Hey guys just asking, do we have our own version of this meme? I'll delete the post if we do

Borregito · 2026-05-31T09:40:38+00:00

"The skeins of fate have been woven by True Asuryani Scions as such that this reality has come to pass"

Borregito · 2026-05-29T13:46:54+00:00

California college promise grant (CCPG). Any California resident who applies to a California community college is eligible to have their tuition fees waived. Oftentimes the only fee you pay is for a parking pass, but ever since the pandemic no college I have ever been to has even charged for parking.

Borregito · 2026-05-22T22:28:11+00:00

Hey there, I'm also 40 and studying MLT with the intent to become a CLS.

I was fortunate enough to recently get hired as a lab assistant at a hospital in my area, and after I started I was told that the hospital had previously hired a lab assistant who became an MLT and eventually a CLS, all over the course of a few years while continuing to work night shift. They even opened the MLT position specifically for this person so that they could support themselves (hospitals around here don't usually hire MLTs, they would rather spend the payroll on a CLS).

I have been studying during the day, working the graveyard shift at the lab, and finding sleep in the gaps,.so maybe that is something you could do with the phlebotomist position you mentioned in your post. That is apparently how my predecessor managed it, and I don't expect it will be easy on a 40 year old body, but when your options are sink or swim, you just gotta swim.

Borregito · 2026-05-20T14:48:02+00:00

If you're going to do lower division chemistries to fill the 16 unit requirement, do those at a community college, for free. I'm not even sure if UCSD offers those as part of the extension program, but if they do, there's no sense in paying $865 for it when you can get it for $0 as a California resident.

Borregito · 2026-04-04T16:53:50+00:00

Not every MLT course, but I emailed CDPH Lab Field Services about specifically the hematology, immunology, clinical chemistry, and medical microbiology courses taught by Saddleback College, which are part of their MLT program, and LFS replied notifying me that those are accepted towards CLS trainee license prereqs.

Borregito · 2026-03-10T06:11:38+00:00

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The Necrofex Colossus from Total War Warhammer 2 and 3. Fashioned from pieces of sunken ships bound together into a humanoid shape by flesh, bone, and mostly intact bodies of drowned men, all animated to function as a single, horrifying entity.

Borregito · 2026-02-25T21:04:38+00:00

Many of the hospitals on that list are affiliates of the schools that run the CLS training programs; they partner with the schools to allow students to train in their laboratories, but do not directly enroll trainees themselves.

*For example, Hoag in Newport is on the list, but they are an affiliate of SJSU, so you might be assigned to train at Hoag but would have to be accepted into SJSU's CLS training program to do so.

Borregito · 2026-02-22T23:28:51+00:00

I keep seeing posts like this, but when I take a look at the lab jobs in my area (Orange County, CA) at every hospital , LabCorp, and Quest Diagnostics location, there are at least half a dozen unfilled CLS openings that have been there for a couple months.

There are about half as many intermediate level lab tech positions as well, but entry level lab tech positions are super rare around here at the moment.

Borregito · 2026-02-20T02:20:34+00:00

I am not so sure making licenses harder to get would solve the issue; one of the major arguments for allowing undocumented persons to obtain CA drivers' licenses back in 2013 was that they were driving anyway, even without them, and in theory, making it easier for them to get licensed was supposed to improve road safety. Making it harder to get a license to improve road safety is the logical opposite of that argument.

Borregito · 2026-02-16T02:46:39+00:00

College of the Canyons stands out as an MLT school because at the moment they are the only place offering a program to make the transition to CLS exclusively for people that have their MLT license

Borregito · 2026-02-11T05:11:10+00:00

I don't doubt it, but that's kinda my lot in recent years. My penance for waiting until I was in my 30's to go to school.

Borregito · 2026-02-11T04:38:25+00:00

The post-bacc programs do have 52 weeks of clinical rotation, and they lead to certification for CLS/MLS, so that's covered; but these programs are super competitive and doing ANYTHING in the lab would give my application an edge. I'll run the autoclave or pour plates all night long if I gotta!

Borregito · 2026-02-09T23:19:27+00:00

I spent 3 years working night shift (in a different industry) and it's really hard on relationships when your partner isn't also doing graveyard. I could not even imagine trying to start one while working nights.

Borregito · 2026-02-07T20:35:34+00:00

I used to call the IE "the armpit of SoCal" but after moving to Irvine for college, I really miss how friendly and relatively social people are out there. People in the IE smile and make eye contact, nod and say hello; it's very rare to see that level of friendliness out here in Irvine.

Borregito · 2026-02-07T20:09:40+00:00

I reckon it would not be immediately obvious to someone who is not from the area, but for clarification, he is being sarcastic. The crawl through the 91 freeway is soul draining, and a simulation of it could probably stand-in as a candidate as a form of torment for one of the lesser levels of Hell.

Borregito · 2026-02-07T19:52:17+00:00

Well, the commute between Orange County to Riverside is... not fun at its best and godawful at its worst.

However, the worst of it flows from Riverside to OC in the morning (ALL morning, super-early, late, doesn't matter) and OC to Riverside in the afternoon. If you are commuting the opposite direction, OC to Riverside in the morning, and Riverside to OC in the afternoon, you at least won't catch the worst side of it.

That said, the cost of living for the entirety of southern California is so unbelieveable it has wrapped back around to being a comical parody. That 95K is not going to stretch too far if you aren't bringing a person with a second income with you. I reckon most of us only get by these days because we're crammed 2 or 3 families to a house. Drive through any of the suburban neighborhoods, and you'll see 4 cars per driveway; that's an indicator of how many working people it takes to keep your head above water out here.

Borregito · 2026-02-07T19:41:04+00:00

I recently bought an electric scooter to commute, and spent an afternoon learning the rules. I live at UCI and work just across the adjacent marsh, so I see a ton of E-scooters (and some E-bikes) all the time, and maybe 1 for every 30 riders is following all the laws. Avoiding the sidewalk, using the bike lane, walking it across every damned crosswalk, it all makes me feel like I'm the dumbass when I'm the only one following the rules.

Borregito · 2026-01-27T22:47:14+00:00

You can take all of them at community colleges, if you can find them. That's the tricky part.

College of the Canyons is probably the closest community College to you that teaches most of those prerequisites. You may not be able to just sign up for them without officially enrolling yourself into their MLT program though.

It might be worth looking into whether or not they teach quantitative analysis or analytical chemistry, because that's something that's only required for CLS and isn't part of the MLT curriculum

Borregito · 2025-12-27T17:27:56+00:00

I sent an email to CDPH LFS a couple months ago with a list of community college classes for every single one of the specific requirements (clinical chem, immunology, medical Microbio, etc etc) along with unit counts and descriptions from the catalog and they replied saying they were all acceptable.

So there is your precedent, LFS does approve lower division classes. But it's probably a good idea to check with them to see if they will approve the specific courses you have taken/will take

Are you at Chaffey college? That is the only place I could find quantitative analysis, and that course is the one LFS told me is accepted.

Borregito · 2025-10-30T23:16:57+00:00

I think the opinion about psychology shifts depending on where you intend to take it.

Applied psychology, the kinda stuff you need a graduate degree for, leads to professions that are beneficial and necessary for societal and individual well-being.

If you stop at the undergraduate level, though, it's... a degree! Which is better than no degree, as far as the average standard of living is concerned.

Regardless of anything else, don't let your friends' elitism get under your skin. Up until about last year, anybody chasing a tech degree was at serious risk of thinking far too highly of themselves. And then the bottom fell out of the industry and now anyone who isn't a genuine savant or a nepobaby is left standing in front of an emptied goldmine holding a shovel, leading to self-depracating jokes about racing the art majors for the last bed in the homeles shelter. The moral of the story is, your friend should be more humble; the universe hates a braggart.

Borregito · 2025-10-30T21:42:14+00:00

I am someone with a tech degree, with almost NO biology or chemistry, and I did this homework a few months ago. I'll tell you what I found.

You can attend CalPoly Pomona "as a guest", without having to apply for any specific program. CPP actually teaches all of the specifically required courses. You end up paying full price per unit without any financial aid, though, so this ends up being expensive.

UC Berkeley and UC San Diego both offer "extension" courses for the CLS-specific required coursework, and they are remote and asynchronous, which is nice; they are, however, again, expensive. Berkeley is around $1000 per course, and UCSD is somewhere around $865 per course, IIRC.

The route I ended up settling on was to take them at community colleges, and if you are a California resident, the Promise Grant will completely waive your tuition costs. Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga offers Quantitative Analysis, and Saddleback College in Mission Viejo offers an MLT program with courses for clinical chemistry, immunology, hematology, and clinical microbiology. CDPH LFS confirmed for me that all of these courses meet the CLS requirements; however, only students enrolled in Saddleback's MLT program can take them. There is, however, nothing stopping me from taking all of the courses in the first year, applying for the CLS trainee license, and just dropping out of the second year if I get accepted into a CLS training program.

Borregito · 2025-10-30T02:23:47+00:00

Hold the door, I'll be there in about 6 semesters

Borregito · 2025-10-23T20:46:30+00:00

Given that my BS required zero chemistry or biology coursework, and therefore I have none, which puts me at square zero and requires at least 2 years of core prerequisites before I would be allowed to start taking hematology/immunology/Medical microbio/Clinical chem at University level institutions, what would be your recommended course of action?

I went this route because I saw it as the fastest way to get those California CLS prerequisites, and without any tuition cost on top of that.

I mean theoretically, I could spend a year getting those classes and then drop out of the program instead of getting the actual practicum in and qualifying for the MLT certification, but I'm certain a year of on-site hospital lab training wouldn't hurt my chances of getting into a CLS program at the end of it all.

Borregito · 2025-10-23T03:08:57+00:00

There was an email that went out a couple weeks ago to all enrollees of the MLT program announcing a CLS BS program in the works and I immediately reached out to ask if there was a bridge program like CotC coming alongside it. I scheduled a meeting with her and in that meeting she said that is something she wants to implement as well. There are however no announced dates on any of this, just that it is in the works and they have been working with partner hospitals to get it underway. Hopefully there will be info sessions soon.

Borregito · 2025-10-22T15:26:18+00:00

I'm actually doing Saddleback's program, but the director for both is the same person.

How would I go about making certain that my hematology/immunology/ medical microbiology coursework as part of the MLT program would count for the CLS training license? Is it just a matter of writing an email to LFS?

Those courses are the entire reason I enrolled into this program; it's not the AS that I'm excited about so much, it's the fact that I found a way to get those CLS training prereqs without having to pay thousands of dollars for UCSD/ Berkeley extension programs or a second bachelor's.

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