Take A Chance On Me
It is uncommon for medical writers not to have a circuitous route into this field. As my colleagues Mahin Arastu and Justin McLaughlin have previously detailed, everyone has their own story to tell.
In a shameless effort to shoehorn in an ABBA reference to a blog post about medical writing, consider the following:
If you change your mind
I'm the first in line
Honey, I'm still free
Take a chance on me
What does this passage from a pop song that is approximately as old as I am have to do with my personal journey into medical writing? So glad you asked.
I had the misfortune of being laid off from my job as a proposal/technical writer one month before my wedding. Needless to say, this was an unwelcome development. Life moved on in a blur, but when I got back from my honeymoon, I had a message on my answering machine. Among the flurry of recent job applications I had sent out before we left, one had caught the eye of Helen Coyne. There was an opportunity to join the biostatistics group at HCRI to help with data QC and reporting. I was free and they took a chance on me. HCRI is a contract research organization that specializes in medical device clinical trials. Seeing all of the disciplines required to work together to conduct a trial was an invaluable experience for me. Under the supportive tutelage of Joe Massaro and Theodora Cohen I was able to fill an internal need and grow a medical writing department. Eventually, I felt the need to gain experience on the Sponsor side. Once again, I was fortunate that another group was willing to take a chance on me. Working within the pharma industry (at Infinity Pharmaceuticals) offered me new opportunities to work on different document types and further witness how various functions depend on each other to succeed. Observing this interplay has been crucial in allowing me to navigate the needs of teams as I moved through my subsequent career. This is also when I met Justin McLaughlin and we schemed to build something better in the future. Life eventually drew me away from client-side writing and I took a chance on becoming a consultant. This was rewarding in providing me a greater breath of writing opportunities and let me get lots of reps in (Gladwell 10,000 hours blog).
Eventually, when Justin (and Virginia Kelly) changed their minds about working in Industry, I was the first in line. I don’t work for free, but they took a chance on me, and we’ve been rocking and rolling ever since.
A post about a journey should probably have lyrics from Journey in it, but I would never do that to you. I’ll just remind you; don’t stop believin’, hold on to that feelin’.
Michael Claffey
VP Acumen