Tomorrow the moon has moved into another constellation—Virgo, and will be in its “new” phase. That means that it is time to reflect back on the goals that I had set for last month, when the moon had entered its “new” phase in Leo.

So, the Leo new moon was in my 10th house, or my career zone. This was the time when the universe was giving me several nudges to start working harder on trying to figure out my transition plan for getting a position in industry. During this phase, there were several different nudges but basically they all reminded me that I’m done with research in academia, and to so extent I’m done with academia in general.

So what were my goals for the Leo new moon?

  • Narrowing down my top choices of industry positions;
  • Adding more value to connections (but being strategic at the same time) to hopefully gain informational interviews soon
  • Determine what my “brand” is both personal & professional
  • Start reading more in both the business world & the scientific world; and finally
  • Continue working through the data programming e-courses that I’ve bought

So how did I do with each goal?

In terms of narrowing down my top choices for industry positions—the positions that I’m now considering include:

Health Economist and Outcome Research

Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) Specialist

Clinical Data Manager

R&D Research Scientist (working up to R&D project manager; I’ve realized that if I want to become a project manager—I would need to spend some time still at the bench, as most companies probably won’t hire someone who doesn’t have the experience to be an manager right away).

Marketing Communications Specialist

Market Research Analyst

Quantitative Analyst

Operation Research Analyst

Medical Copywriting

In terms of adding value to connections—this is still slow going, in that I know that I need to set aside specific time periods and just work on this (so again, this is a work in progress).

I’m still trying to determine my “brand” (to the point I’m actually taking an e-course on personal branding).

The reading is slow going—again, I need to just set aside specific time periods to where I’m reading business pages, and then start reading scientific papers that actually interest me (with this—I might start writing small reviews of things for the blog).

I’m also slowly working through the different programming e-courses that I’ve bought (mainly because I haven’t had the time to totally download programs to my computer for some of the courses).

Overall, I made progress this past month in determining the different paths that I want to start exploring in terms of different career options. Research as moved down the list, mainly because I have slowly started to lose my enthusiasm for it—though that could just be the fact that I’m totally done with academic research. I am also getting close to the decision on whether or not I want to sign the extension contract come Thanksgiving—while the paycheck is always nice, being stuck in a job that you don’t enjoy and actually dread going to work daily—it isn’t worth it (even if it means that I may not be eligible for unemployment; I would then have more time to focus on my industry transition.