Science

Science was very much a part of my life and still is. I trained in Biology and Chemistry with minors in politics (of all things) and anthropology. I completed University in three years instead of the traditional 4 because I was in a hurry to get to work. 

My first job was as a research assistant at Rockefeller University in NYC. It had the highest concentration of Nobel Prize winners of any institution. I hated it. Backstabbing academia. Writing grant requests and grovelling for money. Sacrificing hundreds if not thousands of rats after stressing them to study how the brain works -- at a time when the movie Ben was released -- was stressful, to say the least. Nightmares, insomnia Sunday through Thursday every week.  I couldn't wait to leave, yet I was running the lab and had several assistants myself. 

Went from there to Roche Labs to work in a lab studying drug metabolism. Sacrificed many more rats and injected rabbits with antigen to manufacture antibodies to study as well. Couldn't work with the beagle dogs as they were testing carcinogens that cause breast cancer. I hated bench research. It was not at all as pure as I had envisioned. At Roche, we didn't have to write grant requests but we did have to justify our programs and publish or perish. I only stayed a year in that job before moving into the marketing area. 

So, I was stunned to come across a paper I'd written so long ago online. My name then was Daria Korzeniowski. As the junior member of the team, you got to write the first draft of the paper. Mine was published almost exactly as I had written it. Apparently, it is still thought of as a seminal work in the discovery of how p450 works. Well, I'll be! I suppose if I had stayed in science I might have achieved high ranks but I wouldn't have been President of companies nor an entrepreneur. 

Did it work out well?  You bet. I got to retire early and go sailing. What's wrong with that?