Radiology Career Advancement Tactics, with Andre Perkins of Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts

Episode Overview

Episode Topic: In this episode of Skeleton Crew – The Rad Tech Show, host Jen Callahan engages in a rich conversation with Andre Perkins, an accomplished adjunct instructor at Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts and a dedicated nuclear medicine technologist at Womack Army Medical Center. They explore the dynamic world of radiography and professional growth, covering topics like career navigation, comprehensive education, real-world learning experiences, adapting to changes in radiology, essential skills for success, and the role of networking and continued education in advancing radiology careers.

Lessons You’ll Learn: In this episode, we delve into the diverse journey of radiography with guest Andre Perkins. Discover how to navigate a career in radiology, the significance of comprehensive education, and the various opportunities within the field. Explore the role of real-world experiences and hands-on practice in professional growth, and gain insights into the skills and attributes needed to thrive in the evolving landscape of radiology.

About Our Guests: Join us as we host Andre Perkins, an esteemed adjunct instructor at the Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts and a dedicated nuclear medicine technologist at the Womack Army Medical Center. With his extensive experience in both education and practical application, Andre brings a wealth of insights and experiences to the discussion.

Topics Covered: We explore Andre Perkins’ career journey from nuclear medicine technologist to adjunct instructor, Gurnick Academy’s approach to radiology education, advice for aspiring radiology professionals, the integration of real-world experiences into the curriculum, hands-on learning, success stories of Gurnick Academy graduates, the evolving radiology landscape, essential skills for success, and the significance of networking and continued education.

Our Guest: Pioneering Leadership in Healthcare with Andre Perkins

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Episode Transcript

Andre Perkins: It was still staying within the realm of the guidelines, our procedure, our protocols. But hey, every patient is not going to be like that. So you have to incorporate that when you’re teaching this stuff because you’re not going to get textbook patients all the time. And that’s just the nature of the beast. You have to give the students the ups as well as the downs of the career, because they’re going to be some days you’re like, man, I quit. There will be some days you’re like, man, I can’t wait to come back to work.

Jennifer Callahan:  Welcome to the skeleton Crew. I’m your host, Jen Callahan, a technologist with ten-plus years experience. In each episode, we will explore the fast-paced, ever-changing, sometimes completely crazy field of radiology. We will speak to technologists from all different modalities about their careers and education. The educators and leaders who are shaping the field today, and the business executives whose innovations are paving the future of radiology. 
This episode is brought to you by x-raytechnicianschools.com. If you’re considering a career in X-ray, visit x-raytechnicianSchools.com to explore schools and to get honest information on career paths, salaries, and degree options. 
 
Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of The Skeleton Crew. My name is Jen Callahan, your host. Thanks for being with us again. And I have an esteemed guest. His name is Andre Perkins. He is an adjunct professor at the Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts. And then he also, too, has a dual role where he’s working in education. And like many people out in this field, is also to working in the radiology field, in nuclear medicine at the Womack Army Medical Center. So, Andre, thanks for being with me tonight.

Andre Perkins: Thanks for having me, Jen. Really appreciate the invite.

Jennifer Callahan:  Yeah.My pleasure. So Andre tonight is going to talk to us. He’s got a crazy journey that he’s going to talk to us about. And it’s interesting how life just leads you to the different paths that you end up and how your avenues just crisscross, and you don’t think that you’re going to end up doing something or something, never would have even crossed your mind, and you end up somewhere completely different than maybe where you were before. So was me leading into that. Andre start us out with what we were just talking about, age 18. Where were you? And then let’s work our way to present day, if that’s okay.

Andre Perkins: My way into radiology and into nuclear medicine was just by happenstance, and I didn’t get to this part of the story when we first started Jen that in high school, I was a slacker kid. Do just enough to get by party animal kind of football player. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. And finally, somebody said, hey, you should probably join the military. And I was like, all right, fine, no problem. Wasn’t ready for college was not. Make a long story short, it took me several tries to actually get in the military. And when I got to the military, to the place where you pick your job as MEPs, the guy looked at me in my face and said, hey, what do you want to do? And I said something along the lines of, hey man, give me anything. And he looked at me square in the face. He looked at me. He looked at his paper. He looked at me. He said, I got the perfect job for you. Radiology, radiology. At this point, I’m 17. I’m like, what is radiology? I’ll take it. Sounds good. Keeps me out of the sun. I can tell people I’m gonna be radiology. Whatever. Fast forward. I get to San Antonio, Texas, and at this point, I’m 18 years old. I’m actually full-time in the military, and I’m in what’s called AIT (advanced individual training). I mean, San Antonio, Texas, I’m 18 years old, have a few dollars in my pocket, and I don’t have anybody to tell me what to do.
 
So of course, like any 18-year-old, that’s what I do. I partied and partied some more. And yeah, I partied a little bit more, to the point where I nearly failed out of -ray. I think that program, the first part of it was maybe 20 to 24 weeks, and we’re talking about week three. They was like, look, you might want to pick another job because you’re already failing. And it only gets harder from here. And my head, I’m like, I can’t go home and tell my parents that I failed out of radiology, which they don’t know what it is. And yeah, so I buckled down and I told you before, I don’t even think I made it. I really think they just wanted to get me out of there. And if I did make it, it was literally by the hair of my chinny chin. So I went on, and of course, I passed and everything and I was stationed in Georgia and nuclear medicine came. You know how I got into nuclear medicine? I was working radiology at any techno. Second shift and third shift are the sometimes the worst shifts to work. And you’re like, oh my God, you hate life because you get all the traumas, you get all the alcoholics come in on a Friday night.

Jennifer Callahan:  And then also too, you’re working with like half the staff.

Andre Perkins: Right.

Jennifer Callahan: And but sometimes the workload can be possibly just as much like you might still have cases going on. You’re still running portables, your air is blowing up.

Andre Perkins: Right. And it gets old quickly. At the time I work third shift, so third shift was midnight to eight. But anyway, the new med guys would come in. They would come beboppin’ in at 6:00 in the morning. Just all cool. And I’m looking at him like, why is this guy so happy at 6:00 in the morning? Every day this guy is happy. He is enjoying life. What is it about him and what does he do? And how can I do it? Well, that same guy and I inquired with him, hey, what does nuclear medicine? And he gave me the ah, this, this and this that. Okay, well, so he invited me in a friend of mine to his house. Well, this guy, his house was laid out and I sat in his driveway after he put me out after a few hours, I wouldn’t leave because it was so nice. I really didn’t evaluate my life. Sitting in his driveway, I was like, well, what is he doing different than I’m doing different? What wrong turn did I make in life for me not to have this? And the only thing I can put my finger on was this guy was a mad tech and he was moonlighting at certain places. He was just. He was killing it. So I was like, well, how can I get into nuclear medicine? And long story short, I re-enlisted and I was able to get into nuclear medicine school and nervous because of the of the situation. In the head and radiology, we almost failed. And mind you, I’m a few years older now, so I’m like, well, been out of school a lot a long time and I almost failed then. So what is it going to be like here? But again, like I tell everybody, it’s not where you came from, it’s where you’re going. And those lessons that I learned as a young adult, it helped me, helped propel me and made me, made me better in medicine school.

Jennifer Callahan: So you had a re-enlist in the Army for you to do your continuing?

Andre Perkins: Yes, ma’am, I did. That’s why I got into Gurnick the military’s program. At the time it was it’s called. It was called the Naval School of Health Sciences. It was a tri-service school with all the military, army, navy, and Air force. We’ll go to school together. And the program was set up where you do the didactic portion all upfront. And once you finish that portion, you go to your clinicals, and once you finish your clinicals, you go on to a course to your respective service and go back and do your work. The founder of the program at Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts, she actually wrote the program as Farah Johnson when I actually met her and we just started having dialogue, she mentioned she was in the military and we started mentioning names. She said, wait a minute. We went to the same program, like, wait a minute. Wow. So I really wanted to be a part of this cutting-edge program because I think it’s one of a kind. It’s one of a kind program here in the United States. When you’re doing the didactic portion online and you’re doing the clinicals, whatever state you’re in right now, we’re just in California for nuclear medicine. So.

Jennifer Callahan: Well, I was going to say, so where is Gurnick exactly? Stationed out of like what would be like, considered your home base?

Andre Perkins: Well, Gurnick is actually in California. They have several campuses in California, but the nuclear medicine program is based at the Concord campus and Concord, California. But the program I said is online. The whole entire nuclear medicine faculty, with the exception of the clinical coordinators or I think, program directors in Louisiana, North Carolina, we have somebody in Atlanta, someone in Massachusetts. So we’re able to bring in instructors and professors from all over the United States to this one program. And we have really I have some esteemed colleagues, Dr. David Gilmore, Ms. Sybil Nielson, they are awesome, awesome. They bring a wealth of knowledge to the program, and the students are all in California, and their clinical sites are really within 35-45 minutes of where they live. I think we have maybe 45 hospitals in the California area where the students can do their clinicals. And we have we’ve partnered with these hospitals.

Jennifer Callahan: So you’re basically doing like remote teaching. You’re teaching from where are you, North Carolina?

Andre Perkins: Yes, ma’am.

Jennifer Callahan: So you do classes, I guess via what, zoom or something? Or do you record or how does that work?

Andre Perkins: We use Google Meets. Our classes are we meet Tuesdays and Thursdays. Their classes are four hours apiece. The students have several classes. They’ll have a class in the morning. I won’t say they’re taking 2 to 3 classes a day. And within the nuclear medicine program, and on the off days of nuclear medicine, they’re taking their their prereqs. Some of them are taking math, chemistry, physics. It’s a full-time program, and they’re expected to attend full-time as if you were in were in sitting in class face to face.

Jennifer Callahan: Okay. Yeah. So I was on the website earlier and just like looking at all the different programs that are offered through there, and you offer up to like a bachelor’s of science, correct?

Andre Perkins: Yes, ma’am. Not necessarily nuclear medicine, but in radiology, nursing, ultrasound, of course, phlebotomy. It’s a wide range of medical specialties that offers. And it’s throughout several campuses. But we are the only program that’s online hybrid.

Jennifer Callahan: Right. Do you have the ability to go to class if you want to. Like could they go and sit in a classroom setting?

Andre Perkins: Not for this program. They don’t. And the intent is with the way the world is going, we’re trying to reach more people. Distance education is becoming a thing now, just within nuclear medicine, within Garnick. If you look at a lot of major universities, brick and mortars, they have an online section or an online portion that students can. You can be wherever and you can go to school online and still get a degree from pick a college. So that’s virtual is becoming the way the lay of the land.

Jennifer Callahan: Now, what led you from working as a Nuke med technologist to wanting to do your MBA?

Andre Perkins: It’s two fold. I think we talked about it earlier. I have great leadership and I have great mentors. One piece of advice I give anybody is find someone who is doing what you want to do and get the blueprint from them and tailor that blueprint to your situation. So I have a great leader, my mentor. She pushed me to go to school. Hey, you need to step out of your comfort zone and go back to school and. Rewinding while I was in the military, I was a stop and go student as I like to refer to myself. I go a couple of classes here. I stop, go a couple of classes here, and I stop, go a couple of classes here and I quit. So it was one of those things where she’s like, hey, you need to you need to go back to school and you need to actually finish. Like, okay, well thank you put me on Front Street like that. But okay. So once I got into the groove of undergrad, I was like, well, maybe I should probably go a little further. I had someone say, yeah, you should go further because I’m going further. And if I can do it, you can do it. So while I was still in that groove of finishing up undergrad, I was like, okay, let’s keep going, let’s keep going. And I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. When I grow up, I always want to stay in health care, or if I stay in health care, what is going to work best for me as I move up the food chain if that’s a thing?
 
And I looked at a lot of the directors and executives and hospital administration, and a lot of them had MBAs. So this is where, hey, they had the blueprint. Let me just tailor it to me. I got the MBA. As far as the PhD, the PhD is actually something I’m interested in and chose IO psychology because I have a passion for leadership, leadership, and making organizations better. As you probably can relate, throughout your career, I’ve had some terrible leaders. I’m terrible leaders like, oh my God, how did this person become like this person? Like, wow, you could lead a choir. And really and I’ve had some really good leaders as well. And I wanted to know, how do you fix the leadership model or the promotion system, especially within the military? How do you fix the promotion system? Why does the military have high attrition rate within the medical community? Those are questions that I want to answer, and I don’t think it’s fair to complain about something or make complain, make these just riveting complaints. You don’t have a viable solution. So in order for me to have a viable solution, well, let me go to let me do some research, let me learn about it. So when I bring a solution. Well, Mr. Perkins, how do you know? Well, I wrote a dissertation about it, or I wrote a paper about it. Oh, okay. So that was my push to go to get the PhD or to start the PhD.

Jennifer Callahan: So let’s lean into you then, being an instructor at Gurnick, what classes or classes do you teach? Do you instruct?

Andre Perkins: Well, I’m teaching right now. We’re doing procedures. And procedures is a beast in its in itself. And I’m smiling because I still have a hard time grasping the fact that I’m an instructor, like this guy who almost failed out of radiology and struggled through class. I’m now teaching it. But yes, I’m teaching procedures right now. My first class ever was patient care, which was probably my hardest class because first day they’re looking at me and I’m looking at them like, okay, what do I start? I can’t tell them I’m a first-year teacher. I’m a first-time teacher. You got to play it off. So we play it off and we get through it. But now procedures is one of those one of those sections. You’re an X-ray tech. You got to learn about the different organ systems and how the organ systems work, what they work well together with, what kind of diseases you have. So it’s a lot now. It’s just breaking it down and making it easy for them to retain the information.

Jennifer Callahan: The students that you have, you found that they mostly students who are coming back, who have been technologists, who have been working in the field for maybe at least more than a year. Or are they possibly just graduating from X-ray or taking their boards and X-ray and then just rolling right into another modality?

Andre Perkins: Believe it or not, I don’t think I have any technologists in the second cohort. I don’t have any technologists. I have several people with medical backgrounds. I think I have a phlebotomist, have an EKG tech, but for the most part, everyone in my in the second cohort, they’re all fresh, some of them with no medical experience.

Jennifer Callahan: Really! So you’re not required to have your PT.

Andre Perkins: For this program? No, ma’am. Nuclear medicine, if you will, is a standalone. You don’t have to be X-ray tech to be a mega tech. If you look on the ART website, it’s actually a branch. If you have your nuclear medicine boards, you can take the ultrasound boards, you can take the CT boards, you can take those other boards.

Jennifer Callahan: All right. So rolling from continuing our education and how it helps us in our career. When you’re instructing, do you talk about real-world experiences and how you as a technologist could incorporate that into your day-to-day activity as a working technologist?

Andre Perkins: Absolutely. I think that’s something that you have to do. Again, like I said, we’re both technologists, radiology and nuclear medicine. We all know that textbook. Every patient that we see or every exam that we perform or study that we do is. Almost never on a textbook. So we encourage the students, obviously, to learn the textbook principles. However, be flexible enough to be able to manoeuvre based on the patient. We’re still staying within the realm of the guidelines, our procedure, our protocols. But hey, every patient is not going to be like that. So you have to incorporate that when you’re teaching this stuff because you’re not going to get textbook patients all the time. And that’s just the nature of the beast. You have to give the students the ups as well as the downs of the career, because they’re going to be some days you’re like, man, I quit. They’re going to be some days like, man, I can’t wait to come back to work. It just rolls like that and you have to tell a story. For me, I tell stories about situations I’ve had with interactions with patients, maybe some not-so-good patients or patients that really left a mark on your heart, or patients that just, oh man, they were funny or funny interactions with the physicians. So it’s all a part of the instruction and part of the giving them the full ride of radiology because radiology is a roller coaster.

Jennifer Callahan: Do you feel like that helps you be a better instructor, that you still have that hands-on experience? So you’re still very much in the working realm of radiology, and you haven’t stepped out of that completely just to be an education.

Andre Perkins: Absolutely. Just like radiology is an ever-changing field. A lot of times the field changes, but the book does not change. The textbook does not change unless we update it every three or 4 or 5 years. So having that first that real-world experience and bring that to the classroom, I think that is an advantage because again, you can give them, hey, look, I know the book says ABC, but sometimes you’re going to have to go CBA. It is what it is. So absolutely, this is a dynamic field and it’s ever-changing.

Jennifer Callahan: Right. So as you’re saying, it’s ever-changing. What changes have you seen in the nuclear medicine world from when you started to what you’re doing now?

Andre Perkins: I’ve seen changes both in radiology and nuclear medicine. I grew up on the era of gray film and black film, and I can remember times where we had the darkroom and we had to take an image, go to the darkroom and take the image out and put it through the processor and go have somebody wait on the other side. Right? Oh, man. The fun you have with that. I can remember a time I dropped my leather marker in the film bin. Oh man, turn the light on and there goes all my film. So going from grey film and black film to now digital, it’s like, wow, it’s a drastic change for radiology. I went over to the X-ray department a few days ago and they have amazing equipment. They don’t even use cassettes anymore. No, no. What’s your 14 by 17? You’re like, what is that you’re talking about 17 for a chest X-ray? He’s like, oh, we don’t use that. We just sit them up against the buggy. Yeah. Oh, okay. That’s cool. It’s changed. Same thing with nuclear medicine. When I came in nuclear medicine, fusion imaging was here, but it had not made its mark. And now everything is about fusion imaging.

Jennifer Callahan: Could you just explain that term a little bit more like what Fusion imaging means, just for anyone who might be listening that maybe isn’t in the field of radiology?

Andre Perkins: Yeah. So fusion imaging is we’re taking two different modalities and we’re actually fusing them together, overlaying them together for image correlation. So the biggest thing specifically within nuclear medicine is SPECT CT. And we’re seeing what we’re talking about Spect we’re talking about It’s called single photon emission computed tomography where our camera spins around the patient. It’s like as you will. But then you take that and you fuse it with Cat scan computed tomography. And you match those images together. And you overlay them and fuse them together, and you use them for image correlation. So the radiologists can actually look at the nuclear medicine scan, and you can look at the CAT scan and you can say, okay, well this is the abnormality or the lesion is here on the news and I can see it here on the CT. Let’s put them together and make sure we’re matching them. So image correlation. That’s a huge advancement within the realm of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging Spect pet CT we’re talking about when we’re saying pet CT pet is really it’s a nuclear medicine study, but we’re just using an isotope that produces a higher more energy. But anyway, you take that and infuse it with the CT. And it’s really big in oncology. The oncologists love pet CT.

Jennifer Callahan:  Now, do you go through all these different types of scans in the nuclear medicine curriculum that you teach?

Andre Perkins: Yeah, we actually do. We go into details. However, we say we give them the basic foundation because again, every department, every clinic you go to, their protocol may be may differ. I may image for one minute here and I go to clinic B and I image for four minutes. So it’s in the basic foundation of how it works. And when they go to clinicals they’ll see okay all right this is how it works. This is how they do it here. So in hopes that when they go to any clinic they know the foundation of nuclear medicine, they can just learn the protocol of the hospital, the department that they’re in.

Jennifer Callahan:  So do you have any stories that you can think of since you’ve been an adjunct instructor? A good story to share.

Andre Perkins: So as an instructor, you always want to make an impact. And I remember I went through my first course and it was, I think maybe 12 weeks. And again, I’m brand new to this. So I got my evaluations, the student evaluations, and oh man, they tore me to pieces. And I was like, I went to my program director. I was like, oh my God. They look, they told me to pace it and she is cracking up. I’m in panic mode and I’m not a person that gets panicked easily. But most of my students just told me that I suck. So I’m in panic mode, like, oh my God, is this? And she’s laughing. She laughs. She’s like, look, you’re always going to get bad reviews. It’s okay. It’s a part of the field. I’m like, don’t think it is. I’m going to quit. I’m going to reevaluate this career choice. She’s like, okay, let me know. She knew I wasn’t quitting, but I’m like, man. So the second class reviews views got better and the third class, my reviews were off the charts. I’m like, oh yeah, okay, I got the hang of this. I have some other colleagues that I talk to. They’re like, look, it takes 3 to 5 years to get acclimated to this. But as far as students, the students keep you, they keep you on your toes because sometimes you get a student that asks a question, you’re like, yeah, let me get back to you on that one.

Jennifer Callahan:  Let me Google that.

Andre Perkins: Right? Like, what was that? You can’t be awesome and you don’t want to give them wrong answers. So you have to be honest. And I’ve watched other colleagues, they’re like, they asked the students to ask a random off-the-wall question. And they’re like, look, I don’t know. I don’t have a clue. I’m like, wow, they said that. Yeah.

Jennifer Callahan:  It’s better to be honest, though. I mean, like, it’s almost talking to to like a kid. My kids ask me questions off the wall all the time, and I’m going to tell you there’s good amount of times and I’m like, I don’t know. I’m not sure we’re going to have to look that up.

Andre Perkins: Yeah. And I’m like, okay, and text my program director, hey, such and such. Ask me, what do you think? And that’s another thing too. You have to know your strengths. And math is not a strength of mine. It’s not. So my program director is like, you want to teach physics? No. You want to teach me physics because I don’t know physics, you know? So, yeah. So you got to you have to know your strengths and your weaknesses and expound on your strengths. Utilize your strengths. They always say, well, Mr. Perkins, do you have any funny stories from clinic? I’m like, pick one. I have tons of stories told a story a week ago, and during COVID, you remember, during Covid we still medical medicine still rolls, radiology still rolls. Yeah. Well, I was in the doing a stress test with this cardiologist, and they built a rapport with the cardiologist we had on our mask and everything. And this patient, as some of our patients do, you can agree with this patient passed gas. It was really, really bad. It was really bad. So we have on mask right. Yeah. And it was like, oh my God. So I walked out, I walked across the room and because it was bad and I’m on the other side of the room laughing hysterically. And this physician is cardiologist is over there and he’s trying to be as professional as he possibly can. So I’m hearing this guy talk. He’s like, yeah. So he starts gagging and I’m laughing. So finally he comes running back over here. He says, Andre, that was really bad. Why didn’t you say anything? I was like, dude, he didn’t see me run out and stuff like that kind of keeps it, makes it interesting and you can reflect on it and look back on it like, man, did you remember that when that happened?

Jennifer Callahan:  And you had to share that information with students because we said not everything is cut and dry and you’re dealing with the human body. So something like that’s going to happen, whether the patient meant for it to happen or not. And the poor guy was probably embarrassed as all hell, he 100% could smell what you were smelling. So.

Andre Perkins: And to be honest with you, to be frank with you, some of the stuff in nuclear medicine is absolutely boring. We can be honest. That’s just it’s just boring. And I think one of the differences between radiology and nuclear medicine is in radiology, every day is something different a broken arm, broken finger, broken whatever. And it’s like like, man, that’s interesting man. Today I saw a broken arm, blah blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Nuclear medicine. We’re looking at the liver. I saw a horseshoe kidney like, oh my God, we have a horseshoe kidney. That’s exciting. And it’s really not. But that’s exciting. So that’s you have to find things like that and to make it interesting because it’s just honestly, I try to be straight up with him like, good. Look guys, we’re talking about this system. It’s absolutely boring. There’s no way I can make this fun. Grin and bear it. It’s honest. Get through it.

Jennifer Callahan:  So are you happy with your transition from radiology into Nuke med? After going to that guy’s house?

Andre Perkins: I am happy where I’m at. I’m glad I made it, made the transition, however piece of my heart. A large part of my heart is still in radiology. Always be in radiology because again, you see interesting things every single day. I miss it. So yeah, I’m a nuclear medicine, but in my heart, like y’all just hear.

Jennifer Callahan:  How about the transition or your segue into education? Are you happy with the transition? Doing that in conjunction with still being in the clinical field?

Andre Perkins: Absolutely. I like to think of it of a way to say, hey, if I can make it, if I can do this, you can too, because I’m pretty sure there’s other people who have struggled or they didn’t do as well as they wanted to, or some of their peers in class, and they’re like, man, what can I do? I’ve struggled in class. If I can do it, that means you can do it too. I still have a hard time grasping the fact that I’m actually a nuclear medicine instructor. I’m teaching this stuff. The world is yours. Once you put your mind to something, the world is yours. You can do it. You just have a positive attitude and use the word perseverance. It’s my watchword, perseverance.

Jennifer Callahan:  So if you had to give advice to someone entering into the field or someone who’s currently in it, would that pretty much be it? Have perseverance.

Andre Perkins: Perseverance. Just get through what you have to get through, no matter how you get through it. Just get through it. Never stop, never quit. Just keep pushing, Dory from Finding Nemo said just keep swimming.

Jennifer Callahan:  Yeah.

Andre Perkins: So just keep swimming. You will make the goal that you set your mind for. I tell the students all the time, find your why every. Everybody has a why. I got into radiology because I saw that those guys made great money. And I’m tired of working at this job. Or I got into this because I want to make a better lifestyle for my family. Leave a legacy. Hey, this is a segue into radiology is a segue way for me to end going to play school, to medical school, or I want to be a director. I want to be a hospital, whatever it is. Why is find that why? And once you find that, why is going to actually going to push you, it’s going to make you keep swimming. Those times get tough. My why? I can’t go back to working at Kmart. I can’t go back to work in this. I can’t those naysayers. I can’t prove those naysayers right. I can’t prove them right. So my why is I’m going to keep going.

Jennifer Callahan:  Like that, keep swimming. So it’s a great piece of advice, like all around for life. Andre, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me. Everybody, this is Andre Perkins sharing his insightfulness through his journey from the military and X-ray to Nuke med, to working as a technologist and now being an instructor for nuclear medicine, you’ve got the gamut going on there with the MBA and the PhD. I mean, you’re like a jack of all trades right now. So I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for being with me tonight.

Andre Perkins: I’m honoured to be here. And I told somebody I was like, I’m gonna. Thank you so much.

Jennifer Callahan:  My pleasure.Everybody. The Skeleton crew tonight with Andre Perkins follow up to see what we have coming. And if you have any tips or any suggestions for us, leave a comment, leave a review, give us a like and check out the other episodes that we have, because we always have some really interesting guests on our show. This is Jen and Andre. We’ll see you guys later. You’ve been listening to the Skeleton Crew, brought to you by X-raytechnicianschools.com. Join us on the next episode to explore the present and the future of the Rad Tech career and the field of radiology.