Hello, my name is Jin, and I have been a consultant for 5 months now...

Dear Reader slash Passerby,

Thank you for visiting!

Firstly, an introduction - My name is Jin, and I have been a consultant for umm....a little less than 5 months now. I was first introduced to the notion of consultancy shortly after moving to Chicago (1st move, not 2nd). At the time, I was torturing mice by day (biweekly amphetamine injections followed by death), and devouring Lean Cuisines with a neighbor-turned friend-turned frenemy (my fault, not hers)-turned friend again by night. My listless, effortless, drab-ish life weighed heavily and I desperately needed to unload it. The friend reincarnate thought I should give consulting a try; she herself has dabbled. Instead, I took the "higher" road, aspiring to alleviate the world of its injustice through more equitable distribution of health (yes, okay, I read one of Paul Farmer's books). So against the strong discouragement of my parents ("You are going to be infected with HIV and end up homeless on the streets!") I enrolled in the International Health Epidemiology program at the University of Michigan.

My delusions of bucket showers with malnourished orphans in Mozambique (or a similarly impoverished, disease plagued, but not terribly dangerous African nation) was quickly halted by the daunting reality of student loans (as predicted by my very clever mother), the discovery that BAD POLICY is the biggest factor affecting the health and illness of populations, and the realization that I am aesthetically allergic to EcoSox. I transferred to Health Management and Policy one semester later.

So there I was, along side all these douchebags (no offense my HMP friends) who cared mildly about health and (pretty much) not at all about health equity. Outside school I socialized exclusively with Epi/Health Behavior Health Education people (a fact that I am very proud of), but inside, I convinced myself that tackling issues from the policy side will be more effective than publishing useless, Captain Obvious papers that link car-exhaust to asthma.

Note - I later completed the management (not policy) track.

Why? Because it would "open more doors" and also, on average, MHSAs make $10,000 more than MPHs immediately post graduation. Yes, my friends, this is American Greed! Perhaps we are all born with a reserve of douchebagary...

Thus began my descend into consultancy...