Ming Tai-Seale
Associate Professor, Department of Health Policy & Management, School of Rural Public Health, Texas A&M University Health Sciences Center

When AcademyHealth asked me to write about the challenges I had faced in the early years of my career and what it is like to work in my position, I felt honored. Upon reflection, an old Chinese adage came to mind: one good person is helped by three others. My journey has been helped a great deal by my husband (Tom Tai-Seale), my daughters (Sahar, 12 years old, and Arin Tai-Seale, 8), and countless mentors and colleagues who had crossed my path at the perfect junctures.

Lesson #1: Choosing mentors - I was fortunate to have chosen Thomas Rice as my advisor at UCLA. He gave clear guidance at each stage of my doctoral study and an ideal research project from which my dissertation had spun out. He has continued to guide me through myriads of twists and turns in my academic career. He not only shared my joy in winning a dissertation grant from AHRQ, several joint journal articles, a career development award (K01) from NIMH, and tenure and promotion, but also picked me up on numerous discouraging occasions.

While being an assistant professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, I worked with Bernice Pescosolido, Deborah Fruend, Marc Rodwin, Eleanor Kinney, William Tierney, David Takeuchi, and Gerard Wedig. Each of them helped me in a unique way that was just right for me at the right time, whether in writing joint papers or research projects, or in proposal development, even in learning to deal with administrative matters.

After the first version of my K01 proposal was not funded, several more mentors came to my aid, including Thomas McGuire, Willard Manning, Ken Wells, Maggie Alegria, Sarah Horwitz, and project officers Agnes Rupp and Ann Hohmann at NIMH. They assured me the merits in the proposal, shed light on the grant review process and showed me how to improve the proposal. The funding came after I moved to Texas A&M. Without their support, my idea probably would not have seen the light of the day.

Lesson #2: Finding the balance - being attentive to personal wellbeing and looking after family and friends. Take breaks to recharge and renew appreciation for these heavenly gifts. Without them, life is incomplete, published or not. Raising a family constantly reminds me of the need to balance professional work and personal matters and to be mindful about the choice that I make.

Lesson #3: Being of service - serving the profession is one way to "pay back" all the help that I have received. I have been serving on a Study Section for AHRQ for a few years and have reviewed proposals for various special emphasis panels for AHRQ and NIH. While reviewing grant proposals is time consuming, its rewards are many. As with serving the AcademyHealth, they give me the satisfaction that I could be of service to something larger than me. Working with Marian Mankin and other Academy staff has been a pure pleasure. I have received much more than what I have ever given.