studying hard or hardly studying?

I struggle to focus after Monday tests. This week is no exception. I think you are supposed to study hard/play hard, but not at the same time. While I'm on the topic though, Sierra Nevada makes a very nice stout. The body is fairly uniform and simple, but the malty finish is quite enjoyable. The alcohol is 5.8% by volume, but it does not command undue attention. Good beer.

Funny story. Some of the guys in my class discovered that the door separating the men's and women's gross anatomy locker rooms is no longer locked. Sadly, in the not too distant past, there was no need to have separate locker rooms because there were no students of opposite gender, and for a while this door probably accessed a closet that to this day suffices as a women's locker room. Anyway, these guys were coming up with wouldn't it be funny ifs. I thought that it must be at least a little disarming to have just split our cadaver's crotch to the 3rd lumbar spine and then transect above the hips with a hack saw to remove each leg. I watched a bunch of first years walk to the sinks behind me with human limbs in their arms so that they could wash out the contents of the distal colon (depicted by Frank Nedder in the image above) at the sinks behind me. I thought, just imagine, "excuse me ladies, but seriously, there's nothing here that I didn't just see in excruciating detail 5 minutes ago." 

the path of most resistance

Medicine has a draw like riding a bicycle up a mountain. Most people admire it, far fewer want to try it, and even less actually go through with it. Both require so much drive and unseen sacrifice. Both are essentially unnatural. Most of all, both feats offer in return very little material gain relative to the work required. The top cyclists in the world are paid a pittance compared to Shaq or Roger Clemens, for that matter compared to the last man on the NY Giants 2007 team. For the amount of years and dollars spent, it is not difficult to argue that physicians are also relatively underpaid (said the med student). 

One of the most challenging aspects of training to be a physician is the very accurate perception that everyone around you is moving in a different direction in life, and with considerable more ease. The pace seems totally incongruous. Our contemporaries settle into families and homes, and we borrow to buy groceries and rent (and a mountainous tuition). This is where the cyclist reminds us that we can't afford to look at challenges in life as mere obstacles to rewards. We must climb for the sake of climbing. Lance Armstrong, while he made a handsome sum from endorsements, never needed a salary to push him through The Tour (it has been reported that he gave his salary to his teammates for their crucial support - an act from which several lessons can be drawn). I fully believe that he would have climbed without pay, that it is his nature to climb.

The question therefore becomes not whether to climb, but which mountain? 

time to rethink

Yesterday was a chilly day following a big storm. I didn't think that I would get a chance to ride, but afternoon classes were cancelled unexpectedly which left a nice window open for riding. 

In the middle of the second lecture of the morning, the professor briefly paused. It would have otherwise been unremarkable - maybe she was checking to see that she covered everything she intended to cover - if the problem had not continued. After the third pause, which lasted nearly 30 or 40 seconds, she told the class, without looking up from her computer, that she needed to leave. She quickly exited the lecture hall. My classmates sat for a while before reacting. After a couple of minutes, someone went to check on her and reported that she was quite ill and would not be returning for the rest of the day. That was all most people needed for a cue to exit the building. 

I checked the weather before leaving for my ride. There were predictions of 20-30 mile/hour winds, so I added an extra top layer to cut the chill. I figured (hoped) that a 50% spread in the wind speed range was just the meteorologist covering bases. As I left, the skies were mostly cloudy and the wind came in short but strong gusts. My legs felt strong even after a fairly intense ride the day before. As I settled into my pace, I noticed that I was going much too fast, which probably meant that the wind was directly behind me. I checked the sun to mark the wind direction. The smells were fantastic and vibrant in the crisp air. Cotton was still visible in the fields. The trees are now bare, revealing the otherwise hidden objects behind them. I arrived at the return point and faced the wind for the first time in the ride. Not pretty.

I had plenty of time, especially on the painfully slow return, to think. I wondered how long it would have taken other people in the class to go check on our professor, myself included. For all we knew she was having a stroke and was losing more brain function with each second we waited. The irony of stroking out in front of a class of medical students in a university hospital did not escape my imagination. It turns out that she has the flu, and was probably under the influence of some pretty intense medication just to be there. It didn't take me very long to quit worrying about her well being and to start dwelling on the time I was stealing to ride. Although class was cancelled, I still had material to learn. This would cost me. I grabbed the drops and pushed into the wind. 

(photo from magnum photos)

an introduction of sorts

I suppose I could just dive into writing whatever comes to mind, but for some reason I feel compelled to say a little bit about who I am and what I am writing. I am a first year year medical student just trying to achieve a little bit of balance in an environment that by and large rewards just the opposite. Don't get me wrong. I love school, or at the least the idea of learning. I just don't love the constraints on my passions in life. The rub is that medical school, in my experience, is a combination of both (learning and constraining). Maybe by writing about the things that I truly enjoy and value in life I can take a better appreciation of them. We'll see.

What else? That seems like enough to get started. I certainly would appreciate anything the reader has to say, about my topics or otherwise.

Cheers!