No time at all

It doesn’t take to long to type a thought.  But it does feel like I’m using the wrong medium if said thought doesn’t contain more characters than facebook or twitter will allow.  It’s getting crowded in here.

Unedited Unhappiness #1

          The goal for me here was to just pick a subject and enter the first thoughts that came to mind. I apologize in advance if anything is offensive or seems inconsiderate but avoiding these things was not my main intention. I may add content to these posts at a later date but I don’t plan on bothering any of the existing content.

          There must be some aspect of “it won’t happen to me” or “I’m not a just a combination of risk factors” involved. I think that most American adults are just unhappy. (I realize it’s easy for a kid to say this and I will one day, at least outwardly, resemble the very group that I am now speaking of.) I’m proposing a deficit in their desire for life b/c they are stuck in a job/mortgage/shitty relationship/city that has lost its luster in their mind. (I know many claim happiness at all hours but has anyone been able to prove happiness?) Once someone has lost their attachment to the thrill of life then they have a harder time seeing any positive effects of change. Depressed people are very resistant to change b/c they already have “too much on their plate” and can’t adequately deal with something new. Traveling later in life seems to help some maintain a larger connection to the world (and themselves as players in it) and maybe this also allows them to better adapt to its pressures and fluctuations. (I also think these people seem happier but that is just my point of view and I realize that can be just as wrong to others as it is absolute truth to me.) I guess as life goes on we learn to put some things off for another time while we do less interesting things that “need to be done.” I suppose there is usually a catastrophic ending when the things we decide to put off determine our eventual health or lack thereof. If I can control the demise of my structure (body) then it seems like that would be a very beneficial and rewarding thing to be concerned with as life progresses. I’m not sure why some choose to ignore health until it becomes disease and/or disaster but I assume we all do this to some extent. You could argue that some people lost a flattering image of their body early on in life and so are more prone to forgetting that some things you can’t see really do matter if you want your run to be long here. If an image of self has suffered over time then the self must logically suffer equally from neglect or other misdeeds. With obesity being an epidemic here in America I think this theory might be applicable. There are others of course but I’m studying for an OPP test right now and should get back to it.

Money, It’s a Trip

          I was going to call this blog “When the cookie crumbles correctly” (because alliteration is always awesome) and it was going to be about med school adventure and growth through the 5^th law of the universe: “money = time”.  I went with a different title.  I don’t feel like I need to explain this idea on its own or convince you that those with more money are able to buy more free time than those without money.  I also don’t think I need to explain that free time is something you must buy as life progresses.  (So then what is this blog about anyway?)  If you are wondering why money=time is the 5^th law of the universe it’s because I let Newton have the first three for now and figured there has to be at least one more somewhere that I’ve overlooked.  (This numbering system is temporary of course b/c at some point I will formulate my own laws of the universe, I’m just not there yet.)  The phrase that compelled me to write this blog was “we get paid in med school.”  And really, it’s the extreme opposite of that (borrowing w/interest) but what I’m saying is the amount of money allotted for “living expenses” in our loans we can choose to (or have to) take out is more than I’ve ever had to live on for a year.  I believe med school does this intentionally b/c it is in everyone’s best interest if students can use the 5^th law for accelerated personal growth towards awareness.  The overall idea is: grow into yourself (if you haven’t already) very quickly so you can better handle life/work/caring for others.  Something like “You set your ways, we’ll set your schedule.” 

          I need two things to be true for this idea to make sense.  The first is: You become aware of your self through exposure to selves that differ from you and through experiences that are new/important (but mostly new) to you.  You try to change your self as you go through life to better fit who you want to be to everyone else (because you should always be you to you).  So through exposure to others you can gauge to what extent you truly have “changed” and make adjustments to become the finished you.  For the institution this equates to the guy that reliably does his job as well as he can.  The second thing I need to be true is: Meaningful experience takes time and shapes everyone.  The “get away” “make time for yourself” “better take a vacation b/c this is your last free summer ever” messages encourage experience so Med school is very adamant that students take a vacation or get married or anything that fits the “last summer of freedom” title following year one.  Getting married makes it the double last summer of freedom though right?

           A classmate posed a question along the lines of, “when did you discover who you are or want to be?”  We established earlier that you can gain insight to who you currently are by comparing your self to other selves (like the ones you might encounter on a vacation outside of the country).  You can also gauge changes you make to your self by the widening or narrowing gaps between you and others (probably have to know these people well to compare).  It’s not very easy to become who you think you want to be without constant feedback/change/reflection.  Likewise, deciding who you want to be is a lifetime process that is ever-evolving.  This is why I don’t like to attempt to define myself along the way (but here goes).  For now, I’m a guy that will gladly use some extra cash in order to grow through experiences I might not otherwise be having.  Gracias a mi escuela de la dueda.

           -Thanks to K for the question and J, K, and A for the uncertain honesty

Scatter Your Brain

          I used to think that a hangover made me more creative/original.  Not immediately upon awakening of course, at first I’m as useless.  But after I get going again, while I may still have a headache, may seem a little “scatter-brained”, and generally slow recalling what happened the night before, I still seem to feel more creative.  So I had a thought today as I was talking to my roommate and walking out of a lab that maybe I’m not more creative (or creative at all) but instead just more open/receptive.  I was talking about pre-workout routines when the guy walking in front of us (not talking to us) said the exact phrase I was about to and made me not want to finish my sentence without having to acknowledge that I was recently unintentionally unoriginal with my words.  This made me realize that I was paying as much attention to this guy in front of me as I was to what I was saying (which was without a doubt amazingly interesting).  This brought me to realize that I was paying a larger than usual amount of attention to everyone and everything else around me.  Other examples of this would be an intensified perception of a moderately loud noise in the morning of a hangover or being startled by something and having the abnormally intense effects last longer than usual.  So instead of making me more creative I think the post-night-of-drinking difference is that my mind is more open to my surroundings, thus making it easier to have and work on ideas.  I like the idea of creativity being just an extension of paying attention and picking up on things that other people overlook because they are unimportant (the things, not the people…mostly).  I also believe “perfection” is perception based and consists of nothing more than a steady hand and attention to detail (I’ll expand on this later).  When we look closely enough at anything we realize the flaws that lead us to believe things are unique.  However, the flaws are infinite in number and even these lines in the letters that I type now are mere dots when examined closely enough meaning even they aren’t “real” or perfect.  I’ll stop here because “what is real” is an extremely long conversation that I’ll spare you from (for now) but I’m pretty sure the short answer is “nothing and everything” (I googled it).

So I’m into sports…this was a facebook comment

          These are the things that trouble me as a LeBron fan that has to watch him play for the Cavs.  I remain surprised that LeBron hasn’t had Mike Brown fired by now (even more surprised that he stood behind him after he’s sucked basketballs for so long).  The Cavs ownership has made some fairly drastic moves (Shaq is on the books for 20mil/yr) to accommodate the king but LeBron always seems to just “approve” of the shaquisitions instead of coming out to emphatically thank management for providing him the pieces that he knows will lead to a championship.  To me the lack of these “Get me this guy and we win” statements either means that he doesn’t believe he has “the pieces” and is politely thankful for the gesture or that he just isn’t sure what he needs to obtain that goal.  I don’t know the contract situations with the 6ft nothing guards and 7ft bench players the Cavs have on the current roster, but the amount of moves the Cavs have made (and they have been trying) makes me think that they have limited room for addition to the free agent convincersation they will have with their golden child in a couple days.  So I feel like they are sort of stuck with the horse they rode in (but not all the way in) on.  Yes, the Celtics whipping horse of game 5.  But all the possible landing strips for air LeBron present a similar problem.  They don’t have pieces in place for him to just step in and win either (okay, maybe LeBron and Wade could reinvent the wheel but even that would have plenty of holes).  So I see most teams doing exactly what the Cavs have done up until this point.  They will sign a guy here or trade for a guy there and ask LeBron what he thinks to which he will reply, “I’ll allow it” or “That’ll be fine”.  And before you know it he’ll be 30 watching Kevin Durant threepeat for the first of who knows how many times in his illustrious career.  The only way I can see James avoiding this fate is by standing up and taking control of a franchise from top to bottom.  Be involved in every decision not as a consultant but as the guy with the golden ticket (and thus the final say).  Of course it would suck to run a dictatorship that fails but I think it’s better to lose on your own terms than letting things “fall where they may” or simply “hoping for the best”.  Step one of LeBron taking control of his own destiny should be getting up at least 8 shots (or free throws) in the first quarter of game 6 but you know how in vogue it is for a superstar to “manage the game” leaving me less than optimistic.

Will to Immerse

          Another point that I thought may be causing my blog absence is the fact that I’m making better grades this semester.  Or more correctly, why I’m making better grades.  I knew coming into an American Medical School that a key to my success would be to let the current of the establishment pull me along the “path to physician.”  This will to immerse is something that I have avoided for much of my scholastic career.  No matter how interested in a subject I pretended to be, I could never convince myself that I would rather be in school than outside doing something active.  This is still true today and I’m not sure that I can ever convince myself that I like the process of school.  However, I suppose I’ve become slightly more aware of how much my future depends upon the education I am going into great debt to obtain.  I’ve never spent much time thinking about why I am so unwilling to immerse myself in a system and become one that is always palling with the teachers.  Maybe I’m clinging to my idea of individuality.  If I immerse myself in a subject then I take on part of that subject as a piece of my identity and thus had to have lost some of myself in the process right?  As someone that values my individuality and greatly admires original thought, I think my attachment to my own thought process outside of the scholastic setting may have helped keep me from becoming this “model student.”  I guess you could argue that our identities are infinitely large and any piece we add does not necessarily have to push another piece out of the picture but how far can this argument extend before it fails?  The idea of a doctor as an identity has come up quite a bit throughout my first year of medical school and I think one must come to accept the doctor identity as their own at some point.  I think everyone agrees that it is beneficial to always have your “doctor thinking cap” on because if there is an emergency or if one can be avoided/lessened it would be nice to have that information on hand.  So this brought me to the realization that I should really make an effort to immerse myself in this particular graduate school because I think (for once) that this information is practical and can be used “immediately” (of course not all of it can be used immediately and we are advised against giving anything other than our uneducated, uncertified opinion on any subject as it’s a common problem for a medical student to start getting consults from family members and friends immediately upon admission to the school).  So in response to this idea I’ve decided to become more active in school clubs for the next year (VP of Surgery club, hopefully treasurer of Sports Medicine clue, and hopefully President or VP of the Orthopaedic Surgery club) and started volunteering more often (Health fair here, concert for kids there, etc…) in hopes to spend more time with the material on my mind.  Or at least to have some extra lines to write down on the sheet of statistics I will soon become when applying for residencies.  Higher education has taught me that there is nothing wrong with being a statistic (class rank/GPA/percentile/letter grade) and that to get on any short list your own list needs to be long.  Cheers to work then.

Mindless

          I’ve been procrastinating in lecture for the past 40 minutes (the teacher decided to post the powerpoint AFTER lecture) and decided that I should regain control of this blog I started a while ago.  I have been “gone” a while in part due to Neuro and in part due to my inability to decide on what to write.  When I started this blog my first “rule” was to not complain/rant about everything like most medical student blogs I have read.  I also wanted to use this blog to become a better writer (or become a hint of one at all) instead of just casually posting my thoughts and feelings for the day (that’s what twitter and facebook are for right…does anyone remember that relic of a social networking site myspace?  You know, the one that was soooo much more customizable than facebook and also allowed non-.edu e-mail addresses to enroll…I guess the facebook advertising department won the battle).  Anyway, I know that this entry is blatantly ignoring my second rule of this blog but I figured that if I posted something like this maybe I would become slightly more motivated to post.  Or maybe that’s just how the mindless blog begins…