That's how I felt when I ended up in oncology research. All these super smart, driven, funny & interesting people who love going to work every day and try to help patients while driving research forward.
After futzing around in other industries and doing bs work for waaaay too long, I felt like the girl in the bee costume from the 1990s Blind Melon video who at the end of the video finally comes across and parties it up with a bunch of other bee-people:
I'm not an oncologist (heh...), more just a data guy who works with the researchers and helps them with genetic typing to build outputs with the tumor sample analysis. Sounds fancy but sometimes I'm just even doing plain old IT support (because I'm there in the labs and having to put in a ticket and wait for hospital IT is a pita).
I do work with a lot of oncologists and while like any industry there are a few big egos and jerks the majority of them are simply amazing people. I've seen patient's families screaming and yelling at our PIs (literally spitting on their faces) and the Drs. stay calm, cool and professional. It's hard to be the ones delivering bad news but they do a great job.
Most of the MDs I work with are both researchers and regular oncologist physicians. They participate in clinical trials and have labs where they investigate new treatments and drugs, but they also provide standard of care treatments for patients who aren't eligible or choose not to participate in trials.
After futzing around in other industries and doing bs work for waaaay too long, I felt like the girl in the bee costume from the 1990s Blind Melon video who at the end of the video finally comes across and parties it up with a bunch of other bee-people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58