me that going to law school, graduating, and passing the bar is kind of like winning a pie eating contest….where the prize is…more pie.

Today, I like pie.

To my friends who passed the February 2013 Indiana bar exam, I congratulate you.  We all won the pie eating contest today!  Special thanks to IndyBar, who had patience enough to prep me for this exam…twice.

And to my friends who did not pass, have faith.  If it is meant to be, it will happen, and if not, trust when I say that everything happens for a reason.  As another law school pal of mine said, “Are you really going to let some silly test get in the way of your future?”

Exactly.

To my friends who passed: congratulations.  Here’s to the rest of us who today – welcome that pie as the prize!

…does anyone have a fork?

First, in my note from the Universe this morning, the following:

“Sometimes, e, when circumstances or disappointments bump you off track, it’s the beginning of an even bigger dream coming true, that could not have come true on the track you were on.  Yeah, always.”

Second, a conversation with a mom/co-worker, who has a son who is currently seeking his first job out of college.  I was rooting for him with one of my former employers, but sadly, I was informed he didn’t get the job.

Now what?

Here are 4 suggestions on how to move on from this, and maximize that time you spent polishing that resume, practicing your interviewing, and shaking hands/meeting new people:

1.  Follow up – First off, I’m in hopes you sent an immediate connection request via LinkedIn digitally after the interview (with a custom thank you message), and a hand written thank you card (in legible penmanship, with a business or custom calling card with all your contact info in the card) to each and every person you met at that company when you interviewed.  (You did, didn’t you?)  Furthermore, I hope you sent the snail mail and the LinkedIn requests within 24 hours of that interview.

Second, assuming you did all that and were informed you did NOT get the job, reach back out 3-4 weeks after your last interview, thank everyone again, and say you would hope that they would consider you for future positions.  Ask for feedback on your candidacy as well.

I asked for feedback regarding a Fellowship application rejection I received this spring.  I got it.  It was brutal to listen to, mainly because there was feedback on stuff that was and is completely out of my control, but, I NEEDED to hear about my weaknesses so I can improve for the future.  You should do this too.

2.  Follow up, again – You certainly don’t want to turn into a stalker (there’s a fine line between passionate persistence and stalking, as I’ve stated here before) but there’s nothing wrong with taking notes during your interviews and then following up with interesting bits from that original conversation.

For example, I like to talk strengths from Strengthsfinder 2.0.  Buckingham and other authors are always putting out other books on the topic – so if the hiring manager is big on Woo from Strengthsfinder, for example, why not talk about the Woo book, then send him or her a copy of it when it comes out, or a link to an article on Woo when you see it – and email it to the hiring manager, check in and just state that you saw the book or article and it reminded you of your conversation with them.  (Feel free to substitute “Woo” for “sports” or “art” or “travel” or whatever you two discussed.)

This step requires you to prep ahead – by taking notes, and having interesting things to say during the interview conversation and after.  Sports/books/movies/ideas/websites/travel – bring something different to the table in your interview, and you’ll have stuff to continue the conversation even if you don’t get the job.

3.  Think of the “no” as “not now, but let’s keep in touch” – Take the interview for what it was – the STARTING POINT to continue conversations, not a one shot deal-never-to-be-spoken-of-again.  If you got a call for an interview, you got the amazing shot at seeing a company from the inside out, and you should leverage that opportunity as an ongoing conversation rather than a terminal point.  It’s just a starting point.  If you go into the interview with this mindset, you’re golden.

4.  Success is the best revenge – When you DO get that amazing job, make sure you shout it from the rooftops.  Make that other company WISH they had hired you.  There is no better revenge than success!  After a year or two under your belt and some amazing projects you can be proud of, make them fight over you after you engage and continue these conversations.

I’ll close with a little story about my own career: that same company with the son above…?  Yeah, they didn’t hire me the first time I applied either.  But, eventually, they did hire me.

I never gave up – and neither should you.   And sometimes, when things aren’t working out, that just means that something even better is lurking around the corner for you…you’re just moving over to a better track!

For all you Marcus Buckingham fans out there, I’m a maximizer.  Therefore, I like to experiment in the classroom each year, in an effort to make the class experience better over time.  Now that we’re in finals, I thought I’d throw down some of the experiments I tried this year, and share them with you, my amazing 13 fans.

I could, of course, write these ideas up in a journal or two, and it would take 6-18 months for them to get published.  Or, I could just throw them out here, and see if anyone else in the universe tried them too – and could share what worked, what didn’t, and what could work better with just a little tweaking.  Here goes:

1.  Hybrid learning in Pharmacy Law – OK, I’m going to keep it real here, since I was just a student myself until last spring.  Most adults have a 20 minute attention span before they check out of a lecture–and 20 minutes is a generous timespan.  It’s shorter relative to the age of the audience as well (the younger the audience, the shorter the attention span).  Most students check out at 10 minutes.  I’ll admit it – I checked out every once in awhile in class – if the topic was boring or I frankly didn’t care about it. (Yes, shocking.  I had to take law classes that I didn’t care about.  Sorry, again, just being honest.)

So…on the other side of the lectern, I teach pharmacy law (not the sexiest topic on the planet – and frankly dry because a lot of it is stuff you just have to memorize).  I decided to “flip” the lectures and post them online this year, using this product called Panopto, where we can record our voices over PPT slides or video (I chose the slides as my visual).  I pre-recorded lectures, and posted them so students could watch them anytime, anywhere, “on demand” (provided that anywhere had internet connectivity).

More than half the class liked this hybrid model.  Over 10% of the class, in fact, wanted it ALL online instead of the combo with live class too.  However, most of the live class time I reserved for guest speakers, for several reasons: 1. the students want to hear from other professionals than me, 2. I like bringing in subject matter experts in law (I mean really – there’s no way I can know everything in Fraud & Abuse, Reimbursement, HIPAA/HITECH, PPACA, FDCA, CSA, Stark, Antitrust and state pharmacy practice acts of Indiana and 49 other states.  So, why not bring in some of the experts to help out and mix it up?)

The “money” question on my post-hybrid-class survey was whether or not students agreed that they had to be self-accountable for their classroom learning in this model – and most either strongly agreed or agreed with personal responsibility for learning being kicked up a notch.  Good!  Considering I’m not always going to be around to point them in the right direction of looking up their answers, this question alone tells me that hybrid learning is on the right track for this class.

2.  ePortfolio – Pharmacy students have to drag around this 5 inch binder called a “portfolio” during their last year of pharmacy school while they are out on rotations in pharmacies.  It’s full of all their licenses, records, history, rotation information and documentation of their last year of experiences.  Good portfolios by the end of the rotation year can double as weapons, because they are heavy and back-breaking to lug around, with hundreds of pages of information.

So, a team of us put together a electronic portfolio template on WordPress for our students as an experiment this year.  Each student has a WordPress blog of their own on a secure server, where they post all their stuff, instead of dragging it around with them all year.  NO MORE 5″ binders, no more plastic cover page protectors, and no more lugging.  We can see the back end of every user’s portfolio and double check when and what they’ve uploaded, instead of requiring the students to drag the portfolios in to campus a couple of times a year for a manual check.  Preceptors of the students can check out their sites online for information.

This one is working thus far.  Dig!  (Although, somewhere, a plastic binder factory is weeping a little…)

3.  Children’s book project – If you follow my shenanigans, you already know that I’ve mentored 4 different groups of students either solo or with other faculty to produce a published book project now.  Three books went to publication, one did not.  This year was the asthma book with 3 other colleges.  What I tried new this year was adding the 4th college, the College of Business students to the project, which was BRILL, because they really owned the project and took more off of my and the other faculty mentors’ plates.

What else the students added this year was the closed Facebook group to collaborate and communicate while they were all running around off campus at different internships or practice sites, they used Dropbox (as the students did last year), Google+ hangout (instead of webex from last year) to meet up live real time, and Kickstarter for fundraising to publish.  And, of course when we had to get everyone together in the same room, thank the universe for Doodle.

They worked–the book is published!  And while we’re going in a different direction next year (for a myriad of reasons), self-directed, interdisciplinary, project-based learning is always the highest form of learning out there, bar none.  It’s one thing to teach and test, but an entirely better way to learn by providing projects with fuzzy outcomes and admitting the teachers DO NOT have all the answers.  It honestly doesn’t get any better than that in education, at least in my mind.

There you have it! No waiting for publishing approval, or feedback, or peer review.  It’s just 3 ideas I tried this year while teaching.  Some worked better than others, but the important part was that I tried.  I experimented.  And in my book, good teachers are never afraid to try new things, because good teaching and learning is all about experimentation – ESPECIALLY in the life sciences!

Big week here, my amazing 13.

First, the good news: I officially got in to the Women’s Campaign School at Yale this summer – YAY!  This is what the mystery was around the post I had on the Iron Lady.  I decided to apply when I found out she passed on….as someone needs to pick up the girlpower torch and carry it forward, right?  Well, at one point we all have to stop passing the buck and turn that “someone” into “me, myself and I,” so I did.  Wish me luck, I’m super excited about attending this event to learn if I have the guts/stomach to run for office in the future.  And speaking of guts and stomachs…

Second, I received an email from one of my friends Saturday that just said the following:

“Thursday.”

Hint: He is one of my law school chums.

Yes, we find out this Thursday whether or not we passed the bar.  After my last episode, I’m kind of hoping I forget by then and just get on with my day and find out circuitously from my other friends, frankly.  Nothing like getting vomit all over your laptop either by waiting for the refresh to finally show the link on the very, very public page online.  Thinking about it right now as I eat my lunch kind of makes me want to hurl.  On the other hand, it will be what it will be–queasy stomach or not.

Big fat week.

Here’s hoping YOUR week has more of the good stuff and less of the stuff to make you hurl!

My prior post sparked this post, along with a conversation I personally had this past week.

Anyway, I was talking to someone about “economic development” as a professional background, whereby the experience level of this person needed to be around 10-20 years.  As we chatted on through the conversation and I was going through my mental Rolodex to help connect to someone in my own network with this type of experienced professional, I kept thinking to myself, “Aren’t we pretty much all economic developers these days?”

This mental battle in my head led me to what I’m about to argue – that like it or not, we are ALL professionals now in the following realms.  Even if we didn’t major in it in college.  Even if we never took a class in it.  Even if we’re a “professional” in another realm. I’m here to say that, WE ARE ALL IN THE FOLLOWING 5 BUSINESSES NOW, LIKE IT OR NOT!

1.  Journalism – see my previous post.  If you’ve got a keyboard and internet access, you’re in.  Seriously – that’s all you need.

2. Marketing – I hate to say this because it sounds somewhat cliche – but we’re all brands now.  If you think you don’t have a brand, just ask your boss about it – s/he certainly thinks you do.  If you were a brand in the grocery store, what would the box or bottle say?  “Awesome multitasker,” “really organized,” “cleans up messes lickity split!” ???  Whatever it says, it does say something, (even if you choose to ignore it) so you probably should own it, rather than letting it own you.

3. PR – this is kind of a subset of marketing, I know.  But, part of owning your brand is properly owning how it is distributed, and with what messaging.  If you also think you’re not in PR, when was the last time you were missed over for a promotion at work?  Was that promotion made by a boss?  Did you get the chance to plead your case on why YOU should be the one promoted?  If you were dissed, you might want to pick up a good book on PR – because guess what?  We’re all in the PR business now.

4. Networking – I know, I know, dear introverts – this one we don’t want to own.  However, you can be a hardworking introverted networker and still get the job done.  Do your best to either go deep, go wide or both.  Go deep if you’re new to a profession.  Go wide if you’re a thought leader in a profession, but need to start branching out into other professions in order to share your expertise and learn how other professionals may work with you.  The very best networkers do both, which means double the work, but more than double the fun!

5. Others – OK, I was a little deluded.  There are more than 5 here.  Stuff like financial advising, coaching, IT, social media, leading, career management, understanding and abiding by the law–these and so many more we each now need to own.  Back in the day, we could rely upon others for a lot of this.  But now, we’ve got to own more than ever, because it is a fiercely competitive, 24/7/365 world we’re living in now.

Just giving you the heads up.

I’m probably going to get hammered for my opinions on this post, but I was asked recently–”Albert, if you’re so big into writing, why haven’t you written more peer reviewed journal articles?”

Well, there’s a pretty big reason why I don’t.  Here it is.

Honestly, if I think something is worth spending my time, thoughts and energy enough to carefully craft on paper, in hopes that someone else in the universe might find it helpful, then why not write a book instead of just a journal article?

Now, this commentary really doesn’t apply for clinical trial data that is turned into journal articles – that’s a whole other ball of wax that I can’t address here in a single blog post.

But for academic papers that aren’t original clinical trial research, I feel this way.  Seriously–why go through all the rigamarole to put your words into someone else’s format, then have it gone over with a fine tooth comb by people (anonymous strangers) who may have never written anything–book or journal article–only to get back feedback that is next to useless, and that doesn’t really mean anything to the heart of what you’re trying to convey on paper anyway?

Why not instead, if it is something really important to discuss and put on paper, either get it out there ASAP (via a blog) or, put together something that you individually control and is more enduring, like a book?  You can share your book with people you actually trust before you publish it, who have opinions you value, to give you feedback on your book and make it even better before it is published.

As for peer review – I actually have published in this venue – via law review.  I’d take the opinion of 30 critical law students going over my law review note with a fine tooth comb before a handful of unknown, anonymous “peers” in some journal that I’ve probably never met.  I also know that law review students can write, which I can’t always verify with anonymous reviewers from journals.

The worst job according to a list I saw online today at one of the major websites was “journalist.” Bummer for professional journalists, I suppose.  But here’s the good news behind that stat for the rest of us: we can ALL be journalists now.  We can write content and publish it on our own!  We don’t need a professional title, or even a journal with anonymous peer reviewers anymore.  We can do it all on our own now, or choose our team thoughtfully.

Sounds pretty good to me!

There was a lot of rhetoric, pontification and speculation in this weekend’s local newspaper on my employer and first alma mater, Butler University.  And while I usually limit my posts on the day job here and my general feelings on my current employer/first university choice, I’m going to throw out a disclaimer first: what I’m about to say is my opinion and my opinion only – not my employer’s.

I thought it was worth a post, however, to share my own reasons for choosing Butler, (more years ago than I care to admit), in hopes that this might help some high school students out there, struggling to figure out what college or university to say yes to in order to help them wisely make a decision that could have one of the largest financial and personal ramifications on their lives.  (And yes, with tuition at most 4-year programs being the cost of a pretty decent house in the Midwest now, it’s an absolutely critical decision that each high school student attending college now must carefully make along with her parents.)

First off, when I was in (public) high school, I knew I loved science and chemistry.  I wanted something medical-ish, but I never wanted to be married to my job – hence, medical school was out.  So, I chose pharmacy.  Then, I had to stay in Indiana (or at least that was the parameter I was given by my parents.)  That quickly narrowed my choices down to two: Purdue and BU.

When I visited Purdue, I kept thinking one thing in the back of my mind: too big.  WAY too big.  I didn’t dig the size.  Next.

Option 2? BU.  It wasn’t intimidating.  The pharmacy program was strong.  I could have a car on campus as a Freshman (something that most kids now probably wouldn’t care about, but I did at the time, since I needed a job…or two).  They also had something called “automatic advancement” – where I could get into the pharmacy program automatically if I kept up my grades and stayed out of trouble.  Plus.

Oh. Yeah.  They also gave me a 1/2 tuition scholarship.  I’m not going to lie – that helped make my decision even easier.  Bonus.

There was no “Butler Way” on paper back then.  (And the “Butler Way” was articulated by the sports people at BU.  That didn’t come from the academic side, just FYI).  Frankly, I still to this day really don’t know what the “Butler Way” is; everyone at the university has their own idea what, in fact, it really is–but I try not to use that term, since to me it is ill-defined and somewhat nebulous.

For me, college frankly wasn’t a bucket of fun, either.  It was a lot of hard work.  Pharmacy school is still to this day one of the hardest things I ever accomplished (way, way harder than any of the other 3 graduate programs I went through, by a landslide).  I pretty much had a job or two, (or more) all the way through undergraduate too.  My parents never finished college, either, so they made sure I was going to finish, and I did.

That was my own Butler Way, I suppose–work your $%^! off, study hard, sustain yourself, focus, and finish.

The bottom line: my choices had honestly nothing to do with sports, and nearly everything to do with academics.  OK, maybe a couple of nails in my choice included life mechanics – like having a car and size of the place – but at the end of the day, I’m here to say, that sports were never a consideration in my choice of university.  When I was a student at BU, the basketball team was there, and other sports, but I never had time to go to the games.  I was busy working and studying, honestly.  Besides, I seriously doubt people like Drew Faust or John Hennessy really get up every morning and focus first on what their sports teams are ranked.

My message to those out there right now making this very, very tough choice: choose wisely.  Look at each school by what is important to you, and ignore the hype.  Make sure the school you are choosing fits what you need and want in a career that you will carry forward for the rest of your life.  And don’t choose based upon which school has a higher ranking in a glossy, slick magazine or an online website (those are all un-scientific anyway–at the very least when it comes to you and your wants, values, and needs individually), the rank of their sports teams, (unless, of course, that is really important to you and your future), and just choose your school based upon your own “way.”

Just finished reading (a book–that had nothing to do with work or law school) – Drunk Tank Pink by Adam Alter.  There were a few curious bits in it – like:

-Pink calms people – and when sports teams caught on to it, starting painting the away team locker rooms pink until they were told to make both rooms the same.  (So, why don’t they use that color instead of orange in the Hamilton County jail?  Yes, I went there.  No, not because I personally was incarcerated.)

-Red is attractive to males – but it is also a good color on occasions when paying attention to details counts.  (Maybe more red on pharmacy drug bottles and labels?)

-Red trunks or uniforms on athletes allows them to win more too.

-Staring at a photo of a loved one reduces pain vs. staring at something else.

-When we need to restore, it’s good to get out into nature – as it doesn’t overwhelm us, unlike man-made noise and cities.

There are other interesting little psychological tidbits in here – but the above came to my mind first.  It is a good fast read if you like psychology.  Furthermore, I’m always fascinated by how our surroundings affect us, and this book puts in a series some ideas on how our world really does, scientifically, changes our mood and behavior.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone, watching all that is going on in Boston unfold.  Honestly, I hope the mess is over soon.  However, something has been tickling the back of my brain for a couple of days ago on a piece I saw about the Boston bombings on one of the major news outlets this past week.

The reporter was interviewing a local Bostonian when he said the following (paraphrased): “Boston is about 3 things: politics, sports, and revenge.”  Of course, when I shared that quote with a local Bostonian friend of mine, he replied “Amen!”  In my limited experience with Bostonians, I’ve generally found this to be true as well.  (After all, most Bostonians I know think I’m Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms, and that is sooooo not me!)

So…more important and my point…if YOU had to come up with 3 things about yourself to describe yourself, what would they be?  Best I can come up with for myself is ‘serial entrepreneurial educator’….but I don’t know if that fits yet. Regardless, I think it is an interesting way to investigate yourself, your hometown or your region.  The power of 3 can be awesome…and a little intimidating, but important when it comes to your personal values, what you want to spend your time doing, and most of all, your authentic self.

Pretty deep for a Friday.  And philosophy aside, I hope all of my 13 fans–inside and outside of Boston–are safe this weekend.