Bamboo shoved under my fingernails. Pungee sticks. Being caned. Having that dream where you get to school and then realize you're naked actually happen. Chinese water torture.
Above is a list of things I prefer to Christmas Shopping. First of all, I abhor crowds. Nature abhors a vacuum- as far as people are concerned, I LOVE a vacuum. The only thing worse than being in a huge crowd of people is being in a huge crowd of shopping people. So let's discuss shoppers.
They are inconsiderate. If you've ever seen the movie The Deer Hunter, where Christopher Walken's character becomes something less than human by being forced to participate in a game of Russian roulette, you might know what I'm talking about. You take a normal human being and put them in a mall where they may or may not find what they want, and they instantly devolve to something primal and horrifying.
If the troglodytic nature of Christmas shoppers were the only problem, however, it wouldn't be a big deal to go Christmas shopping. A little bit of faith and a whole lot of self-affirmation goes a long way toward helping one survive a Friday afternoon at the mall in December. The real problem is that not only are these people crazed, beastly shoppers during the Holidays- most of them are "mall-people" year round anyhow. Mall-people are the bane of my existence, the fly in my ointment, the Serpent in my Eden. It's become vogue to talk about how commercial Christmas has become, but does anyone really feel that strongly about it? I don't think so. Most of those people you hear chatting about the evils of commercialism around the water cooler in December spend hours every week the rest of the year at the mall happily plugging quarters into the machine.
Don't misunderstand me here. I do buy Christmas presents, because that's what's expected. Maybe I'm a hypocrite. I spend lots of time every Fall/Winter cruising the stores looking for just the right present for every one on my list. I do it with chills running down my spine and sweat forming on my brow. The sweat comes from nervousness about impressing people because I got just the right thing. The chills come from being forced to sweat about it. Is this the prize of our brutally fought for free-market economy? The ability to spend money has replaced the instinct to show real human sentiment?
Friday, December 7, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Med School: The Ultimate Roundhouse Kick to the Head
So it's been a while since I've posted anything, but I've been stressing, fretting, sweating, and having nightmares about medical school admissions for the last several weeks. I interviewed at three different medical schools in October: Brown University, Case Western University, and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. I've been put on the waiting list at Brown and Case; I got accepted at the MD-PhD program at UTMB but turned it down because I'm not sure the MD-PhD is really the direction I want to go.
Do you have any idea how stressful it is to turn down a GREAT career opportunity because you feel like something that's a better fit might come down the line? I feel sometimes like I might have made the biggest mistake of my life. Of course I'll only feel that way until I get accepted somewhere else...oh yeah of little faith, right? Well, I don't exactly feel super confident after being wait-listed at two places (it's really just a nice way of saying no, right? Like saying "no thanks" instead of "aw hell no"). Plus, no other schools have even pretended to be interested. I'd really like to go to Colorado, but talking to them, they make you feel like they couldn't care less. I scored a 37Q on the MCAT! I've got a 3.84 GPA! I've done a lot of research! I'm a good person!!! What's wrong with me that I can't get in while morons all around me are getting accepted elsewhere?
I promise this will be my only rant about medical schools. Unless someone else interviews me and wait-lists me, then the floodgates may really open; nay, the dams will burst and I won't be able to hold my tongue. There's got to be a better way to do this.
On a lighter note, I'm trying to learn to fly fish. Fly fishing seems like a truly masculine art to me, one in which bearded Herculean giants can participate and not feel at all ashamed like they might as ballerinos. I've always enjoyed the arts, and I've always enjoyed the outdoors- fly fishing is the perfect marriage of those two passions. While I'm no Picasso out there on the water yet, in fact I've only been once, I hope to reach the point where I can feel the artistry in the way the rod sways and the line dances. Or at least, I hope to someday be good enough that others on the river will say, "You know, fly fishing seems like a truly masculine art to me." I wonder if Da Vinci's goal with a painting was every simply to inspire others to want to paint. How altruistic of me.
Do you have any idea how stressful it is to turn down a GREAT career opportunity because you feel like something that's a better fit might come down the line? I feel sometimes like I might have made the biggest mistake of my life. Of course I'll only feel that way until I get accepted somewhere else...oh yeah of little faith, right? Well, I don't exactly feel super confident after being wait-listed at two places (it's really just a nice way of saying no, right? Like saying "no thanks" instead of "aw hell no"). Plus, no other schools have even pretended to be interested. I'd really like to go to Colorado, but talking to them, they make you feel like they couldn't care less. I scored a 37Q on the MCAT! I've got a 3.84 GPA! I've done a lot of research! I'm a good person!!! What's wrong with me that I can't get in while morons all around me are getting accepted elsewhere?
I promise this will be my only rant about medical schools. Unless someone else interviews me and wait-lists me, then the floodgates may really open; nay, the dams will burst and I won't be able to hold my tongue. There's got to be a better way to do this.
On a lighter note, I'm trying to learn to fly fish. Fly fishing seems like a truly masculine art to me, one in which bearded Herculean giants can participate and not feel at all ashamed like they might as ballerinos. I've always enjoyed the arts, and I've always enjoyed the outdoors- fly fishing is the perfect marriage of those two passions. While I'm no Picasso out there on the water yet, in fact I've only been once, I hope to reach the point where I can feel the artistry in the way the rod sways and the line dances. Or at least, I hope to someday be good enough that others on the river will say, "You know, fly fishing seems like a truly masculine art to me." I wonder if Da Vinci's goal with a painting was every simply to inspire others to want to paint. How altruistic of me.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Health Care- The Festering Cancer Sucking the Life out of America
Who likes having tons of money taken out of their paychecks each month so that some insurance executives can buy a 60-foot yacht for each coastal state? Sometimes it feels like we ought to just line up on payday to give a quarter of our paycheck to some bloated greasy executive in a $2000 suit, who can then quickly dispatch us with a swift kick to our collective hind-sides. Now that's medical care, right?
Please don't misunderstand me. By no means am I positing that social medicine is the way to go. I lived in Germany for two years and I saw what happens under social medicine. No where else have I ever seen as many people with preventable developmental limb defects, chronic diseases that could have been treatable had they been caught early enough, and general bad attitudes (okay, this isn't a medical condition and is probably a product of the fact that I was there as a missionary, preaching religion and faith to the heathen). Mind you all these problems were in Germany, which, as far as quality of care in social medicine goes, is probably near the top of the list.
So what can we do with the throbbing pus-ball that is American health care without resorting to an even worse system? Do we have to sacrifice quality of care for the sake of cost?
Here's an idea: change health care (insurance) from a business to a service - like it should be. Capitalism is great, but it has figured out a lot of ways of screwing the American populace; health care is a prime example of this. Taking the business out of health care would mean our health care executives would have to find some other way to swindle the American public- is the oil industry hiring?
So here's how we can do it. As it is right now, we pay tens of thousands of dollars so that we're "covered" in case of an accident. When that accident happens (or disease, or child-birth, or whatever the medical necessity happens to be), how hard do we have to fight to get just a little bit of that money back? Why not set up personal savings-type accounts that we pay into each month, and when we need that money...VOILA! You've got it saved away. Think about it, if you saved $200 a month (pretty cheap compared to modern health insurance), you could save $24000 in ten years to be put toward medical expenses, and that's without the interest you would accrue in the meantime. With all that money going into the economy instead of the insurance executives' pockets, this kind of plan might actually help the economy, instead of putting a drain on it.
I should make the disclaimer that this is not an original idea on my part; I've heard similar ideas many times, most recently from my friend Marissa. However, I think this would be a great way to "fix" health care. Now obviously it wouldn't solve all of our problems- nothing will. However, by taking the greedy corporations out of the picture, we can cut out a lot of the fat and end up with a trim, healthy way of providing good quality health care to a greater number of people at a lower cost. That's me just saving the future of America one problem at a time.
Please don't misunderstand me. By no means am I positing that social medicine is the way to go. I lived in Germany for two years and I saw what happens under social medicine. No where else have I ever seen as many people with preventable developmental limb defects, chronic diseases that could have been treatable had they been caught early enough, and general bad attitudes (okay, this isn't a medical condition and is probably a product of the fact that I was there as a missionary, preaching religion and faith to the heathen). Mind you all these problems were in Germany, which, as far as quality of care in social medicine goes, is probably near the top of the list.
So what can we do with the throbbing pus-ball that is American health care without resorting to an even worse system? Do we have to sacrifice quality of care for the sake of cost?
Here's an idea: change health care (insurance) from a business to a service - like it should be. Capitalism is great, but it has figured out a lot of ways of screwing the American populace; health care is a prime example of this. Taking the business out of health care would mean our health care executives would have to find some other way to swindle the American public- is the oil industry hiring?
So here's how we can do it. As it is right now, we pay tens of thousands of dollars so that we're "covered" in case of an accident. When that accident happens (or disease, or child-birth, or whatever the medical necessity happens to be), how hard do we have to fight to get just a little bit of that money back? Why not set up personal savings-type accounts that we pay into each month, and when we need that money...VOILA! You've got it saved away. Think about it, if you saved $200 a month (pretty cheap compared to modern health insurance), you could save $24000 in ten years to be put toward medical expenses, and that's without the interest you would accrue in the meantime. With all that money going into the economy instead of the insurance executives' pockets, this kind of plan might actually help the economy, instead of putting a drain on it.
I should make the disclaimer that this is not an original idea on my part; I've heard similar ideas many times, most recently from my friend Marissa. However, I think this would be a great way to "fix" health care. Now obviously it wouldn't solve all of our problems- nothing will. However, by taking the greedy corporations out of the picture, we can cut out a lot of the fat and end up with a trim, healthy way of providing good quality health care to a greater number of people at a lower cost. That's me just saving the future of America one problem at a time.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Taxes, Taxes, we all love Taxes
I was discussing politics with a good friend the other day and he made a suggestion that sounded reasonable at the time, and has since grown on me quite a bit. He suggested that we, as a country, abolish income taxes and raise sales taxes appropriately to cover for the loss. My friend suggested this because it would prevent illegal immigrants and devious employees from avoiding taxes by being paid under the table. I believe that illegal immigration is wrong, and that the rights of citizenship are reserved for those who have gone through the legal processes to deserve them by becoming a nationalized citizen. Even more fundamentally, I believe in the law, and I beleive that those who willfully break the law exclude themselves from the protections it can provide. But I digress...
I like the idea of raising sales taxes (while getting rid of income taxes) because it would probably incite a lot of people to spend their money less frivolously and would promote a degree of self-dependence. Some people would become more industrious, e.g. planting gardens instead of buying all their vegetables at Albertson's.
I realize, however, that there are all kinds of economic issues that would have to be worked out, as well as regulation issues regarding the ability of the government to change taxes on a whim. I am not an economist, nor do I claim that this possibility would solve all of our country's economic woes. However, I think its an idea worth kicking around. I also realize that we're living in an era where sweeping changes such as this simply don't happen, especially in the "corporatocracy" that controls the government. But it can't hurt to think and to suggest, right?
I like the idea of raising sales taxes (while getting rid of income taxes) because it would probably incite a lot of people to spend their money less frivolously and would promote a degree of self-dependence. Some people would become more industrious, e.g. planting gardens instead of buying all their vegetables at Albertson's.
I realize, however, that there are all kinds of economic issues that would have to be worked out, as well as regulation issues regarding the ability of the government to change taxes on a whim. I am not an economist, nor do I claim that this possibility would solve all of our country's economic woes. However, I think its an idea worth kicking around. I also realize that we're living in an era where sweeping changes such as this simply don't happen, especially in the "corporatocracy" that controls the government. But it can't hurt to think and to suggest, right?
Thursday, September 20, 2007
AIDS Benefit
So this is an idea I've been kicking around for months, and never really had the guts to do anything about until recently. I told my idea to a friend, Stephanie, who, like me is a Microbiology student and, unlike me, is a natural-born organizer- she's got incredible organizational/planning skills. She was excited about the idea, and we want to try to make it happen.
We want to organize an AIDS-benefit art auction, where we'll auction off original pieces of art from BYU art students. Each piece of art should be a reaction to, or product of, the AIDS pandemic that has been sweeping the world for the last half century. We want to host the auction at a black-tie dinner event for BYU alumni. The proceeds from the art auction will go entirely to an AIDS charity foundation conducting research into finding effective treatments/cures for HIV/AIDS. The event is going to take a lot of work and a lot of time, but we both feel passionately about the topic. AIDS is a terrible disease afflicting millions of people worldwide, and as scientists/students of Microbiology, we've seen that charitable donations like the one this event could produce are essential for funding the research that is ultimately going to find an effective way of stopping the AIDS pandemic. The disease has killed an estimated 25 million people since being recognized as a disease in 1981; it's time to stop it.
We want to organize an AIDS-benefit art auction, where we'll auction off original pieces of art from BYU art students. Each piece of art should be a reaction to, or product of, the AIDS pandemic that has been sweeping the world for the last half century. We want to host the auction at a black-tie dinner event for BYU alumni. The proceeds from the art auction will go entirely to an AIDS charity foundation conducting research into finding effective treatments/cures for HIV/AIDS. The event is going to take a lot of work and a lot of time, but we both feel passionately about the topic. AIDS is a terrible disease afflicting millions of people worldwide, and as scientists/students of Microbiology, we've seen that charitable donations like the one this event could produce are essential for funding the research that is ultimately going to find an effective way of stopping the AIDS pandemic. The disease has killed an estimated 25 million people since being recognized as a disease in 1981; it's time to stop it.
"Confessions of an Economic Hitman"
I'm reading a book right now titled "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" which revolves around the strategy employed by the US government, whereby developing countries are swindled into racking up millions and billions of dollars of debt to American corporations. Because they are so indebted to what the author calls the "corporatocracy", they are unable to provide aide to their own people and are forced to bend to the "American" will. The author of this book spent many years convincing foreign governments to invest "in their country" by contracting development projects (energy production, etc.) to American corporations; the money for these projects was loaned to them by the World Bank and other international lending agencies. Using this strategy, the US has formed a world empire of smaller countries that are so irreconcilably in our debt they have no choice but to bend to "our" will.
The book has opened my eyes and is beginning to make me painfully aware of the blindness of the American public to the actions of our elected leaders, our business heroes, and our industry moguls. After a lot of political discussion with friends recently, my faith in the two-party system of government is seriously wavering. In the coming months I'll use this blog to publish some of my ideas, for the sake of getting them out there. Most of them are not original ideas- they're stolen from people of every walk of life. And I realize that no one reads my blog, so I'll be doing it entirely for my own sake, but so be it. I would love some discussion from those who happen to stumble onto this blog and the friends who happen to read it.
The book has opened my eyes and is beginning to make me painfully aware of the blindness of the American public to the actions of our elected leaders, our business heroes, and our industry moguls. After a lot of political discussion with friends recently, my faith in the two-party system of government is seriously wavering. In the coming months I'll use this blog to publish some of my ideas, for the sake of getting them out there. Most of them are not original ideas- they're stolen from people of every walk of life. And I realize that no one reads my blog, so I'll be doing it entirely for my own sake, but so be it. I would love some discussion from those who happen to stumble onto this blog and the friends who happen to read it.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Med School Interviews
Well, the months of working and forking out piles of cash are finally paying off. At the end of October, I'm going to be interviewing at 3 different medical schools in 8 days. First of all, I'll be heading off to Providence, Rhode Island for an interview at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. From what I've heard, Providence and Brown are absolutely awesome, so I'm excited to go see the area and ask some more questions about the school. Jimmy, a friend of mine, really wants to go to Brown for Grad school, so he's been pretty jealous.
Just a couple days after returning from Rhode Island, I'll be flying out to Cleveland to interview at Case Western Reserve University. Luckily, I've got an old lab friend whose in med school there, so he's gonna let me crash on his couch for a couple nights while I'm there.
I come home from Cleveland just in time to turn around and fly back out to Galveston, Texas, where I'm interviewing for a spot in the MD-PhD program. Most people think I'm crazy for wanting to turn 4 years of professional school into 7, but I'd really like to research emerging infectious diseases in the BSL-4 lab being built down there.
My medical interests include neurosurgery, infectious disease, and otolaryngology. If I get accepted to the MD-PhD route, I'll be locking myself in on a microbiology/immunology PhD, so that would mean I'll end up working in the field of infectious disease. Be that the case, I'd like to work for the CDC as a physician on an epidemic response team, flying out to remote parts of Africa to respond to Ebola outbreaks, or helping the federal government respond to future bioterror events.
Just a couple days after returning from Rhode Island, I'll be flying out to Cleveland to interview at Case Western Reserve University. Luckily, I've got an old lab friend whose in med school there, so he's gonna let me crash on his couch for a couple nights while I'm there.
I come home from Cleveland just in time to turn around and fly back out to Galveston, Texas, where I'm interviewing for a spot in the MD-PhD program. Most people think I'm crazy for wanting to turn 4 years of professional school into 7, but I'd really like to research emerging infectious diseases in the BSL-4 lab being built down there.
My medical interests include neurosurgery, infectious disease, and otolaryngology. If I get accepted to the MD-PhD route, I'll be locking myself in on a microbiology/immunology PhD, so that would mean I'll end up working in the field of infectious disease. Be that the case, I'd like to work for the CDC as a physician on an epidemic response team, flying out to remote parts of Africa to respond to Ebola outbreaks, or helping the federal government respond to future bioterror events.
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