I realized the last time I posted anything on here was over a month ago and I realized the blogging gods would not be happy at me for my poor showing at appeasing them. That and my wife makes fun of me because she posts about 300 blogs for each 1 that I do. I honestly don't feel too bad about it though...especially since all I really have to write about is school.
While I'm on the subject, med school is going pretty well so far. I always heard people use the analogy that med school is like putting you mouth over the end of a fire hose and throwing that switch (lever? wrench?). Now I haven't decided if that would blow out your cheeks, rip open your insides, or make your head explode, but I'm starting to feel like I'm getting close to really understanding what the analogy means (sorry for the graphic images by the way, I spend lots of time around cadavers and looking at pictures of terrible diseases - what do you expect). Med school is great in that you don't have to go into too much detail most of the time - it's just that you cover about a year and a half worth of undergrad material every 10 weeks or so. Exhibit A - we're in the middle of our second block; in this block we are expected to learn genetics, embryology, reproductive biology, developmental biology, endocrinology, pelvic anatomy, reproductive histology, and all the correlating pathology. Oh, and don't forget our basic clinical and interviewing skills. All in 11 weeks.
But I don't want to be a med school whiner (there are plenty of those, trust me), so I'll just sum it up thus: med school is busy.
As a side note, I was fascinated with following hurricane Ike and my heart went out to everyone who was displaced from their home and lost so much. I was particularly keyed in because the other med school I was accepted at was in Galveston. Seeing the pictures, I recognized some of the places in town from when I went to interview. While I felt terrible for the destruction in Galveston and throughout Texas, it made me extremely grateful that the Lord directed us not to go there.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Four weeks down...
So, four weeks of medical school down and I'm thinking, "Hey, I can do this, no sweat!" So I've decided maybe I'll tack on a Masters degree in Anatomy for good measure. We'll see. Classes haven't really started in earnest just yet, so we'll see in a few weeks once they do.
Right now we're doing a lot of the "softer" sciences- we've been studying public health, health disparities, epidemiology, biostatistics, ethics...that kind of stuff. I'll admit it, I can't friggin wait to start the real sciences. I can't do this soft science stuff...it's just not in my genetic make-up to give a hoot about epidemiology. I've got a mutation in my "cares about medical ethics" allele. Once, we did something pretty cool, when we talked about epigenetics as the mediator of environmental influences on health outcomes. The rest has all been hogwash.
I have found a special place deep in the frothy, bile-encrusted, black core of my gut for biostatistics. It's a very short list of things that rank lower on my "how I oughta spend my free time" list. Violent vomiting comes to mind. I'll get back to you with the rest.
On a positive note, we absolutely love Cleveland. Yeah, yeah, the humidity sucks, and no, no, we're not gonna stay here forever, but the city is gorgeous and the people are (sorta) friendly. We couldn't ask for a nicer apartment or street to live on, we've got some great friends (DJ and Jen, that's you, if you ever read this), and Laura seems to like her new job. So while we left our hearts in Denver (be sure to wear a flower in your hair), Cleveland will do as a surrogate of sorts. I'll post some pictures on here shortly.
Right now we're doing a lot of the "softer" sciences- we've been studying public health, health disparities, epidemiology, biostatistics, ethics...that kind of stuff. I'll admit it, I can't friggin wait to start the real sciences. I can't do this soft science stuff...it's just not in my genetic make-up to give a hoot about epidemiology. I've got a mutation in my "cares about medical ethics" allele. Once, we did something pretty cool, when we talked about epigenetics as the mediator of environmental influences on health outcomes. The rest has all been hogwash.
I have found a special place deep in the frothy, bile-encrusted, black core of my gut for biostatistics. It's a very short list of things that rank lower on my "how I oughta spend my free time" list. Violent vomiting comes to mind. I'll get back to you with the rest.
On a positive note, we absolutely love Cleveland. Yeah, yeah, the humidity sucks, and no, no, we're not gonna stay here forever, but the city is gorgeous and the people are (sorta) friendly. We couldn't ask for a nicer apartment or street to live on, we've got some great friends (DJ and Jen, that's you, if you ever read this), and Laura seems to like her new job. So while we left our hearts in Denver (be sure to wear a flower in your hair), Cleveland will do as a surrogate of sorts. I'll post some pictures on here shortly.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Best laid plans...
Well, for those of you who don't know us that well, or haven't talked to me in the last several months, the biggest news recently is that I did get accepted to Medical School at Case Western Reserve University. They say repetition is the key to learning...I wonder how many times I'll have to learn the lesson about submitting to God's plan before I finally get it.
Prior to actually being accepted, I was starting to feel pretty bitter about the whole process. All along, I'd seen myself as a shoe-in; eventually the confidence went to my head, I guess, and I got pretty arrogant about myself. I felt like all of these schools had made a huge mistake by not accepting me, and I started to search for ways in which the system of application and admissions was unalterably flawed because, hey, this was ME we were talking about. What I failed to remember was that God always has a plan for us, and while things may not happen on the timeline we want them to, we've been promised that they will always happen in the way that's best for us.
About this time that I was stewing in my own bitterness about not getting in, I finally resigned myself to my fate as a victim of a flawed system and was about ready to give up on the whole thing. Then, after I got out of the shower one morning, I had a voicemail from the Director of Admissions at CWRU. I called back and got the good news...I'd been accepted off of the waiting list, and was I interested in taking a spot in their matriculating class. You bet!
Just what the Lord had done for me started then to come into focus, and that focus is still being sharpened even as I begin classes. You see, CWRU had been at the bottom of my list as far as schools I wanted to go to. I was on three waiting lists: Colorado is my home school, Brown is in a gorgeous city, so why would I want to move to Cleveland, OH for some school almost no one has heard of?
Now that I'm here, I realize just what a blessing it was to be accepted here and not at one of the other schools. First of all, despite the fact that not many have heard of it, CWRU is actually a phenomenal medical school: #23 in the country according to U.S. News and World Report, and #12 according to the NIH. Second, the quality of the medical facilities associated with the school means that students here get a first-rate clinical education. Third, the curriculum is the best I've ever heard of and is exactly tailored to my particular learning style. Finally, despite what I thought previously, Cleveland is a phenomenal city and we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We've got some great friends here, and we couldn't be happier.
Hindsight is 20/20. As I come to understand why I'm here and not in Colorado or Rhode Island, it's becoming clear to me why I had to go the round-about way to getting in to medical school. My bitterness at not getting accepted right away led me to arrogance about myself as a candidate. At the point that I was ready to give up on medical school, I was starting to see through my bloated, over-wrought self to recognize my own weaknesses. I'll spare you the boring details, but the Lord needed me to be humble so that I could understand His plan in bringing me to CWRU.
I'm grateful for repetition.
Prior to actually being accepted, I was starting to feel pretty bitter about the whole process. All along, I'd seen myself as a shoe-in; eventually the confidence went to my head, I guess, and I got pretty arrogant about myself. I felt like all of these schools had made a huge mistake by not accepting me, and I started to search for ways in which the system of application and admissions was unalterably flawed because, hey, this was ME we were talking about. What I failed to remember was that God always has a plan for us, and while things may not happen on the timeline we want them to, we've been promised that they will always happen in the way that's best for us.
About this time that I was stewing in my own bitterness about not getting in, I finally resigned myself to my fate as a victim of a flawed system and was about ready to give up on the whole thing. Then, after I got out of the shower one morning, I had a voicemail from the Director of Admissions at CWRU. I called back and got the good news...I'd been accepted off of the waiting list, and was I interested in taking a spot in their matriculating class. You bet!
Just what the Lord had done for me started then to come into focus, and that focus is still being sharpened even as I begin classes. You see, CWRU had been at the bottom of my list as far as schools I wanted to go to. I was on three waiting lists: Colorado is my home school, Brown is in a gorgeous city, so why would I want to move to Cleveland, OH for some school almost no one has heard of?
Now that I'm here, I realize just what a blessing it was to be accepted here and not at one of the other schools. First of all, despite the fact that not many have heard of it, CWRU is actually a phenomenal medical school: #23 in the country according to U.S. News and World Report, and #12 according to the NIH. Second, the quality of the medical facilities associated with the school means that students here get a first-rate clinical education. Third, the curriculum is the best I've ever heard of and is exactly tailored to my particular learning style. Finally, despite what I thought previously, Cleveland is a phenomenal city and we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We've got some great friends here, and we couldn't be happier.
Hindsight is 20/20. As I come to understand why I'm here and not in Colorado or Rhode Island, it's becoming clear to me why I had to go the round-about way to getting in to medical school. My bitterness at not getting accepted right away led me to arrogance about myself as a candidate. At the point that I was ready to give up on medical school, I was starting to see through my bloated, over-wrought self to recognize my own weaknesses. I'll spare you the boring details, but the Lord needed me to be humble so that I could understand His plan in bringing me to CWRU.
I'm grateful for repetition.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Dreams...Weird, huh?
Last Saturday I woke up panicked about an assignment I had missed turning in to my Comparative Lit. teacher because I had skipped the class on Friday. I've missed a few smaller assignments in the class because I'm close enough to graduation that I really don't care what grade I get as long as I pass, but I began to hyperventilate and a cold sweat trickled down my spine because this was a fairly weighty assignment. My mind started to race through ways to beg forgiveness from the professor so that I could turn in the assignment late - and then I remembered I actually had gone to class and had turned in the assignment. I had dreamed up the whole scenario.
This class is one I've skipped fairly often recently. Was my brain just expressing some latent guilt at having skipped so often?
I remember discussing dreams in my high school psychology class, and the theory was posited that as we go through life, our brain creates different memory records of our life: one based on reality, that is, what we actually experience through our senses, and numerous other records based on the subconscious imaginings created without our cognizance and which may be, to some extent, founded in or based loosely on reality. Further, it was said that dreams may be our brain's means of dismissing the alternate records as fictitious; as we play back through those scenarios in our sleep, our brain recognizes them as fake and forgets them - which may also explain why it is so difficult to remember dreams once you've been awake for a while.
So if our dreams are replays of alternate realities created subconsciously throughout our lives, how much can you tell about a person by his/her dreams?
"A man is what he thinks about all day long" - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Really?
This class is one I've skipped fairly often recently. Was my brain just expressing some latent guilt at having skipped so often?
I remember discussing dreams in my high school psychology class, and the theory was posited that as we go through life, our brain creates different memory records of our life: one based on reality, that is, what we actually experience through our senses, and numerous other records based on the subconscious imaginings created without our cognizance and which may be, to some extent, founded in or based loosely on reality. Further, it was said that dreams may be our brain's means of dismissing the alternate records as fictitious; as we play back through those scenarios in our sleep, our brain recognizes them as fake and forgets them - which may also explain why it is so difficult to remember dreams once you've been awake for a while.
So if our dreams are replays of alternate realities created subconsciously throughout our lives, how much can you tell about a person by his/her dreams?
"A man is what he thinks about all day long" - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Really?
Friday, March 28, 2008
Been a While...
It's been a while since I've posted anything on here. Have to be better about that, though I guess since mostly only family reads this, there's not much sense in posting that often anyhow, right?
My little brother Colton just got home from living in New Zealand for two years as a missionary for our church. It was really great to see him over Easter weekend. At first I was worried his experience as a missionary would kill his sense of humor. I talked to him on the phone while he was still in NZ and he seemed real stiff and dry. By the time he got home though, he was golden. It's really great to have him back.
My little brother Colton just got home from living in New Zealand for two years as a missionary for our church. It was really great to see him over Easter weekend. At first I was worried his experience as a missionary would kill his sense of humor. I talked to him on the phone while he was still in NZ and he seemed real stiff and dry. By the time he got home though, he was golden. It's really great to have him back.
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