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funkdoctadave
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Name: David
Birthday: 4/18/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: basketball (pro and college), baseball, college football, poker, movies, good food, kicking back in a cool cafe
Expertise: molecular biology, medicine, politics
Occupation: Student
Industry: Medical
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  bayviewbear03
Member Since:
3/7/2004
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| So, I don't know who reads this anymore, but I figure to the one or two who might, who I haven't talked to lately (which means if you're not family, probably everyone), you don't know my big news. I'll do this in a rhetorical question fashion.
What is this big news? In a nutshell, I applied for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute - National Institutes of Health Research Scholars Program. (whew - mouthful) More commonly known as the "Cloister" program, because the fellows, who take one year off from med school to do basic science research at the NIH, funded by HHMI, live in an old monastery on the NIH campus, i.e. cloister.
So what does this mean, really? Well, it means that while right now I'm on pediatrics, and after that I have radiology scheduled, after that, no more med school for a year. I'm taking off from LA in the first half of June, and staying a couple of weeks in Sacramento before driving cross country, and starting July 12th.
What sort of research will I be doing? I don't know yet! The nice thing about this program is that they don't make you pick a PI and a project before you apply. They hope that you would have an idea of what sort of thing you'd want to research when you're back there, but that it's hard for med students to really research all the labs and check them out and pick one, while (a) being in med school and (b) not being at the NIH. So, I have a few in mind, will be e-mailing PI's in the next couple of months, and meet with them in my first few days there.
What sort of research will I be doing? Wait - that's the same question. But now that I've prefaced that question (the second time around) with more background, I can say that after going through my third year of med school, I've really enjoyed surgery. I loved general surgery, enjoyed the tumor-endocrine surgery service (lots of breast cancer, very emotional stuff, really), but had a major blast doing orthopedic surgery. The residents were awesome, the cases were interesting, the outcomes are great relative to other services, and the surgical cases themselves were really, really awesome. Such precision and exquisite detail, unlike a lot of general surgery. So, with that in mind, I'm looking at orthopedics-based labs.
Ummm, so you're coming back to med school, right? Of course! This is for one year, to not only get a year of research, but also get an idea of what a career in academic medicine would be like. Weekly dinners with NIH studs (Fauci, Collins, etc.), mentorship meetings, and basically carte blanche to everything NIH. So it's more than just a year of research, which I theoretically could have done at USC or anywhere else, but it's a setup for later life. I will be back to USC in July of 2007, and graduate in May 2008. Theoretically, this should also give me a leg up in applying for residencies at places of my choice, rather than anywhere I could get one. Ortho is ridiculously competitive.
So I hope that wasn't too much to spring on anyone, and who knows if anyone will actually read this. But wanted to throw it out there. I'm so stoked.
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| SF on Thursday! Word to my man Thierry for taking the plunge. Way to make the rest of us look bad in front of our girlfriends, buddy. Seriously though, I can't wait. Should be good.
On another note, psychiatry has been really interesting. Some of the patients are really in need of help (no surprise), and we see some good improvement during their time in the hospital, for the most part. And you can't beat the hours! 9am-noon every day! So I've been filling it up with the stuff I meant to do after boards were over, like reformatting, cleaning up my place, getting oil changes and what not. Also been putting in some time in lab, including a marathon session coming up tomorrow and Sunday. I figure I can get some studying done while I'm waiting on experiments to run.
Oh, and I got my board scores. I'm in great shape for everything I was considering, except one specialty. So, I'm relatively happy, since I haven't put my eggs in one basket. I'll see how rotations turn out, I guess. Next up: internal medicine! | | |
| ยกI have a moment to make an entry!
So I took the boards about a month ago and find out my score in the next week or two. Basically, this is the most important thing to determine residency. Get a good score, and I can do anything, anywhere. Do poorly, and I'm doing something I don't want to, in a place I don't want to. So that's what I was so stressed out about for the last 6 months. So I haven't ignored people for no reason, even if it wasn't a good enough reason, probably.
Also, I have a few things I need to get off my chest.
- I hate Parking Meter people. I was at a meter for 4 hours, 3 minutes, and got a ticket 4 hours, 1 minute after being at a 4 hour meter. Bastards.
- I hate the USC financial aid department. After I sent in my financial information (basically just six figures of debt), and my mom's (she's a paralegal), I was told I'm not eligible for aid. I'm beyond words. USC is not getting a dime from me, ever, after I graduate. Berkeley, yes. Jesuit, yes. U$C, hell no.
- I hate electronics that crap out for no reason. My pager stopped working one month after I got it. My DVD burner burned a ton of DVD's, I tried to read them, and nothing. I lost a ton of files, including some very important ones. Sony burner, Sony media.
On a brighter note, I'm getting a dope ticket to see Zito and the A's play in Anaheim tonight. And I'm on psychiatry right now, which is ridiculously chill, in terms of hours. I'm working no more than 20 a week, while some people are working 40, others up to 70. And the work and patients are interesting. I'm even able to put in some time in lab, though not as consistently as I would like. I can't wait to get up to the bay area for a good friend's wedding in August - it'll be good to be back, see people, and be in a better place than LA. Also, my girlfriend picked up tickets to an opera in December, so I'm stoked about that. If only I wasn't so ridiculously poor and in debt, and my stuff wasn't constantly crapping out, I'd be really rolling right now. | | |
| In
Berkeley for the Big Game. So jazzed, it's not even funny.
And I have no idea why this is underlined, but I Can't do anything
about it.
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| This is depressing.
A few years ago, Paul Rozin, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, and Claude Fischler, a French sociologist, began collaborating on a series of cross-cultural surveys of food attitudes. They found that of the four populations surveyed (the U.S., France, Flemish Belgium and Japan), Americans associated food with health the most and pleasure the least. Asked what comes to mind upon hearing the phrase ''chocolate cake,'' Americans were more apt to say ''guilt,'' while the French said ''celebration''; ''heavy cream'' elicited ''unhealthy'' from Americans, ''whipped'' from the French. The researchers found that Americans worry more about food and derive less pleasure from eating than people in any other nation they surveyed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17EATING.html?pagewanted=3&th
''Worrying about food is not good for your health,'' Rozin concludes -- a deeply un-American view. He and Fischler suggest that our anxious eating itself may be part of the American problem with food, and that a more relaxed and social approach toward eating could go a long way toward breaking our unhealthy habit of bingeing and fad-dieting. ''We could eat less and actually enjoy it more,'' suggests Rozin.
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