When I was in my third year of university, I had discovered and fallen in love with this amazing scicomm community. At the time I focused my blog and Instagram about my experiences taking bioinformatic and biotech courses, with a bit of insight into sustainability (since I was living away from home at the time) as well as practicing my art skills to do some scientific illustrations.
Last year I finished my last year at UWaterloo and started my journey to become an MLA/T (medical lab assistant/ technician) and I started to post more about that journey. I realized I never said why I decided to pursue this career (I didn’t even talk about this change in general, I just started posting about it).
So, when and why did I decide to become an MLA/T?
Here’s my story:
By the end of my third year, I wanted to continue my academic journey and pursue a master’s degree in bioinformatics. I was very determined to do so; I started to look into it more to see the requirements and who to talk to, and I tried my best to boost up my GPA since it definitely wasn’t the prettiest GPA to see. Unfortunately, midway through the first term of my last year, I realized that my mental health was suffering, and for the past four years I’ve been constantly burnt out and struggling to stay afloat.
When this happened I had to step back and think about what was appropriate for me. I saw myself having different options, these were my main ones:
- Pursue a masters degree right after undergrad
- Pursue a master degree after a couple of years
- Pursue a diploma at a college
- Just start working right away and stay working
The first option was no longer appropriate as I needed a break. I had been taking courses every term since my first year, and yes that included my summer terms as well. The second option I dabbled on for a bit, but not too much since there’s no guarantee that I’d still be interested in pursuing a master’s degree after being out of school and possibly in the workforce for a number of years.
The third option was something I was interested in. I was constantly looking at colleges near my home and seeing the various programs that I was interested in like data science and biotechnology. I eventually applied to three colleges, all of them for a Biotechnology diploma. I was actually really excited, especially after getting accepted into one of them since it was an Advanced Diploma, meaning it has co-op with it as well and had more certifications. I was going to be going to Seneca college for a 3-year Biotechnology Advance Diploma in September 2019.
Then I started looking for part-time jobs for the summer. I applied to a lot of lab positions hoping that I could at least get an interview with the little lab experience I had. That was when I stumbled upon LifeLabs. When I was looking at their job descriptions to be a lab technician, I noticed they wanted you to have graduated from a laboratory assistant/technician program pr technologist program, and certain certifications: the OSMT/ MLPAO and/or CSMLS.
Now I wasn’t even aware there were lab assistant/ technician/ technologist programs. I didn’t even know that field existed! So I dove deeper into it, I learned more about this field in medicine that did not have much contact with patients and focused more on lab work, looked at the different programs and realizing that majority of the assistant/ technician programs in Ontario were in a bunch private colleges, and technologist programs were in 5 programs in Ontario, 2 that were somewhat close to me. I also learned that MLA/T programs were shorter diploma programs, while MLT programs were longer Advanced Diplomas or even Bachelor degrees. I dove deeper and deeper into this topic and found myself looking at MLA/T programs more since I didn’t want to be in school for long and wanted to start a career ASAP.
That’s when I found a private college. I ended up talking to a representative and she showed me around their incredibly small campus, explained the 10-month program, and how placements worked. She even mentioned how I would be in a small class with only a number of seats available.
I think it’s the placements, the fact that the course was only 10 months long, and that I’d be eligible to write the MLPAO and CSMLS exams right after graduating. The idea of having a certified career right after graduating sounded amazing, especially due to the lack of responses and interviews I got when applying to science jobs (which was pretty upsetting). So I made the decision to revoke my acceptance to Seneca and went to pursue a Medical Laboratory Assistant Technician diploma.
I have no regrets! I’ve learned so much the past 9 months and met such amazing people through this program. I wish COVID wasn’t a thing so that I would be practically done my course at this time and starting my placement by the end of June. I would have been done my program end of July and would have been able to take the licensing exams on time.
Life can take a lot of unexpected turns. Things can change in an instant. Within a year I went from finishing undergrad to applying/ accepting to go to a college for a biotechnology diploma to pursuing an MLA/T diploma. I would have never expected my life to have so many majority career changes, especially in one year!
Now with this blog and with this Instagram account, I want to shed light on the things I’ve fallen in love within the science field. It’s still all over the place, some scientific illustrations here, something about sustainability, on occasion an MLA/T post, and bioinformatic posts, but I’ll start to focus more on shedding light on MLA/T’s and producing infographics and scientific illustrations. I’ll probably post about bioinformatics on occasion since it’s still a growing field in science, but my main focus now will be on the invisible field of medical laboratory sciences.
Noemi’s Corner 