a recap of the past 2 months

i don't think i'm a blogger. that is, i don't find a need to put my thoughts on the interwebs for everyone to peruse. i like the idea that my thoughts can affect a worldwide audience. i just don't really find the time or make the time. well anyhow, here is my recap of the past 2 months.

- i won the national geographic film/psa contest. i was subtly surprised, to say the least. as part of my winnings, i get to go to wash d.c. to go to the symposium they put on every year. pretty stoked about that.

-our school put on an event that raised 8000+ for the napa valley food bank. i designed some things for the fashion show. the whole thing was fun and worked out well.

-i realized a couple things about people. this isn't really deep or anything, but a lot of people use other people for their own benefit, while seeming like friends. there are few people that have an ulterior motive outside of their own benefit. i, am sad to say, fit that description time to time.

-been playing in our school's volleyball doubles intermurals. our team name is oscar and smuts. it's pretty legit. we're basically 1:1 in wins and losses so i guess we're balanced and whatnot. no worries, it's fun and something to look forward to after 4 days of constant classes from 10-5/7. my partner's really chill too.

-didn't do too fly on the last bio exam. these bio exams are basically my life. and i should be spending more time on my life. seriously, i need to hustle down and study. truly.

-became a school senator and biology club president. they're not really biggies because not many people ran for the spots. but im pretty stoked to do some stuff with it next year.

-one of my friends couldn't get banquet tickets to the banquet my school is putting on. so, we're making our own banquet. it should be super fun.

-my tmj is back. before my jaw wasn't cracking, but now sometimes, my jaw locks into a certain place and i need to rotate it around to get it placed again. it's weird.

-i'm in a play. it's a lot of rehersal times. note to self: don't do theatre unless you're taking less than 16 credits.

-i'm planning on shooting my next film in a week. i have yet to finish the plot or even start the script.

-have watched a crapload of films. mostly in class, but some not. some are ehh. some were amazing.

post quarter reflection

you know that feeling where there's something you wish you could change, but you can't? there's nothing you can do. there's nothing within legal parameters that you could do to change it. 

there's a lot of things i wish i could have changed. like the time i ditched to kinko's during school hours, without knowing my student government advisors were going to talk to me about how they i thought i wasn't suitable for the spot of school president, even though i was totally slated for it. or when i went to the philippines not knowing that a week after i went there, i would get the most sick i've ever gotten. or when i pretended to forge a teacher's signature for kicks only to have her think i actually tried to forge her signature...causing me to get a traumatic suspension...in 6th grade. 

i just finished finals. now there's nothing i can do to change the grades. grades really shouldn't be one of the most important things in life. but it is. human worth can't be quantified. but when someone tries to, it's done by grades. 

i'm still in the education mindset. i'm on spring break now. thoughts about cnidarians and euglenozoans need to leave. 

paranoia of being sick

why focus on the details when the opposite is obvious?

i am a hypochondriac.

with any unusual symptom that decides to reveal itself comes a differential diagnosis. from the differential comes analysis of each symptom and how it ties in with the other symptoms. with each symptom comes a diagnosis and from every diagnosis comes comparison to other diagnosis. because of my lack of modern day medical lab equipment and scans, i resort to using simple tests and diagnostic procedures. for anything that could be related to gastro-instestinal problems, i observe the color, texture, buoyancy, consistency, and size of my bowel movements. for anything that could be dermatological, i apply pressure, observe through clear glass, and mark with pen. cardiovascular--simple exercise procedures; neurological--holistic analysis; respiratory--breathing exercises. 

people warn us premeds about medical student syndrome, hypochondriasis that arises during medical school. too late. 

don't get me wrong. i have learned countless things about myself, my body, and can list off lists of symptoms from countless obscure and general diseases. i know how to treat glossopharyngeal neuralgia and how to diagnose an atypical heartbeat. i can give you the symptoms of shock and the dangers of bacterial meningitis. all rare diseases that i would, statistically, never have.

hypochondriasis is not a fun thing to have. for many, hypochondriasis causes despair and intense anxiety. being rational and logical with an innovative imagination may be seen as merits in some sectors, but for me, it can run amuck quite quickly. 

when something arises for me, i know that it is a product of stress or anxiety. but i can't help but wonder if it is somehow related to a supervirus or genetic disorder. i realize that i am being illogical when self-diagnosing myself, and yet i still do it. i try to validate the reason i am having the symptoms. i want to be absolutely sure that what i have is what i have i know it is: stress and anxiety. 

so far, there has  never been a time when my symptoms pointed to anything other than anxiety. here is a site that details all the symptoms anxiety may camouflage itself in. i highly recommend everyone to check it out. 

anxiety and stress can take the form of any symptom. the treatment? relaxation, exercise, healthy nutrition, and conversation. there you go. 

at the base of all the problems, i think, is the fear of death. we are all human. we all rise and in time, we all fall. that void, that unknown horizon always looms, taking our friends, our family, our comrades. it's that unknown that scares us: we fear what we don't know. and with every wrong thing that occurs, every problem, we realize that we are fallible. and that scares us. it scares us that we can go from everything to nothing so quickly. illnesses make us feel so vulnerable and that we are. 

but there's a wide highway between illness and fear of illness. our fears are completely irrational. they are always full of inadequate speculation and based on a paucity of actual medical knowledge. the human body doesn't act like an elevator: pushing one button doesn't mean that it'll go to one floor. we have to view the body holistically. and that observation should be delegated to the physician. again, our anxieties and stress are usually the culprits. 

with realization and confidence, we should all be fine. 

typical college dorm room

well welcome! man, you've come a far ways to come visit me in my dorm room, wot wot? let me describe some of the key features that this hallway has. that's our water fountain right there. it keeps tap water cold so that we can experience the joys of numbness and toothache, over and over again! also, observe the ceiling lights. kind of reminds me lights on space ships in star wars. sometimes i run down these halls with my arms extended and pretend i'm a x-wing fighter from star wars, dodging lasers. it's really quite exciting. try it.  

well enough chitchat, why don't you check out my room? here, let me open the door for you.

well here it is! my humble abode. on the left are the beds. the top one is mine because i got choice of desk location. anyhow, of course, my roommate's desk is the one opposite to mine. sometimes i feel like a secretary when people come in.

here, why don't you sit on zach's bed. oh, don't be such a prude; i'm sure the yellow spots are part of the design. so, from here you can see my library. i have quite a large collection of medical literature, half of which pertain to neurosurgery. on the left wall are some of the very first artisan posters while in the middle is my ellsworth kelly print. that piece is my favorite piece of art. i'll write something about that later. 

oh. important detail. our room is divided it into 3 sections: the worksleep room, the playroom, and the reading nook. the worksleep room consists of our desks and beds, while the playroom is basically everything on the other side. there are 2 very comfortable chairs in the playroom: mine is the ikea chair on the right and zach's is that blue rag of a chair on the left. also, we have a microwave on the far left. it has a crack right down the middle of the door, but zach insists it's safe to use. i on the other hand, disagree, and i quietly step out of the room whenever he uses it to minimize my exposure to radiation poisoning. recently i have observed some red polyps on the back of zach's neck. probably cancerous. i win. 

if you really squint, you will see our 2 coffee makers. which is ironic because neither of us drink coffee. no. being high class and all, we drink tea. i drink orange spice and green tea, while zach, being the barbarian, drinks some weird argentinean glunk that he mashes into a gourd and drinks with a metal straw. sometimes he pours soda into the mix. peculiar. oh. and i drink water out of wine glasses. i'm thinking about bringing my apple cider collection up here so that we can have cider tastings. high class, my friend. high class. 

oh and on the far right is the sink with our toothbrushes and whatnot. 

here. come towards the bookshelves.

this is the view facing the door, standing in the playroom. the nook that zach is sitting in is the reading nook. supposedly, it's supposed to be for refrigerators and microwaves and other kitchen appliances, but since we don't have a refrigerator and our microwave is a carcinogen, we had the extra real estate to turn into a reading nook. we don't actually use it because we don't have any pillows or anything to put in there to make it cozy. but once we do...best place to chill in town. 

oh. also. the light switch is by the door handle. when i get into bed, i didn't like getting out, and leaning down to turn off the light. so, instead, i rigged this ingenious switch system so that when i pull the green rope, the light turns on and if i pull the red rope, the light turns off. yes. bow to me, young padawon. 

well that's my room. hope you enjoyed the tour.

to my fellow premeds

normal setup in haiti

_____

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

_____

the above passage is the modern rendition of the hippocratic oath. a lot of medical students recite this as the enter medical school, typically during the white coat ceremony. i feel like so many pre-med students at my school fail to realize the amount of power a physician holds. a physician decides things that determine some of the most important facets of someone's life, if not life itself. medicine and surgical procedures are quite potent; they are not things that should be issued on whim. a physician becomes an intermediary between illness and health, life and death, healing and deteriorating. being a physician doesn't imply "financial security" or affluence. it's not about material luxuries or monetary goods. it means being obligated to improve current society.

so many pre-med students at my college drop out of the pre-medicine curriculum because they feel that it's too much work, too much school, offers too little time, gives too much pressure, takes away other freedoms. they feel that it's too much work for not enough money, too much time spent in place of other activities, too much education in exchange for a lesser life. 

i'm glad that students like that drop out of pre-medicine. how is a doctor who is perpetually reminded of the things he or she is missing out or losing going to be able to wholeheartedly focus on a patient? these students are the students who just give up. do we really want quitters in our medicine workforce? "oh, that operation is too time consuming so we're just not going to do it." 

some students stay in pre-med because they are attracted by the potential wealth and respect a physician acquires. but if you are pursuing medicine because of these things, i urge you to reconsider and take up business or something that doesn't allow you to hold life and death in your hands. 

i'm not perfect either, i know. but one of the greatest reasons i am trekking on this narrow path called pre-medicine is that i want to be able to see a former patient and say, "i helped you get well." i want to be able to see that through my efforts, someone is given a chance at a second life. to be the giver of that solution is strong indeed. 

last summer, i went to haiti with some college students and doctors to give medical treatment to the hundreds of people in the backcountry of haiti. we went from church to church, hosting medical clinics. people would come in and tell us their problem, and we would try to solve it, be it through medication or minor surgical procedure. although at the time i was an incoming senior in high school, i was allowed to talk to patients via translator and determine the treatment that was needed. most of the time it was something as simple as vitamins, or iron tablets, or maybe amoxicillin. sometimes it would require special antibiotics or medication. other times still, injections or minor surgery was needed. 

i would find myself become almost like a vending machine with patients: they plugged in the problem and i spat out the treatment. i viewed the patients, towards the end of my stay there, as a list of problems that i would decipher into a solution. but in retrospect, i see that the things that we did had a wholesome impact on their lives. that is, because of their relief from symptoms of hypertension, they could now get water or farm for their family. because of relief from arthritis they could walk the half mile to see their grandsons and daughters. we didn't cure symptoms--we cured a person. and i know that when i become a physician, i will remind myself during times when i feel apathetic, that my patients are people themselves with futures. the things i do will determine their quality of life. 

i'm not sure how to end this. and i forget what my initial point was. and i'm pretty sure this whole thing was poorly written. but in any case, don't be apathetic. and don't be premed from the wrong reasons.

the samsung glyde sucks

my phone presses buttons even though no one is pressing its buttons

yes, that is my phone. when i got this phone in may of 2008, i was pretty happy. i had been waiting for this phone since november the previous year. why? well, all the other phones on verizon's line up sucked so i figured that i should at least wait for a decent phone. after looking up some upcoming phones, i found that the glyde was issued to come in a bit so i waited. 

it is the must unusual bugger. when it is in my pocket, it constantly vibrates due to the electrosensitive nature of its screen. when someone calls, i press receive but instead it disconnects the call. it take 2 minutes to get to a contact and call it, but that doesn't even guarantee that the call will go through: when i put the phone up to my cheek, again, the raging hormones that course through this phone disconnect the call. when messages arrive i cannot read them because instead of responding to my "read now" tap, it assumes that i, for some reason, would rather read 160 characters later rather than now. 

of course there are some good things about the phone such as that it's an appropriate shape to bludgeon someone with in the jugular. or that it collects fingerprints quite well on it's greasy surface for crime scene investigations. or that the utilitarian appealing back cover opens up easily enough for one to take out the battery when the phone freezes, or that the sporadic screen twitching goes well with travis barker's rendition of crank dat soulja boy. 

in anycase, this phone sucks. and verizon pulled it from their inventory. so us glyde owners are double screwed. yay for verizon. 

i hate libraries

exactly. WHATEVER.

finals have just ended. they were pretty ridiculous. that is, i had 2 of my toughest finals on the same day. actually, just 27 hours ago i was slaving away over my honors final essay and just 30 minutes before that i was trying to remember if PCR stood for polymerase chain reaction or pakistani croquet rash. okay, fine. that was a lame joke...but i suppose it shows that i haven’t completely decayed into a real premed.

no. you’re right. i have.

for the past 1.5 weeks, i have inhabited the library like blagojevich will inhabit his cell. funny thing is, i usually don’t get work done in the library, and these past days are no exception. while i might be in there for a while, the fruits of my labour barely fill a fruit basket. i constantly get distracted by insignificant things such as facebook (which, i’m convinced is financed by medical schools to weed out the socially adept) and the new yorker (yes i read that intellectual bullshit).

you would think that the library is inhabited by smart people (nerds : libraries :: dwight schrute : beet farms) but really, it isn’t. all the smart people go to study where it’s quiet. the library is haven to all the people who are very good at pretending to study. like me. after 4 hours in there, i walk out thinking, “what the (fill in rowdy expletive in here) did i just read. and why the (fill in expletive that starts with f ends with uck*) is it dark already?”

thats another thing. why is it getting darker so soon? i bet it’s because medical schools want to make us even more depressed and stressed with the juxtaposition of medical school rejections and dark skies. as you can see, i am a bit cynical towards the monsters that is acceptance committees. and the people say, "oh, at such a young age."

it’s break now, and im back home. sun and surf galore. except that its cloudy. and the water’s cold.

*fire truck. geez. what were you thinking.

reading the same line over and over

i'm pretty sure everyone does this. 

you read the same line over and over and then you realize that you're reading the same line over and over but then you start to think why am i reading this line over and over and then while you think about why you are reading the line over and over you start to read the line over and over and then you look at the line that you were reading over and over and then realize that you have no fucking idea what you just read and so you're forced to re-read everything you reread but in the process of re-reading your phone goes off and you answer it and in the process of talking to your so called friend who actually is quite a bitch and so why the hell are you still talking to her you get a notion that you should probably get back to studying because this ho is giving you a serious migraine and so you hang up and you look back at your book but you can't find your place in the book because you weren't using a highlighter damnit why wasn't i using a highlighter this sucks and then you realize that you were studying the wrong chapter all along and you look at the time and there's only a couple more hours that you have to study for this damn test and so you try to focus but you can't because you're all worked up over that bitch who just called and so you just say screw it and go to sleep because your serotonin levels are way too low and you need the sleep. 

right?

right.

the continuity

prior to entering college, i was having a hard time with the school's housing. they first told me my roommate's name was milton. then i got concerned. from my experience with miltons, ahem, i was hesitant, of course. then it so happened that this milton was supposed to be roommates with 8 other students. and so i got shafted out of my to-be fantastical remake of office space.

housing, 2 days before school started, told me my roommate's name was zach. after some quick facebook stalking, i found that this man was actually a full-fledged man. that is, he is a senior. now, there's really only one reason a senior would dorm with a freshman: it's because he's a loser. like, really. why would anyone want to dorm with clueless, insecure freshmen. freshmen suck. also, his default picture on facebook showed him in front of some chinese monument. great. one of those "world traveler" bullshit types. so, i was not too stoked, to say the least.

for some reason, he didn't come to the dorms until a week or so after school started. during this anticipatory time, i casually referred to him as my "missing bitch." yes. i referred to him as my bitch. zach, if you're reading this, well, if you ever confront me, i'll deny it all. 

finally, i met this man, and, to say the least, i now really respect him. he is fun to be around and he's quite ridiculously smart. he has some questionable antics. like walks on tightropes. and doesn't shave. but i digress.

zach is exceptionally talented at longboarding. and so, me being the filmmaker and all, i decided to make an artistic skate video. it turned out swell after 2 days of shooting (1 day where i was completely soaked) and about of a week's worth of free time editing. i then threw it onto youtube.

this man named adam colton, who happens to be one of the leading figures in longboarding, contacted me. he wanted to use it for the loaded longboarding newsletter. of course i said yes. what you see before you is the first skate video of many to come. congratulations. you are a winner.