I read a post a while back on a forum for medical students, and the post was in a thread about what a medical student who is about to go into residency should be reading before his first year of residency begins. Someone suggested one thing, someone else another, and one person said that it was more important to maintain his lifelines.
I was interested as to what that meant, and the poster (an experienced physician) explained that residency and professional obligations in general can sometimes make someone feel as though they're drowning, and explained that it is necessary to maintain lifelines on which a doctor can pull when they feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities and their timetable. Following this vein, here are my lifelines, and how I maintain them:
Family and friends - I like keeping in touch with people I know all the time, and it has actually helped considerably. Adding perspective to what I'm doing, my life in general, has helped me move forward. Unfortunately, talking on the phone with each person who is important to me for two hours at a time is no longer feasible, so to maintain this lifeline, I decided to start this blog. The blog is mostly for them, but I seem to have garnered a very small North American and European following. I'm not complaining.
Fitness - I have been inconsistent at best with this aspect of my life, and must make considerable effort to improve on it in the next two months before residency. I know I'm going to Europe, and I know I'll have plenty to do before July 1st (rent/buy housing, buy a car, get clothes if necessary, etc) but I have to be in the best shape of my life before residency begins and I think cycling, boxing and weightlifting will be my solution to that. I just need to wake up strong in mind every day. A strong body begins with a strong mind. I'm going to work out for 45 minutes a day when I'm in residency, at the crack of dawn or slightly beforehand.
Cooking - Again, inconsistency is an understatement where this is concerned. I'll get better at it. I already love eating, how difficult could it possibly be to rekindle my love for cooking? I have a day off every week during residency, in that day I should be able to get everything done that needs to be done.
Reading - Extra-curricular reading is not commonplace with me, but I've slowly been amping it up. More developments in this area will occur as I become better at time management, and I will be doing lots of it during my time following my board exams. If I read before I go to bed during residency, I'll feel more sleepy, I'll manage to make it part of my routine, and I think I will have accomplished some higher level of well-roundedness.
Music - I used to play guitar, not well enough to play on a stage, but that has always been a dream of mine. The plan is to re-learn music theory, from scratch, and then re-learn sight reading with guitar by going through this enormous book I bought (Leavitt's Complete Guitar Method 1, 2 and 3). Progress has been made, small steps each day but progress nonetheless. If I can practice guitar for an hour a day during residency, I think I'll be performing for my friends by the end of the first year.
Tomorrow I'm going to wake up strong, and by the end of the day hopefully I'll finish strong, and then I'll say so here. That way, everyone will know that I wasn't just blowing hot air in this post. Hopefully not anyway.
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Saturday, 30 March 2013
Recollections: Ping Pong
Following the suggestion of one of my friends, some of my posts will be reflections on times from my past, since my memory for these things has proven to be better than average.
I started playing ping pong when I was 12, at gym class in the UAE. I was not very athletic as a child, my enthusiasm for tennis and sports in general began when I was around 14, although for tennis it began around 12. So anyway ping pong was the natural go-to sport if I wanted to avoid getting pushed around at soccer or getting yelled at in cricket. Children can be very competitive sometimes, especially when their parents are very strict.
Ping pong did not come naturally to me, very few sports actually ever did, and I received most of my ping-pong related training in the form of humiliating beat-downs that began when I was 14 years old. I met a guy on the street (literally) in Grade 8 summer. He was playing street hockey with the neighbourhood children and I would periodically poke my head out to try and get a game in. We instantly became acquaintances, most alliances made at that age are fragile and fleeting anyway. Him and I ended up in high school together, and I found out he had a ping pong table. Impressed, I was enthusiastic to play him since I had already beaten him at carrom at that point (but he had beaten me at chess, which is disappointing on a whole other level for me). I went to his garage, and found out they played fast and loose with the word "Table" at that house. The ping pong table was two wooden rectangles painted with the official lines, with the corners and edges scraped up from so much sliding, stacking and moving over the years. We ended up mounting the tables on boxes and cement blocks (I think) and we played inside the garage, lengthwise. Since the garage wasn't exactly a greenhouse, there was a "dark" side and a "bright" side, and since my friend was the superior in skill, he would always play on the dark side of the table. Day and night (not really, just day) we would battle for the title of champion of the universe (another gross exaggeration) and I never did manage to win enough points to count as a game, until perhaps much later. Eventually we added a third to our ping pong games, and when two people were playing, the third would press the garage door every 10 minutes so that the garage light would come on. There was no tube light in the garage, just a door-timed light.
Then something interesting happened when I met our fourth. He would find out what we were all into, somehow get interested in it, and buy whatever platform was necessary to facilitate the entertainment. He bought a ping pong table, a Risk 2210 board, a poker set (he's a professional poker coach and player now, so he definitely didn't miss on that hobby) etc, and then we stopped playing garage table tennis in favour of table tennis with him. The problem was that, for the longest time, nobody could beat the guy. This guy practiced on his table at home and managed to hone his technique so well that it was impossible to return his shots most of the time, it was really quite impressive. I'd break into a sweat trying to play him, I can't distinctly remember improving to his level. One thing I did manage to find out about this guy when I played him at ping pong, or anything for that matter, is that he hated (and , to this day, still hates) losing. I beat this guy at bananagrams a year ago and you'd think he just got back from a funeral or something. The guy with the garage table doesn't hate losing, he just tends to play with his head all the time, which is a very useful skill I managed to learn mainly from him. He does whatever he has to in order to win, as long as it's permitted within the rules of the game, regardless of the conventional method involved in playing. He's always looking for an edge, and he's always looking for the best strategy. I guess, retrospectively, there was much more to those ping pong games than just ping pong.
I started playing ping pong when I was 12, at gym class in the UAE. I was not very athletic as a child, my enthusiasm for tennis and sports in general began when I was around 14, although for tennis it began around 12. So anyway ping pong was the natural go-to sport if I wanted to avoid getting pushed around at soccer or getting yelled at in cricket. Children can be very competitive sometimes, especially when their parents are very strict.
Ping pong did not come naturally to me, very few sports actually ever did, and I received most of my ping-pong related training in the form of humiliating beat-downs that began when I was 14 years old. I met a guy on the street (literally) in Grade 8 summer. He was playing street hockey with the neighbourhood children and I would periodically poke my head out to try and get a game in. We instantly became acquaintances, most alliances made at that age are fragile and fleeting anyway. Him and I ended up in high school together, and I found out he had a ping pong table. Impressed, I was enthusiastic to play him since I had already beaten him at carrom at that point (but he had beaten me at chess, which is disappointing on a whole other level for me). I went to his garage, and found out they played fast and loose with the word "Table" at that house. The ping pong table was two wooden rectangles painted with the official lines, with the corners and edges scraped up from so much sliding, stacking and moving over the years. We ended up mounting the tables on boxes and cement blocks (I think) and we played inside the garage, lengthwise. Since the garage wasn't exactly a greenhouse, there was a "dark" side and a "bright" side, and since my friend was the superior in skill, he would always play on the dark side of the table. Day and night (not really, just day) we would battle for the title of champion of the universe (another gross exaggeration) and I never did manage to win enough points to count as a game, until perhaps much later. Eventually we added a third to our ping pong games, and when two people were playing, the third would press the garage door every 10 minutes so that the garage light would come on. There was no tube light in the garage, just a door-timed light.
Then something interesting happened when I met our fourth. He would find out what we were all into, somehow get interested in it, and buy whatever platform was necessary to facilitate the entertainment. He bought a ping pong table, a Risk 2210 board, a poker set (he's a professional poker coach and player now, so he definitely didn't miss on that hobby) etc, and then we stopped playing garage table tennis in favour of table tennis with him. The problem was that, for the longest time, nobody could beat the guy. This guy practiced on his table at home and managed to hone his technique so well that it was impossible to return his shots most of the time, it was really quite impressive. I'd break into a sweat trying to play him, I can't distinctly remember improving to his level. One thing I did manage to find out about this guy when I played him at ping pong, or anything for that matter, is that he hated (and , to this day, still hates) losing. I beat this guy at bananagrams a year ago and you'd think he just got back from a funeral or something. The guy with the garage table doesn't hate losing, he just tends to play with his head all the time, which is a very useful skill I managed to learn mainly from him. He does whatever he has to in order to win, as long as it's permitted within the rules of the game, regardless of the conventional method involved in playing. He's always looking for an edge, and he's always looking for the best strategy. I guess, retrospectively, there was much more to those ping pong games than just ping pong.
Friday, 29 March 2013
From Frank White to Frank Sinatra
Since the age of 14, I have always been interested in rap music. Several times in my life, I would briefly re-evaluate why I kept seeking out and listening to what I now consider (and, back then, still considered) to be some of the most linguistically ignorant music I have ever heard. Sometimes I would cite the energy derived from the beat, other times I would cite my ability to relate (albeit very obtusely) to the lyrics. The latter explanation I would apply (poorly) to the recordings of Notorious BIG, a drug-dealer turned rapper from Brooklyn in New York City. I felt I understood his struggle to do whatever was necessary to make enough money to survive, and to achieve his goals and aspirations regardless of how many people said he would be forever unable to achieve them. Later in my medical career, I discovered the musical styles of a completely different artist; Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra's music was smooth, many of the songs I had heard before in commercials and movies, some of his songs are timeless. When Sinatra was 75 years old, he still managed to draw a full crowd at major concert venues (the same way B.B. King does today). A major difference for me that forced a comparison between these artists from two completely different genres is that I felt unembarrassed to share Sinatra's music with my family, but could not reasonably justify exposing my parents to Notorious BIG. I started to think more about these artists recently, and decided to compare the two of them in order to see to whom I could actually relate more, what made them similar and what made them different.
Christopher Wallace was raised entirely by his mother and he was raised in a housing project in Brooklyn, yet he still attended Catholic school and was at the top of his class for subjects such as English. Sinatra's mother ran an illegal abortion business out of her home, for which she was arrested twice. Sinatra's father (both his parents were italian immigrants, by the way) was a boxer and volunteer fireman. Neither Sinatra nor Wallace graduated high school. Sinatra was expelled for "Rowdy behaviour" in an era when corporal punishment was fair game for schoolteachers. Wallace dropped out of high school to deal crack cocaine. He wasn't in destitute poverty or in need of financial aid for medical bills, he just wanted to sell crack cocaine and make lots of money. He started doing so when he was 12. Sinatra lived through the Great Depression for most of high school. His mother would provide him with money for "expensive clothes" and "outings" but he nonetheless had side jobs as a paper delivery boy and as a shipyard worker.
Both artists cited music as their respective passions in life, but Sinatra began to use his talent at the eight of 8, singing for tips. To add some perspective to this, when Sinatra starting singing for money, the Model T was 15 years old. There was no touch-tone phone, there was barely any government assistance, and there were no photocopiers, fax machines or credit cards. Sinatra began singing professionally when he was 15. At that point, Wallace was arrested on weapons charges in Brooklyn.
I sincerely doubt Wallace would have died had he not made the money he had from guns and drugs, and considering the era in which Sinatra lived, I would be hard-pressed to say Wallace had a more difficult life than him. For what it's worth, both men made leaps and bounds as entertainers and did a lot for their respective genres. Frank Sinatra's music is still very much enjoyed today, and Wallace is considered by many to have been the best rapper that ever lived. I recently realized, though, that if someone were to ask me who I admire more, I'd have to say Sinatra. I can relate more to a man who went after his dream very early on in life (I decided when I was 8 that I wanted to be a doctor) and stuck it out regardless of the problems he faced (Frank's professional singing career essentially began DURING the Great Depression). I started putting together a playlist on a website full of songs recently, and the first songs I went for were blues, clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn .... the next set of songs I went for were from Sinatra's compilation album "Nothing but the Best". I don't have any Biggie on there, and though his music still entertains me on some level despite its profanity, objectification of women, and glorification of crime, it simply doesn't have the same impact it had with me when I first discovered it. It can be argued that I've grown out of it, and into music that was made more than 30 years before I was born.
Addendum: For the one reader from Romania ; Eu Vorbesc Putsin Romanesc, enveutsat de la priete
(I speak a small amount of Romanian, I learned from my friends)
Sinatra's music was smooth, many of the songs I had heard before in commercials and movies, some of his songs are timeless. When Sinatra was 75 years old, he still managed to draw a full crowd at major concert venues (the same way B.B. King does today). A major difference for me that forced a comparison between these artists from two completely different genres is that I felt unembarrassed to share Sinatra's music with my family, but could not reasonably justify exposing my parents to Notorious BIG. I started to think more about these artists recently, and decided to compare the two of them in order to see to whom I could actually relate more, what made them similar and what made them different.
Christopher Wallace was raised entirely by his mother and he was raised in a housing project in Brooklyn, yet he still attended Catholic school and was at the top of his class for subjects such as English. Sinatra's mother ran an illegal abortion business out of her home, for which she was arrested twice. Sinatra's father (both his parents were italian immigrants, by the way) was a boxer and volunteer fireman. Neither Sinatra nor Wallace graduated high school. Sinatra was expelled for "Rowdy behaviour" in an era when corporal punishment was fair game for schoolteachers. Wallace dropped out of high school to deal crack cocaine. He wasn't in destitute poverty or in need of financial aid for medical bills, he just wanted to sell crack cocaine and make lots of money. He started doing so when he was 12. Sinatra lived through the Great Depression for most of high school. His mother would provide him with money for "expensive clothes" and "outings" but he nonetheless had side jobs as a paper delivery boy and as a shipyard worker.
Both artists cited music as their respective passions in life, but Sinatra began to use his talent at the eight of 8, singing for tips. To add some perspective to this, when Sinatra starting singing for money, the Model T was 15 years old. There was no touch-tone phone, there was barely any government assistance, and there were no photocopiers, fax machines or credit cards. Sinatra began singing professionally when he was 15. At that point, Wallace was arrested on weapons charges in Brooklyn.
I sincerely doubt Wallace would have died had he not made the money he had from guns and drugs, and considering the era in which Sinatra lived, I would be hard-pressed to say Wallace had a more difficult life than him. For what it's worth, both men made leaps and bounds as entertainers and did a lot for their respective genres. Frank Sinatra's music is still very much enjoyed today, and Wallace is considered by many to have been the best rapper that ever lived. I recently realized, though, that if someone were to ask me who I admire more, I'd have to say Sinatra. I can relate more to a man who went after his dream very early on in life (I decided when I was 8 that I wanted to be a doctor) and stuck it out regardless of the problems he faced (Frank's professional singing career essentially began DURING the Great Depression). I started putting together a playlist on a website full of songs recently, and the first songs I went for were blues, clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn .... the next set of songs I went for were from Sinatra's compilation album "Nothing but the Best". I don't have any Biggie on there, and though his music still entertains me on some level despite its profanity, objectification of women, and glorification of crime, it simply doesn't have the same impact it had with me when I first discovered it. It can be argued that I've grown out of it, and into music that was made more than 30 years before I was born.
Addendum: For the one reader from Romania ; Eu Vorbesc Putsin Romanesc, enveutsat de la priete
(I speak a small amount of Romanian, I learned from my friends)
Thursday, 28 March 2013
The Competitive Edge
Take the straight A students from grade school and throw them all into undergraduate education at a university. Now take the few percent of those students and give them all acceptance to medical school. Out of the students there who pass the board exams, give the ones with a good personal statement and that little something extra on their resumes some interviews for a residency. How smart will those other people be? The ones that work side by side with me for the next three years ? Now take the ones that do international electives during residency in areas with little supplemental clinical support (i.e. no labs, no hospitals, only doctors for miles and miles and miles) and the percentage of those that are humanitarians? Point them all toward the application process for Doctors Without Borders.
That's the application field against which I will be applying in 5 or so years. Apparently, when someone told me during medical school that MSF was "competitive", I hadn't fully grasped that previous paragraph I just outlined. The paragraph ends abruptly if one doesn't achieve a residency, which is what quite a few of my friends are currently suffering through, people I knew in medical school, people with whom I studied shoulder to shoulder. The competitive nature of medical school and residency is, to me, a microcosm of the current state of employment in the United States and Canada, possibly worldwide. Doctors are in huge demand in Canada and the States because nobody has the facilities to train doctors properly, so barely any of them actually come out of residency and out of those , only a few are willing to practice in the areas in which they are actually needed. Anyway, nowadays the job market is so brutal that everyone is looking for the competitive edge. Parents are sending their kids to French immersion because "he has to be bilingual", and then high schools are letting kids pass because "they have to get to university, they can't get a good job nowadays if they can't make it at least to college or university" and then I heard even universities are trying to soften their policies so that students can get better grades. Softening policies is not going to increase the number of available jobs. Don't get me wrong, I hated my alma mater for weeding people out and making cut-throat students, but it's not like having 20000 people with 90s enter the workplace is going to make things better.
I had to argue pro-con for my first MCAT essay that "the rich have a responsibility to help the poor" and one of the most brutal, cold, heartless and apparently fair stances (99.5th percentile) I have ever taken on anything, I took on that essay. I said the modern global economy is fundamentally based on a clear-cut gap between rich and poor. I basically threw socialism to the wind, completely. And I'm the one who wants to return to Canada to practice. I don't hate socialism, I was just trying to make a grade. Just trying to gain the competitive edge.
I had a really disturbing dream last night, and I was really anxious today so I overate, and now I just realized the overeating is going to predispose me to bad dreams again. I am such an idiot sometimes. Whatever, I'm gonna try and see if 'imagine you can get really big and shoot fire out of your hands' will work this time. That'll teach those giant black human-eating alien locust nymphs. I can't believe I was about to jump off that tower with everyone else to commit suicide and prevent myself from getting eaten. I mean I know it's just a dream, but is that really how I wanted to go out ? That's punkified, next time I'm gonna go with fire hands. Didn't get everything done that I wanted to do today, gotta play catch-up tomorrow again. This time for real though, because I have to take this massive exam in 19 days. And then another one after it. And THEN I'll start being a healthy, sensible, well-balanced human being. Yeah, that'll happen. Probably should start by throwing all the carbs out of the house. My parents probably wouldn't enjoy that.
That's the application field against which I will be applying in 5 or so years. Apparently, when someone told me during medical school that MSF was "competitive", I hadn't fully grasped that previous paragraph I just outlined. The paragraph ends abruptly if one doesn't achieve a residency, which is what quite a few of my friends are currently suffering through, people I knew in medical school, people with whom I studied shoulder to shoulder. The competitive nature of medical school and residency is, to me, a microcosm of the current state of employment in the United States and Canada, possibly worldwide. Doctors are in huge demand in Canada and the States because nobody has the facilities to train doctors properly, so barely any of them actually come out of residency and out of those , only a few are willing to practice in the areas in which they are actually needed. Anyway, nowadays the job market is so brutal that everyone is looking for the competitive edge. Parents are sending their kids to French immersion because "he has to be bilingual", and then high schools are letting kids pass because "they have to get to university, they can't get a good job nowadays if they can't make it at least to college or university" and then I heard even universities are trying to soften their policies so that students can get better grades. Softening policies is not going to increase the number of available jobs. Don't get me wrong, I hated my alma mater for weeding people out and making cut-throat students, but it's not like having 20000 people with 90s enter the workplace is going to make things better.
I had to argue pro-con for my first MCAT essay that "the rich have a responsibility to help the poor" and one of the most brutal, cold, heartless and apparently fair stances (99.5th percentile) I have ever taken on anything, I took on that essay. I said the modern global economy is fundamentally based on a clear-cut gap between rich and poor. I basically threw socialism to the wind, completely. And I'm the one who wants to return to Canada to practice. I don't hate socialism, I was just trying to make a grade. Just trying to gain the competitive edge.
I had a really disturbing dream last night, and I was really anxious today so I overate, and now I just realized the overeating is going to predispose me to bad dreams again. I am such an idiot sometimes. Whatever, I'm gonna try and see if 'imagine you can get really big and shoot fire out of your hands' will work this time. That'll teach those giant black human-eating alien locust nymphs. I can't believe I was about to jump off that tower with everyone else to commit suicide and prevent myself from getting eaten. I mean I know it's just a dream, but is that really how I wanted to go out ? That's punkified, next time I'm gonna go with fire hands. Didn't get everything done that I wanted to do today, gotta play catch-up tomorrow again. This time for real though, because I have to take this massive exam in 19 days. And then another one after it. And THEN I'll start being a healthy, sensible, well-balanced human being. Yeah, that'll happen. Probably should start by throwing all the carbs out of the house. My parents probably wouldn't enjoy that.
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
iPads for toddlers
Okay she wasn't quite a toddler, she had just turned 4. I tutor this 6-year-old (the girl's brother) and his mother at French, and I noticed that, at their house, there's a communal iPad mini that's shared between all members of the family. Were those my children, I would be constantly worried that someone would drop the iPad and break it into a billion pieces on my hardwood floor, but I guess that hasn't happened yet with these kids so it's all good. I almost feel like they understand how valuable the thing is. Another part of me is sure I'm going to walk in one day and the thing's going to be broken.
I was teaching this child French, and found out very early on that he can't read ... at all. He's in a French immersion program, which makes this realization even more confusing for me. I later understood that he doesn't actually take studying seriously, doesn't understand that each day of homework and proper studying and material takes 2-3 hours of time and focus to complete effectively. He's 6, he probably can't even spell "effectively" , but he needs to start understanding the concepts of study and practice.
I tried to make the study process more interesting for him because it otherwise resembles water-boarding. At least those were the sounds coming from him when I would say "Write it out again. Spell it correctly this time." I found a website where, if he doesn't know how to say something, he can just type it into the search engine and a speaker icon will come up that he can click in order to listen to the word in French. Proper pronunciation practice achieved without the use of a continuous tutor, liberating the child to learn independently. He will, however, still need someone to watch over him and make sure he's actually doing his work when he's supposed to be doing his work. For now, at least, he was quite excited to hear the lady or man in the iPad telling him what the correct pronunciations of the words are, so hopefully that will work out for him. His mom's French is a lot better, but her pronunciation needs some refinement. Eventually they'll get to the point where she teaches him, and he teaches himself.
Visiting these people for tutoring is my only excuse for getting out of the house. Tutoring them is a barrel of laughs, lots of fun. It's also extremely rewarding, and in teaching, much is learned.
Other quick things today ; Got almost all my work done, not concerned that I fell a very small bit short of the daily goal, and I went looking around for new phones and found that Android was the best system for me mainly because 1) it allows me to use my phone as a USB and 2) I can manipulate the home screen in any way I wish. Anyone who wants to argue apple or windows is free to do so here, I'd be interested to hear differing viewpoints.
I was teaching this child French, and found out very early on that he can't read ... at all. He's in a French immersion program, which makes this realization even more confusing for me. I later understood that he doesn't actually take studying seriously, doesn't understand that each day of homework and proper studying and material takes 2-3 hours of time and focus to complete effectively. He's 6, he probably can't even spell "effectively" , but he needs to start understanding the concepts of study and practice.
I tried to make the study process more interesting for him because it otherwise resembles water-boarding. At least those were the sounds coming from him when I would say "Write it out again. Spell it correctly this time." I found a website where, if he doesn't know how to say something, he can just type it into the search engine and a speaker icon will come up that he can click in order to listen to the word in French. Proper pronunciation practice achieved without the use of a continuous tutor, liberating the child to learn independently. He will, however, still need someone to watch over him and make sure he's actually doing his work when he's supposed to be doing his work. For now, at least, he was quite excited to hear the lady or man in the iPad telling him what the correct pronunciations of the words are, so hopefully that will work out for him. His mom's French is a lot better, but her pronunciation needs some refinement. Eventually they'll get to the point where she teaches him, and he teaches himself.
Visiting these people for tutoring is my only excuse for getting out of the house. Tutoring them is a barrel of laughs, lots of fun. It's also extremely rewarding, and in teaching, much is learned.
Other quick things today ; Got almost all my work done, not concerned that I fell a very small bit short of the daily goal, and I went looking around for new phones and found that Android was the best system for me mainly because 1) it allows me to use my phone as a USB and 2) I can manipulate the home screen in any way I wish. Anyone who wants to argue apple or windows is free to do so here, I'd be interested to hear differing viewpoints.
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Good guys
My whole life, I've prided myself on being a good guy. I've always tried to be honest, tried to be outgoing, generous, and I've always gone out of my way to help people. I've never cheated on a test, never lied when it really mattered, and I've never intentionally wronged anyone I care about. I never conceal my intentions, I do my best not to hide things from people, and I make it a point never to suck up or talk behind peoples' backs. For a very long time, this approach basically got me nowhere.
Undergraduate studies was where I saw the worst of it. Friends of mine would cheat on tests, copy assignments and hand them in for high percentages, and they would also take classes specifically so that they could cheat and get high grades on them. They got interviews for medical school, pharmacy school, graduate studies, careers that went somewhere and meant something. I hated them for it, and I hated that they had it so great and so easy in life and I had to struggle, even though what they did never really affected me. I trudged through university like the field of bodies it was and etched out my 2.96 GPA, which was good enough for what seemed at the time like the lousiest of Caribbean medical schools. Even there, I was only accepted because I had a solid MCAT score. One thing those people who cheated couldn't cheat on was the MCAT ; I remember one guy who consistently scored 13s on his sciences (impressive, basically) and then scored an 8 or something like that on verbal. I scored an 8 on verbal too, but I brought it up the second time to a 10. Somehow. Don't ask me how.
Then in medical school my luck didn't seem to change. I studied as hard as I could through every course, was a TA, etc etc etc and it lead to board scores that were below or barely near average at best. I thought to myself, how in the world would I get into residency like this? What hope do I have of landing a job when everyone else keeps telling me "They only look at your Step scores" and "if you don't have the grades, you won't get the interview". And then, if I even got an interview during interview season, how were these people supposed to pick me over the other candidates who were American citizens and didn't require visas?
Then something interesting happened. I went on these interviews, and people were actually pleased to meet me. I didn't get into my top 2 choices, but #3 on a list of 5 was still quite good, I believe. I sat back in my chair today and thought to myself, why would they choose me? I have mediocre step scores, and I went to interview just like the other 150 people they met that year. So what made me all that different? Then I realized the last 26 years of being a good guy and having solid character may have actually done me well. Looks like being a good guy, a nice guy, having values, principles, honor and character, may just matter to people after all. Either that or they picked me because I was last on their list and everybody else didn't want to go there. Nah.
Real quick, other things that happened today: I kept up with my reading, I ate a bit better but I'm out of chicken breasts so I'm not sure where that leaves me for the rest of the week, I got back on the bike (which was amazing) and I actually started back on Sarnecki. I'm on page 9, trust me to buy the book that incorporates the Basic, Intermediate AND Advanced books into one book. If I don't learn a new language, I guess I'll at least finish that book. Hopefully, anyway. Oh and it's a secret project, nobody's supposed to know, so keep it on the d/l guys.
Addendum : Apparently there are people in the US already viewing this blog. How this happened I don't know, I don't intend on locking the blog down because it's quite exciting to think that someone may actually find my life interesting enough to come across it, but if you viewed my blog and you plan on coming back here, and I didn't invite you to join, then I DO invite you to comment and let me know who you are, where you're from, and what you think/thought etc. I have views now. Fascinating. The internet never ceases to amaze me.
Undergraduate studies was where I saw the worst of it. Friends of mine would cheat on tests, copy assignments and hand them in for high percentages, and they would also take classes specifically so that they could cheat and get high grades on them. They got interviews for medical school, pharmacy school, graduate studies, careers that went somewhere and meant something. I hated them for it, and I hated that they had it so great and so easy in life and I had to struggle, even though what they did never really affected me. I trudged through university like the field of bodies it was and etched out my 2.96 GPA, which was good enough for what seemed at the time like the lousiest of Caribbean medical schools. Even there, I was only accepted because I had a solid MCAT score. One thing those people who cheated couldn't cheat on was the MCAT ; I remember one guy who consistently scored 13s on his sciences (impressive, basically) and then scored an 8 or something like that on verbal. I scored an 8 on verbal too, but I brought it up the second time to a 10. Somehow. Don't ask me how.
Then in medical school my luck didn't seem to change. I studied as hard as I could through every course, was a TA, etc etc etc and it lead to board scores that were below or barely near average at best. I thought to myself, how in the world would I get into residency like this? What hope do I have of landing a job when everyone else keeps telling me "They only look at your Step scores" and "if you don't have the grades, you won't get the interview". And then, if I even got an interview during interview season, how were these people supposed to pick me over the other candidates who were American citizens and didn't require visas?
Then something interesting happened. I went on these interviews, and people were actually pleased to meet me. I didn't get into my top 2 choices, but #3 on a list of 5 was still quite good, I believe. I sat back in my chair today and thought to myself, why would they choose me? I have mediocre step scores, and I went to interview just like the other 150 people they met that year. So what made me all that different? Then I realized the last 26 years of being a good guy and having solid character may have actually done me well. Looks like being a good guy, a nice guy, having values, principles, honor and character, may just matter to people after all. Either that or they picked me because I was last on their list and everybody else didn't want to go there. Nah.
Real quick, other things that happened today: I kept up with my reading, I ate a bit better but I'm out of chicken breasts so I'm not sure where that leaves me for the rest of the week, I got back on the bike (which was amazing) and I actually started back on Sarnecki. I'm on page 9, trust me to buy the book that incorporates the Basic, Intermediate AND Advanced books into one book. If I don't learn a new language, I guess I'll at least finish that book. Hopefully, anyway. Oh and it's a secret project, nobody's supposed to know, so keep it on the d/l guys.
Addendum : Apparently there are people in the US already viewing this blog. How this happened I don't know, I don't intend on locking the blog down because it's quite exciting to think that someone may actually find my life interesting enough to come across it, but if you viewed my blog and you plan on coming back here, and I didn't invite you to join, then I DO invite you to comment and let me know who you are, where you're from, and what you think/thought etc. I have views now. Fascinating. The internet never ceases to amaze me.
Test/Intro
Hi, I'm Jeremy. I started this blog because I'm becoming more and more pressed for time each day to keep up with my professional duties and still keep in touch with people. I've decided this to, for now, be the most efficient method by which I'd be able to maintain contact with family and close friends. There is, in fact, a short list of less than 10 people who even know this thing exists (aside from the developers of Google I guess) so if you are reading this, then I guess I should congratulate you on mattering to me if in the off-chance you do indeed consider that an achievement in any sense. If it were me, I would not consider it an achievement, but then again I am a bastard. Figuratively.
I enjoy martial arts, Eastern philosophy, and cycling. I also enjoy cooking, scrabble, fitness in general, and then everything else in no particular order. I have aspirations of being able to play guitar, being able to speak multiple languages, and being a doctor, and so far only one of those aspirations has actually been met. I owe a lot to my friends and my family, and I have understood that the best way to repay is to pay forward, so I'm going to try to be nice to people, even when it is sometimes inconvenient for me. I have done this more often in the past and will try to do so less because I don't want to overstretch myself, as I do not currently have superpowers.
I try to be funny, I try to stay humble. More often than not, I just try. The title of the blog was inspired by something I thought to myself and said out loud at some point not too long ago. When I was in medical school, there was this 4-year anxiety over whether or not I would actually land a residency, because the statistics were not amazing. Having said that, I landed a residency not too long ago, and while I have lived the last 8 years feeling substandard, more or less a nobody, I actually feel like I'm somebody now.
I enjoy martial arts, Eastern philosophy, and cycling. I also enjoy cooking, scrabble, fitness in general, and then everything else in no particular order. I have aspirations of being able to play guitar, being able to speak multiple languages, and being a doctor, and so far only one of those aspirations has actually been met. I owe a lot to my friends and my family, and I have understood that the best way to repay is to pay forward, so I'm going to try to be nice to people, even when it is sometimes inconvenient for me. I have done this more often in the past and will try to do so less because I don't want to overstretch myself, as I do not currently have superpowers.
I try to be funny, I try to stay humble. More often than not, I just try. The title of the blog was inspired by something I thought to myself and said out loud at some point not too long ago. When I was in medical school, there was this 4-year anxiety over whether or not I would actually land a residency, because the statistics were not amazing. Having said that, I landed a residency not too long ago, and while I have lived the last 8 years feeling substandard, more or less a nobody, I actually feel like I'm somebody now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)