Two of my good friends have recently made very neat posts on their respective blogs. My friend S. Chen recently described what she saw as the traits which best characterize the strange quirks of the creature we know only as Homo consultantus. I have to say she nails it quite well.: The typical consultant… Replies [...]
One of the most challenging things about the shift from science to consulting, or, for that matter, a shift from one field to any other field, is dealing with jargon. What’s especially jarring is trying to learn new meanings for acronyms that I already learned different meanings for. Case in point: at my firm, consultants [...]
You didn’t think Consultant dictionaries were the only ones available, did you (although some of these can definitely be applied in Consulting)? (hat tip to A. Phan) From HealthCare Economist: The following list of phrases and their definitions might help you understand the mysterious language of science and medicine. These special phrases are also applicable [...]
“This is why I’m hot. I’m hot ‘cos I’m fly, you ain’t ‘cos you not. This is why, this is why — this is why I’m hot.” — MIMS Mindless lyrics? Yes. Got some lines reppin’ the West Coast? Yup. Really catchy for no apparent reason? Also yes. Excellent way to probe logical relationships using [...]
I don’t think there’s anyone who knows even the slightest bit about Richard Feynman who isn’t in awe not only at the guy’s sheer brilliance, but the crazy antics that he is said to have partook in. Case in point: Feynman was one of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project (responsible for producing [...]
Where I work, just like in college, I have instant electronic access to numerous databases. While I no longer have access to Scifinder Scholar (for Chemistry papers and structures and patents) or (almost) full access to journals on PubMed (which indexes every biological/medical paper published), my research workhorses are now Factiva (for news and magazine articles), [...]
In many ways, scientific training crosses over very well into consulting. It trains individuals to think critically about the world around them, to take in all observations for careful analysis, to skeptically consider evidence, to craft and test falsifiable hypotheses, and to find rigor in numbers and computation. It is no small wonder that so many [...]
For those of you who are interested, I was staffed the day after the Fourth of July on an internal project. But… shhh… if I tell you any more, I might have to kill you. While doing research for the secret secret internal project (I’m sorry, if I tell you, I do have to kill [...]
If you had told me four years ago that I would be working in consulting, I would have responded with a question: “What’s consulting? And, why am I doing it?” As recent as a year ago, I was positive that I would be pursuing a PhD in Systems Biology (or, as it is sometimes referred to, Computational Biology or [...]
Eight Years Date: (Spring 2005) There was a semester where I considered going into organic chemistry. Why not? I had liked the orgo classes I had taken. The subject matter, at least from textbooks, seemed fascinating to me — using the properties of Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and my other friends from the periodic table to [...]