selling out

So it’s official:

I am self-employed!


Last week, in spite of my sweaty palms and embarrassingly shaky voice, I succeeded in landing my first  contract as an independent contractor. Now, this sounds significantly less impressive considering my contract is with the organization with whom I’ve been employed for the last years but it’s still great news.

This contract means I won’t have to resort to nefarious activities to fund my grad school experience, such as selling organs on the black market. Or worse, private loans.

It also means that, while I’ll have to be significantly more frugal than I’ve been, I won’t have to live soley on ramen noodles and stale coffee during my grad school years…Now and then, I may even be able to splurge on a slice of famous new haven pizza.

For the most part, I’ll be working on health industry trend and policy research and analysis, which is ideal, of course, since that’s what I’m going to school to study.  I’ll be trading in my buttoned up, coffee-fueled 5am mornings for PJ-clad, coffee-fueled 3am nights in front of my computer. Inspired by music and the caprice of the moment, which  is how I work best.

The best part? I get to remain, while not an employee, a contributor to an organization which, for all its flaws, does and will play a significant role in continued progress towards a patient-centric healthcare system. With all the chatter about healthcare reform, it’s still the patient's voice that matters most- and is at the greatest risk of being lost. I’m glad that I don’t have to sacrifice my participation in such critical movement while I’m in school.

Still, my negotiation skills need some major work. As the exec to whom I pitched my proposal pithily remarked, “This contract is crap.”

 “But,” he continued (ah, this little conjunction upon which my future so precariously hung!), “we know you.” You know what?! I wondered. You know that I’m a selfish Gen Y-er trying to squeeze the system to meet my own needs? That I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too, like the gluttonous slob I am? That I have a better shot at winning American Idol with my sub-par pseudo-soprano and seizure-like dance moves? I waited to hear, dread boiling in my stomach.

Turns out, my expensive education has provided at least a little return on investment. His proceeded to explain that while the contract can be fixed, and at the end of the day, they’d like to “keep my brain with the organization.” Which, to any nerd, did feel a little bit like winning the lotto.

And so I proceeded to sell my brain. (Or at least the non-dysfunctional part of it, which by comparison is microscopic!) I feel incredibly grateful and lucky, and a little bit less nervous about ditching my job and climbing a mountain of debt to follow my dreams.

Ok, ok- that last part sounded a little “Sound of Music-esque.” Cue Simon Cowell and a chorus of self-criticism, but I don't care! My piggy bank is happy, and so am I.

fish stick-it-to-me

Although I've been claiming to be a vegetarian for a few months now, I've gotta fess up. I'm actually what's known as a pescatarian, or as my Ohio relatives insist, a "fishatarian." I was going easy on myself because the pretext for my vegetarianism, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, focused only on the nutritional and ethical dangers of corn-fed beef and chicken....


....and more honestly, I really, really like fish. So I continued to obliviously- and happily- eat salmon or tuna once a week or so until I read a piece in today's NY Times dining section, when Mark Bittman, author of Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking cruelly burst my bubble.

A self-proclaimed fish-lover, Mark gloomily recounts the rise of large-fleet fishing, which has depleted the oceans of many types of commonly consumed fish, and the prevalance of dubious fishing tactics. Because buying fresh fish has become such an "ethical and logistical nightmare," not to mention, less-than-cheap. Mark offers his thoughts on what was once thought of as an alternative panacea, farm-raised fish:



"...With the exception of mollusks, which have been farmed forever with little environmental impact and sometimes with as much flavor as wild, most of the products of aquaculture are not only not worth cooking but are also environmentally challenged. In fact, farm-raised fin fish are really the cage-raised chickens of the sea: in many instances wild fish are harvested to produce feed for farmed fish (nearly 90 percent of the world’s fish oil goes into fish food), and it takes three pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed salmon (other farmed species require even more). Aquaculture is also a local pollutant and a major consumer of antibiotics, and it has long been thought that escaped farmed fish will interbreed with and weaken wild fish."



I'm sad....for the fish, and for me! Who knew that fishing could be so cruel to the fish, to the environment, and to the consumer. What do you think? Is it posssible to eat sustainably raised fish on a meager grad school budget?




Meanwhile, thanks to Bittman's article and the judgmental eyes of this guy:
I am going to go fish-free!