Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Position: Imposter

My new job title is Epidemiologist for the state health department's Tobacco Control Branch. But, well... have you ever read that book Catch Me If You Can? (It's a movie, too, with Leonardo diCaprio.) The guy poses as an airline pilot, a doctor, a lawyer... when he wasn't really any of those things.

I have training in epidemiology. I've taken a number of statistics classes and have experience in statistical programming. I've even had experience with previous waves of the dataset I'm supposed to be working with, but ...

I'm kind of waiting to get figured out.

Soon, they may know that I'm not the statistical genius my predecessor is. They'll find out I have to look back at my classnotes to remember basic SAS code. It's a good thing this blog is private or they might find out that I call Arnie sometimes to ask him questions when I get nervous about something.

You all won't be the ones to tell them, will you?

4 comments:

Shelley said...

Wait, do you have S's old position?? I am impressed you even have notes on SAS coding - I never made it past SPSS! :) You're going to rock it.

Molly said...

Yes! I have his old position. Crazy? I didn't exactly know that was what I was getting myself into. Big shoes to fill for sure.

m-l-e said...

I feel like this all the time. I just think back to that awesome commercial (for beer, true) where the guy just says "Yes I AM".

Yes YOU ARE

Shelley said...

Ok, the people demand to know - how's that job going? How about the rest of your life? Some of us out here need new photos! ;)