Sarah Palin - McCain's Running Mate

I was shocked when I got the text this morning from my dad that McCain had chosen a female running mate. My first reaction was, "what was he thinking?!" But when I got home and looked up who this Sarah Palin lady was, I quickly jumped to the other side of the boat. Pain is a strong conservative, which will be great to balance out McCain's moderate stance. She's a woman, which will bring in some of those female voters out there who buy in to the "we need a woman in power" hysteria that Clinton had going for her. As Mike Huckabee said in an interview earlier today, "Governor Palin ... will remind women that if they are not welcome on the Democrat's ticket, they have a place with Republicans." She's also very young (44), which brings the McCain ticket to an average age of 58, while BO's is 56. She has strong morals, with a very strong stance on pro-life, which will appease the Christian right. And even more appealing to me, is the fact that she seems so down to earth, like a normal American mom. Just look at the picture!

My only hesitancy with her is that she is not a big name on the national stage. She just became governor of Alaska two years ago, so the experience is somewhat lacking. But I think McCain more than makes up for that. Also, her youngest child has Downs Syndrome, so with having a special needs child, along with 4 other children, how much time and energy will she truly be able to devote to Washington? But I am not going to hold her family against her. I appreciate the fact that she is not a typical politician that has devoted her whole life to gaining power. She has other priorities. Balance, my friends, is key.

So here we go. I'm now officially excited about the McCain/Palin ticket. McCain put a smashing on BO in the Rick Warren interview, and I think his choice as running mate will be quite a popular choice among the conservatives of this great country. He's on the rise.

I couldn't have said it better

I came across this blog and I believe it perfectly sums up how I feel right now. Overwhelmed, yet guilty about getting behind in the first place. It's my fault I failed my first quiz of medical school, no one elses. (Although when the average is a 60% you know the quiz was a wee bit ridiculous.) Anyways, read and enjoy.

Taken from: http://rumorsweretrue.wordpress.com/2006/11/01/pancakes-every-morning/

Title- Med School Metaphor: Pancakes Every Morning

I have a lot to learn. By Friday, anyway. I have a Pharmacology exam followed by a Pathophysiology exam this coming Monday. Once again, I find myself behind. It’s the funny kind of behind where you look at the stack of notes on your desk (2″ of one, 3″ of the other) and sort of chuckle. “Ha. This is going to be funny.” Cue despair.

Looking at it now, I’m tempted to start the passive bragging of impossible odds. “You have no idea how hard it is,” I’d say. “Medical school is like trying to take a drink from a fire hose,” I’d brag.

And that’s total bullshit.

At the beginning of each course, we’re given a syllabus telling us how we’re going to be graded, the question break-down for each test, and the schedule of lectures each day for the next 4-5 months. Nothing is going to sneak up on you unless you can’t read the print on the page (in which case you’re blind and things sneak up on you all the time).

But it’s sunny outside or snowing outside or Tuesday. Whatever. You’re in medical school to become a doctor, not to be in a classroom (scheduling conflicts here) and you find yourself out on the weekends, maybe catching a movie on the weekday, and so on. You blow off the first week of any course because the material is supposed to be introductory and you certainly blow off the first week after any exam to recuperate. Maybe you take off two weeks if it was especially difficult and draining.

Eventually though, the next exam is closer than the last exam and you have to return to the desk and pretend to be a serious student. The first week back studying, you won’t be as efficient and as familiar with the material as you were leading up to the last test, so there’s some built-in catching up to do. You can’t understand the material taught TODAY because you blew off the introduction, so until you catch up, you keep falling behind. By the time you’re back in your stride the exam is so close you can feel it’s breath on your neck and you still have material to cover on a first pass. Let’s not forget: you haven’t reviewed or committed anything to memory at this point. It’s now that you understand the truth:

Medical school is like trying to eat five pancakes every morning for breakfast.

You know you can do it. A Premed advisory committee endorsed you saying, “He has the stomach for it. He’s committed.” And you prove them all right. Every day you show up with your first-year optimism and your annoying hunger for learning and you clean that plate (just kidding, it’s adorable). But you begin to notice that those pancakes are slowing you down a little each day and the sugar highs and lows are screwing with your sleep. Smart person that you are, you decide to pass on the flapjacks one day. You think to yourself, “Self, I’m going to eat ten pancakes tomorrow so that I don’t have to eat any today.”

But it never stops. Turns out that “self” isn’t the most responsible lender, and before you know it there are 40 pancakes in front of you and your plate needs to be clean by tomorrow. So yeah, at this point it looks impossible. But really, it’s your fault.

In the future, as I like to imagine it, I’ll be in charge of all medical school admissions. The process will be six weeks long and will consist of nothing more than showing up each morning to eat five pancakes, at which point you can then go about whatever you were going to do that day. At the end of the five weeks a few jaded, newly diabetic hopefuls will come to my office and, mixed with both pride and resignation say, “I did it. I finished those goddamn pancakes.”

“Wow,” I’ll say. “That’s very impressive. You must be very proud, and your parents must be very proud. Just one more thing.” They’ll reflexively clutch their stomachs, shifting their girth from one hip onto the next and groan, “What’s that?”

“Regurgitate it.”

Truth Hurts

I am not cut out for med school.

First Publication

I got an email earlier this month from a company in Seattle, Schmap, that wanted to use one of my pictures that I took this past spring break in their next publication. They found my picture on Flickr and nominated it for one of the pictures to be used in their "University of Washington" section and it ended up being selected! Whoop! Here is the link to the picture I took, and here is the link for the magazine it was used in. I am kinda shocked they selected it because it was a cloudy day so the sky isn't anything to look at, and it was one week before the cherry blossoms bloomed, which is what UDub's campus is famous for in the spring. And for all of those who know Alex Lee, that is her sitting on the bench for me posing. So you got your first modeling gig, Alex. :)

It's not National Geographic, but I'll take it.

Mid-day affliction

Problem: I am completely worthless between 12 and 2:30pm every day. No exceptions. No matter how much caffeine I consume in attempts to keep myself focused on my studies, I somehow always find myself waking up from a quick snooze. And then I just give up and watch the olympics for a bit, before my conscience kicks in and I feel horrible for wasting my time. You would think topics such as gastrulation and neurulation, or sympathetic pathways of the ANS would keep me interested, but that has yet to be the case. If it weren't for Coldplay, I wouldn't be able to focus between 3-6pm. Praise Jehovah for Chris Martin.

Solution: A mandatory nap/rest time needs to be instituted between 1-3pm every day. China has been doing this for years. Schools and workplaces shut down in the early afternoon so that people can go home to relax and rejuvenate. It is obviously working for them. 43 gold metals. Enough said.

And it starts...

I arose bright and early this morning to the stress of knowing I wasn't even prepared for my first day of medical school. The professor had sent out an email a few days ago advising the class to read 30 pages of the anatomy book and then glance over the lecture notes. I had forgotten to do both until late that night so I decided to just get up early and do it in the morning. Although, after the extreme increase of adrenaline that was screaming throughout my body after watching Phelps et al win the relay last night, I probably should have just stayed up and done it then. Nonetheless, I awoke before dawn and accomplished everything asked of me, including taking the obligatory First Day of School picture in my brand new scrubs.

Simply put, class was a bore. I printed out my notes in color so I didn't even get to color along, which is why I was looking forward to anatomy so much. But after suffering through 2 hours of the lecture on the back muscles and vertebrae, we were led to the anatomy lab and set up shop around our cadaver. When we got there all the bodies were covered in coffin-like apparatus so we had no idea what our bodies looked like. Male of female? Black, white, brown, or yellow? Fat or skinny? Young or old? The anticipation was unbelievable. The combination of excitement with nerves, the smell of wintergreen formaldehyde pervading through the cadavers, and the 116 people crammed into a lab was almost as exhilarating as the opening ceremonies in Beijing this past Friday night. Almost.

When they told us to open up our dissection tables, I wasn't prepared to see my guy laying there face up. I had assumed they would have already flipped him over since we were dissecting the back today, but no, we got to do that ourselves. The skin was extremely hard, like rubber. I volunteered to be the first person to grab the scalpel and go at it (once the teacher had come to our table and explained what we were supposed to do). You had to put some strength in it to cut through all the skin and fat. Our guy* had a few extra pounds to spare, so cutting through his lower back and shoulder/neck area was particularly difficult because the excess amount of superficial fascia. FYI, fat is disgusting. No more McDonalds.

The two hours we were in there flew by. I had not really been looking forward to lab because I didn't know how well I would handle cutting open a dead body, but I quickly got into it and had a blast working with my lab partners. Getting to actually touch and hold the lattisimus dorsi, trapezius, deltoid, all these muscles that I had worked on toning so vigorously in the gym the past 5 years on my life, was amazing.

So let the studying commence. This is the beginning of a long 4 years.

*We haven't named our cadaver yet. Many names are up for debate. He has to have a distinguished name because he was kind enough to donate his body to science. So far Winston, Albert, and Carl have been thrown out there. We're going to give him a full name (first, middle, and last) and we've already knighted him as a "sir". Let me know of any good prestigious sounding names that you can think of.

The New Pad

Location, location, location. That's what my new apartment is screaming, besides ghetto, ghetto, ghetto. I just moved in to my new pad this past weekend, thanks to the much needed and appreciated help by my family. I am a 90 second walk to my classroom building, a 3 minute walk to my mom's and dad's clinics, and a 7 minute walk to my gross/histo labs in the main hospital. I can literally role out of bed in the mornings and not have to struggle with traffic, parking, shuttling, etc. Whoop!

While the location is superb, the area of town is not stellar. There is a constant flux of homeless people walking up and down the streets, searching through our dumpsters, and whistling at me. I don't exactly feel safe, but hopefully I will get used to it. There are 5 med students living in the same complex I am, so we will probably walk together at nights.

The good news is that my apartment is very clean - new carpet, new tile, newly painted walls, new toilet seat, and supposedly, soon to be installed, new doors. Yet, somehow, the apartment still reeks of smoke. I thought it would go away after leaving the windows/doors open all day on Saturday as we were moving and then putting in some plug-ins. But all my effort has been in vain. I get hit in the face with the stench of smoke every time I walk in to my apartment, and my clothes are starting to smell like it too. This is a crisis like none other. Something must be done to change it immediately. Also, I don't have a dishwasher or a washer/dryer. And I have a wall AC unit. I totally feel like I'm roughing it, but I will survive! :)

Thus far, living solo has been an enjoyable experience. I loved getting to come up with the decorating themes and organizing the furniture as I like. Pictures will come later once everything in my apartment is organized and pictures are hung, but my living room/dining area is a Texas theme (as in the state, not the university, with multiple A&M things), and my bedroom is a Greek Isle theme, mostly blue and white with bright pinks and yellows to accent it. It's my little Mediterranean oasis.

Well I'm off to grab some pad thai with my mom for lunch. I think I am going to get used to this being close to home thing!