The Culprit Life

You know how when you pack for a trip you get all your shirts and pants and essential stuff in first and then right before you leave you look around your room and throw in a few extra small things you may or may not need just in case? That’s what the day before the test is like. Do I need those branches of the vestibular nerve? Maybe, maybe not, lets take them just in case. What about the stuff that connects to the common annulus tendon? That might come in handy.

Of course there’s always that moment, after you’re already on the plane looking down on all of those quadrilateral fields, when you remember:
“I forgot to pack my toothbrush.”

If you don’t know anything about my life right now, basically, all I do is study. That pretty much sums it up. There is a point I always reach in the test cycle where I “know” everything. The problem is, I haven’t memorized everything. Understanding and recalling are two very different things. I can say I’m intelligent because I have the ability to comprehend the difficult concepts that are vital to the inter-workings of the human body but I am severely lacking in the type of mental capacity it takes to memorize vast amounts of knowledge. It’s the part of the brain that functions more like a muscle than a set of neurons that feels week. It’s as if that part of me has atrophied. I feel like I was at my cognitive peak several years ago when I was studying organic chemistry. I did well in that class even though I don’t like chemistry at all. I remember having a tremendous amount of focus, a focus that I feel I’ve lost. When I think about it, I probably spent too much time away from science. Too much time doing the things I really wanted to do. That hardworking part of my brain got soft. Don’t get me wrong, art is hard, art is extremely difficult but in a completely different way. The set of skills you use to solve problems in each arena are very different, and now I feel unbalanced because I spent too long in one and not in the other.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is this: I really don’t want to sound like I’m playing a martyr. I know I am blessed to be where I’m at in life. I know I have it better than probably 98% of the world’s population. I’m really sorry if I come off as ungrateful or someone who complains all the time. The truth is, I don’t. I just want to accurately portray the life and struggles of someone who is going through med school. I realize it may sound overbearing at times but really that’s just the way it is. Nothing I write in here is an exaggeration. It’s a collection of snap shots from where I’m at everyday.
Where I’m at now is the histo lab and it’s 1am.

I spent the morning in the anatomy lab with Kimberly doing the practice practical. Half of it wasn’t bad but the other half seemed sort of impossible. Afterward, we talked to our course director who told us to watch the videos he made of the dissections online. So I did, later, and found them really helpful except for one fact: the quality is terrible.
The picture is so fuzzy, it’s hard to differentiate some of the thinner structures. The audio quality is fine but when you try to fast forward or rewind it takes 20 seconds to come in again. And then, on top of all that, several of the videos simply stop working after several minutes.
So I sent an email to the course director about it and told him that I would like to help him film new ones for future labs. It’s not that I care about the aesthetic quality of the films for that sake alone but the fact is the poor quality of the videos is inhibiting learning, which is their primary purpose. I’m a little upset because it’s too late to do anything about it for this test but I’m hoping I’ll still be able to pass.
The reason I feel like the videos are so important to my ability to do well on the test is that the dissected bodies look completely different than the drawings in the book or any representation made on paper. They look like a bad car wreck and you have to identify where the wires are that go to the ignition. It’s that bad.

Sometime after 2am I left the histo lab.

Coming back home to an empty house I thought about who I am, what defines me.
I realized that being a medical student has consumed me completely. I cannot separate myself from it anymore. Medical school isn’t what I do, it’s who I am. And in a way that makes me very sad. I would love, for one day, just to be Trey Penton. Not Trey Penton the medical student, just Trey Penton the person. But I can’t. I can’t go back. One day I will be Trey Penton the doctor and it will be that way till the day I die. I hate it.
I hate that it has consumed me like a lion. I feel helplessly swallowed by this persona that has been cast on me by my position in medical school. It’s not that I don’t want to be here, its that I don’t want to only be here. I don’t want this to be all that I am, and right now, that’s what it feels like.

I had a PD skills workshop this afternoon that was supposed to include a session on how to palpate the neck and head except my groups preceptor doc was 70 years old and all flustered because he showed up 10 minutes late because he couldn’t find parking so he rattled off a bunch of ridiculous terms and rushed through some loose palpation format that failed to include any of us actually touching the patient at all. We didn’t learn anything. The second half was better because we had a good preceptor but we ran out of time and didn’t get to really practice using the panoptiscope to examine the retina.
In the morning we had On Doctoring.

I have developed a new pet peeve and here it is: A large number of people in my class walking in significantly late to On Doctoring.
Look, I get it, the class is mandatory but not really graded in the same way as the others, and it’s about intangible things like emotions which you don’t like talking about as much as science or what kind of field you’re thinking about going into or what reality tv program you wish you were watching at the moment. But give me a freakin break. When like 30 of you are late and some of you just don’t show up at all to a mandatory class that only occurs once or twice a month, you just don’t give a crap. That’s pathetic. Because you know who does give a crap about this course? Your future patients. The way you talk to them, the tiny cues you pick up on, the social dimensions and familial impact of a disease on any given individual, are all vital aspects of medicine that are important to internalize if you expect to be GOOD physicians. No doubt, you will all become doctors with your god like mastery of the molecular inter-workings of metabolism and your longing to make well over six figures a year, but you wont ever be GOOD to anyone but yourself unless you embrace these points of connection with the human beings that you will be serving. So grow up, show some respect for the course and the people behind it and get to class on time. God knows if it was some neuro-physiology lecture you’d be in your seat at a quarter till. And no, they wont always have a roll sheet so yes, you often can get away with not coming at all because they expect you to act like adults and not middle schoolers who need to be held accountable for their attendance.

Okay, I’m done. But seriously, the class today was almost a straight clinical correlation with a patient there to talk with us about oral cancer. It was really cool, but heavy on medical procedure and hardly even touched on the emotional aspect of things at all. For those students who wern’t there, you may find yourself 20 years from now watching a married couple break up in your examining room all because of a little misunderstanding about HPV and cancer which you could easily clear up, effectively saving the marriage, if only you had shown up to your On Doctoring class in your first year of medical school.

Okay, now I’m really done.

Just a bunch of reviews in the morning, then a long study break while waiting for Kimberly to finish her PD skills workshop prompted a little romp outside with my computer to finish some neuro questions:

Lame webcam photo, I know, but it was bloody brilliant weather outside and I was starting to get stressed in the histo lab. Later, I went through the entire 170 or so structures on the structure list for this test with a group of six people in the anatomy lab. We found nearly every one of them on the cadavers but when you start getting into the nerves that run through your pelvis and thigh area it starts to get real freakin hairy.

I watched an interesting brochoscopy in LCE this morning. The doctor had to inflate one of the airways with a balloon but when he did he inadvertently tore a big piece of scar tissue from the side and later had to use this kind of snare contraption to get it out completely.
Also, there was a patient who was very sensitive to drugs and fell unconscious when he was given a small dose. I watched the nurses and doctor bring him back with another drug that’s a competitive inhibitor. He woke right up like nothing ever happened. It was cool because you see that kind of thing done on TV all the time but I’ve never seen it done in real life, or really understood it to be honest.

The afternoon was just neuroscience lectures and falling asleep while studying at home. Waking up before the crack of dawn every tuesday gets old. Fast.

2 hours of lecture + 1 hour of lunch + 2 hours of lecture + 4 online lectures = my monday.

And on a positive note, the eye/optic nerve pathway is incredible. The design is unlike anything we would have made up ourselves and it’s pure genius. There is no camera that works quite like it, or quite as well I think. When you have about eight hours of lecture on a single subject, it makes it more bearable if you are enamored with what you are studying.
And I think that’s probably one of the main things that separates me from most of the other people in my class.
I love this.
I’m not saying that they don’t love the idea of being doctors or helping people (because I’m sure they all do) but I’m talking about the actual human body.
I am completely in love with it. And I think that love is one of the things that’s helping me get through right now.

Study some more. Oh and I started writing a behavioral medicine paper on Peter Parker/Spiderman. What is the point you ask? Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose it’s their way of making the course “hip” or something. I think it would be nice to just not have to do busy work in med school. Just sayin.

Study Study Study

Not much to report about this day except we started studying the details of the eye and to my surprise some of the lecture material sounded very similar to the kind of stuff we did in molecular medicine. Thankfully, this time around I have the advantage of knowing that I learn this kind of information best through formulating stories.

After a morning of learning how to conduct yet another type of neuro exam (which included our professor playing around with these funny, low quality, animated online eye simulators), I headed down to TGH to spend all afternoon with my LCE doctor. Thursday afternoons is when they initially examine and interview patients who may potentially receive a lung transplant. I sat in as my LCE doctor took the history and explained the lung transplant process to two patients and their spouses. It was long but interesting. After those, it was almost time for me to go but I decided to stick around a little bit longer to watch my LCE doctor put a catheter into a patient’s internal jugular vein. I had never seen one done before so I was pretty amazed. Well, maybe not so much amazed as I just thought it was really cool. After the procedure, the doctor explained everything he did in sequence and I had pretty much come to the right conclusions about each step while I was watching him. It made a lot of sense to me and I walked away feeling like I could almost do one myself. Almost…

We learned about how the ear works this morning from a new lecturer in neuroscience. I thought he was pretty good and funny to boot. Then in the afternoon we met for the first time with our LCE small groups where we will be presenting cases to each other. I have a good group of people except my facilitator is TERRIBLE. He is probably the most demanding, egocentric, unsympathetic faculty member I have met thus far. Unfortunately, he fits the old school stereotype of a cardiothoracic surgeon completely. It almost makes me not want to not go into surgery when I see people like him in it until I remember that 99% of the doctors I’ve met bear no resemblance to this man. Thank God.
And get this, in spite of his uber high standards for professionalism from all of us, he himself will not be able to make 4 out of the 7 meetings this semester! How ridiculous is that? Several of us in the group suggested that we ask for another facilitator but the coordinator said she can only give us substitutes for the days ours isn’t there. In the end, our group decided to rearrange some of the meeting times to allow him to be there. I hate catering to people like that, people who act like they couldn’t care less about anyone else besides themselves.

And then, on the other side of the building I had a meeting with my new academic adviser that the college required me to get since I’m on academic warning. I thought it was going to be kind of pointless to have one but I couldn’t be happier with my choice of faculty member for it. He is extremely encouraging, helpful, and accommodating. Plus, its the same guy who is going to work with me when I retake molecular medicine this summer. He seems very confident in me and assured me that we will take care of molecular med with no problem.

All and all, a decent start to the new test cycle that will end two mondays from now.

I’m starting to think of myself as the comeback kid.
Or better yet, Joe Montana in almost every game he ever played.

Developing

Today was remarkable.
Today, I think I actually did well on an exam.
I have not known this feeling, ever, in medical school.
But instead of feeling fulfilled or satisfied, it left me wanting. Wanting to do well on the next one.
It is the slightest feeling of confidence, not in that I know a lot but that I am capable of knowing a lot. It’s a good feeling. And one that comes with the hint of knowing that I am developing into the person I was created to be. Not by my own doing, but through the hidden, powerful actions of the One who placed me here. My God.

Also developing (digitally) are the above photographs I took of my friend Laura Tomlinson today. These are just a few of the many I was able to capture right around sunset. I am starting to get better at editing. In the past I shied away from that aspect of digital photography because I am somewhat of a purist but also too busy to actively pursue editing techniques. Plus, my favorite part of photography (and cinematography) is composition. I typically don’t like to deal with exposure, but I have found color correction to be fun. Anyway, photography is probably the least time consuming realm of art I am active in so it makes sense for me to continue developing my skills while I am med school. It’s a healthy outlet. The photographs of Laura I took today are the beginning of a new large set I am going to be working on for my on going photography project: Who Painted The Lion?
There will be more on that later.


In addition to photography, I also engaged in some recording with my friend Omar today. After our test we came back to my place to work on the latest song I finished for The Culprit Life. We used MIDI and Trey Tomlinson’s keyboard to track keys and drums. My voice is really dry right now so we couldn’t do vocals but I think soon I’ll have a chance to finish those and then track guitar and bass on it as well. Omar may even do a remix of it later because he is quite fond of synth strings.

Whattheheckawesome!

So remember those “Make a Mix, Take a Mix” boxes I set up in the histo lab a while back? Well I found a new mix in one of them last night and decided to take it for the drive home. As you can see, it’s pink and wrapped in a greeting card envelope with gel pen on it so I was pretty sure it was from a girl and I was also pretty sure it was gonna end up having some tween pop idols on it (you know the ones I’m talking about) but I thought I would give it a spin anyway.
Turns out, it’s a freakin awesome mix of cool indie music and experimental instrumental stuff! Totally not what I was expecting. I didn’t know who it came from though because all it said was desk 24 on it. I knew by process of elimination it couldn’t be someone I regularly talk to or really even know by name (which is a small number of people). So this morning when I got to school to study, I went to the desk to see if there was a name tag and there was. It’s a girl named Kristina. I don’t know her but I know of her. She is supposedly the tech guru of our class and also sends out a bunch of good note summaries to everyone. So now I feel I must introduce myself, if only to compliment her on having fantastic taste in music. Also, she said she would give a playlist upon request and I really would like to know what artists did some of the instrumental tracks. Crazy.

And oh yeah, it’s the night before the test. I can’t give an accurate gauge of my confidence right now. I feel like I know a lot but one of the things I know is that I don’t know everything. It was good practicing in groups with people today though. The histo lab was pretty full so there was a lot of medical discussion and non-medical discussion/wiffle ball throwing/ fart jokes going on (like I said, it’s high school). One thing I can say for sure though is this is the most unprepared I’ve ever heard the other people in say they’ve been for a test. I don’t think that’s true for myself. What IS true is that I’m exhausted, mentally and physically from studying so much.

I guess tomorrow we’ll roll the dice again…

In case you didn’t know, med school is just like high school. Socially speaking.
It’s about 11pm right now and I’m sitting in the histo lab reviewing cranial nerves. Across the room a group of guys is sitting around, studying, and engaging in ridiculous banter about all kinds of nonsense. It’s slightly distracting but funny and it reminds me of being on the soccer team in high school. We would spend all day in class together, change in the locker room, and then load into the bus and head to whatever field we were playing on that day. In med school we spend the day in class, then eat together or work out at the gym (not me), change into our scrubs and go into the cadaver lab, or study in histo or the library. We are together all the time, like one big dysfunctional family who’s been snowed in for the winter in a log cabin.
It can be claustrophobic at times but also strangely comforting. It’s about the camaraderie really. I wasn’t much of a fan of high school but it’s the only thing I know that is somewhat comparable. Well, I guess you could say its a bit like war too. Sounds extreme, but in a way we are fighting for our lives, side by side. Not physically of course, mentally.

So to summarize: medical school is a mix between high school and war. Consequently, your relationships with the other people in your class resemble a blend of those you would expect in both scenarios.

I am overwhelmed with the fact that the human body is an incredible work of art. In fact, I believe it is the MOST artistically stunning form to ever exist on this earth. It is one that we could never create ourselves and so we must be content with attempting to restore it to the most functional and beautiful state possible. That is what physicians do: art restoration. It may sound demeaning to think of ourselves as simply restorers and not creators until you realize that we are restoring something that was formed by the hands of God. How many people can say they do that for a living? Very few. And so I am okay with not creating things of my own all the time. Besides, they are all just pale reflections of what sits across from me in an examining room anyway.

Descent

Just a couple of review sessions this morning then home to study. My good friend Paul Tran stopped by this afternoon to say hi. We talked cameras and lenses briefly. He told me he hadn’t been taking many photos lately which makes me sad because he’s a good photographer. Then I realized I hadn’t concentrated on photography in a while either. It’s a shame because I really love that medium. I think on tuesday, after my test I’ll try to take some photos outside.

This morning in On Doctoring we watched clips from the film Babel to supplement our behavioral medicine class. I only saw this movie once, a long time ago, but I really like it.

Other events of the day included: a hilarious lecture in behavioral medicine and one that was quite serious on the subject of death and dying, a PD skills workshop that taught us how to give mini-mental exams and sensation tests to our patients and memorizing the innervations of the lumbosacral plexus. There is SO much to memorize. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. On a funny note, the professor who lectured on death and dying was named Carlos Santana. Yes, he was hispanic. No, he did not give the entire lecture via sick guitar solos as myself and several others in the class had hoped.

And on a serious note, I started following the news about the earthquake relief effort in Haiti. I never pay attention to the news but this event has really gotten to me. It is tragic in a uniquely terrible way. Before the earthquake on tuesday, 80% of the population of Haiti lived in poverty. Now about 3 million more are homeless and injured and at least 50,000 are dead. Before I started college I had the opportunity to visit the Dominican Republic to do mission work for a week. During that trip we traveled down the border of Haiti to small poverty stricken villages to feed people. I remember the children most, small and black and naked running through the grass. We traveled all around the Dominican while I was there but by far the most devastatingly poor areas were the small Haitian villages on the border. Watching video and viewing photos of what’s going on down there right now has done something to me. It’s given me courage I think. Courage and resilience to accomplish what is before me. The thing is, they don’t need musicians in Haiti right now. They need doctors. And more than anything at this moment I wish I were already one so I could fly down and do something worthwhile. But I know there will be more earthquakes. And hurricanes. And wildfires. And I want to be there to make a difference.
The only way for me to do that is to finish medical school.

Two hours of behavioral medicine “lecture” is not a bad way to start your day when the professor is pretty much guaranteed to say something awkwardly inappropriate every 10 minutes. It remains the only class where I don’t constantly check the time to see when it will be over.

I studied for a few hours until lunch in the histo lab and then after lunch till 6:30 in the library with Polley and then after dinner till 11 in the histo lab again. That is the life of a real med student. Eating and studying and eating and studying and well you get the idea. It took about seven hours to just go through one, 68 minute lecture on the Lumbosacral plexus thoroughly. Yes, SEVEN HOURS. From after lunch till 9 with a meal in between. Insane. I will say though, probably the only reason I did not fall asleep on a desk in the library today is because Polley was there doing her homework beside me. I think it is rare that a significant other will typically do anything but distract a medical student so in this case I pretty much hit the jackpot :)

Finally tonight, I put together a short list of objectives to complete in the spring for my medical humanities scholarly concentration. I didn’t really want to do this but my faculty leader was so vague on what she wanted and after I sent her a page about the art I have been contemplating recently she sent me a two line email saying she wanted 5 specific goals handed in during tomorrow’s class. What should these goals be concerned with? Your guess is as good as mine. Basically I tried to maneuver my way into doing as little extra work as possible outside of my classes because I am much more concerned with actually passing those than satisfying some obscure, unwritten requirement for my humanities concentration so I included things I’m doing already except for that last one which has just kind of been on my mind for a while and will probably be the least time consuming.

1.Successfully organize, advertise, and conduct the first screening for the USF COM Alternative Film Series around the end of February.

2.Successfully organize, advertise, and conduct the second screening for the USF COM Alternative Film Series around the end of April.

3.Continue and complete first year of writing daily in blog format about art and medicine.

4.Complete writing and organizing set of five songs using medical imagery to be recorded before the start of second year.

5.Conceive and initiate work on plan to infuse the 1st and 2nd year histology labs with original art.

LCE was pretty stellar this morning. I was able to perform two more lung biopsies with my LCE doctor. What’s strange though is I think I actually like doing rounds more than the bronchoscopies. In rounds you get to see a new patient every every 10 minutes or so where as with bronchs you are with the same patient for around 25 minutes and most of the time you are looking at some screen showing the inside of their lungs which is cool until you realize that lungs generally all look the same on the inside. On the other hand, you can’t listen to all of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road all the way through plus some Bee Gees and Beach Boys while doing rounds! Yes, I was the DJ in the bronch lab today by default because I was the only one who brought an ipod.

The afternoon’s anatomy lab proved to be successful as Rohini, Arjun, and I managed to dissect the entire brachial plexus and ID all the nerve branches. Typically, anatomy lab is a lot of misguided wandering with a scalpel that ends in slight confusion and only a vague understanding of the structures you were looking for but this time around I think we were all able pull it off. And by it I mean learning something.

Late last night, I decided to try and be super positive about everything.
And, for today at least, it worked!

We had a great neuro clinical exercise this morning where we had to figure out where the lesion, stroke, or other problem was from a set of signs and symptoms.
Behavioral medicine in the afternoon was a hilarious, politically incorrect romp through adolescence. I’m still not sure how or what to study for in that class but at least it’s entertaining.

Then finally, in anatomy lab, I actually held a human brain.

Yes, an actual, just cut out a week ago, human brain. It was beautiful really. The brain, unlike most parts of the body, looks nearly exactly as it does in the text books and atlases. It did seem to weigh a little more than I thought though. There are probably a hundred more lines I should write on how profound and mind-blowing it was to hold someone else’s brain in my hands but to be honest, I am really tired and I have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow to do rounds at the hospital.
Like so many other moments in medical school, we are too hurried and exhausted to slow down and soak in the magnificent thing we were just a part of. Instead, I must let it allow it to gently slip away from me as I fall into a much needed sleep.

The only thing good that happened today was that I finished the last two lines of that song I was writing. Hopefully I can record it after the next test.

I had to watch a movie tonight for my On Doctoring class that was pretty lame. It’s called Pieces of April. The acting, dialog, and writing was hit or miss and the cinematography was pretty terrible all around. It just sucks that the only movie I have a legitimate reason to watch (its for class) wasn’t good.

On a final note, I more clearly defined my game plan. I think I was already doing this but I just kind of said it out loud tonight so it makes it more real:

I’m going to work my butt off for these next four months like never before and then, once this block is over, decide whether or not to drop out of medical school.

A good deal of it depends on whether I pass or not. If I pass and just have to make up molecular medicine in the summer, I will probably stay in school. If I don’t pass and have to repeat the whole year, I’m really not sure what I will do.

A good friend of our family expressed to me today that she thinks I might have lost my passion.
I don’t know what to do with that conclusion.

Study Study Study

I had a meeting with our associate dean of education today about the new alternative film series we’re starting up at the med school. He’s all for it and even offered a few suggestions. Turns out he’s some kind of connoisseur of off the wall films and independent cinema. Figures, he’s from the S.F. bay area. I also met with our associate dean of student affairs for about the fifth time. He wanted to make sure I was on the right track, as usual. I’m not even sure what the right track looks like. He asked me if I wanted to give up my position as On Doctoring liaison to which I replied that I don’t really do much for it at all so it doesn’t give me stress and I really want to keep it because I feel like it’s the one way that I can contribute to my class. I’m not good at neuro or anatomy or neuro-anatomy but I can discuss film and art for hours on end.

Overall, he was very kind and concerned and when I mentioned being depressed he suggested a few times to seek some of the free psychiatric help that the school offers us. I told him I think I’ll be fine because I have a really good support system here with all of my friends and family who have provided all the encouragement anyone could ask for lately. I swear, I could go on a killing spree and they would find something nice and supportive to say. Also, what I didn’t mention to him was that I process most of my experiences through songwriting and sometimes screenplay writing. And honestly, one reason why I don’t want to go to a therapist is that I think they would prescribe me medication and I really don’t want to take medication in any form that would alter my emotions. I don’t fault people who do but for me part of being human is experiencing pain and disappointment and yes, even depression and the thing is, I want to feel every part of the human experience with full force. That’s the real reason why I don’t get drunk or take drugs (medication or otherwise); I don’t want anything to dull the pain or ease me into a false sense of happiness. Again, I don’t fault people who do, it’s just the way I choose to live.

Earlier in the day, my friend John did a really nice thing. He wrote out about 17 encouraging Bible verses on sticky notes and placed them on my desk in a big smiley face! So cool, and a lot I had never heard of. He knows I’ve been down lately about school. The rest of the day was spent studying in the histo lab again till midnight. I see a lot of this happening from now on.

Okay. I’m starting to get my bearings back.
After two fluffy hours of behavioral medicine (which all sounds like common sense to most of us in class) in the morning, I attended the lunch time liaison meeting. The liaison meetings are kind of funny to me now because, since On Doctoring only happens once every few weeks, there’s not much for me to officially say. So I end up just chiming in on subjects as a regular student looking out for his own grades as opposed to the other liaisons who are thinking of their respective class mates when addressing the faculty members. One thing is clear: there are a lot of problems with the current system of testing/grading. Some faculty really want to work with us but it’s evident that others don’t really care much about anything but their own jobs. Speaking with the faculty members separately in the afternoon it became apparent that interdepartment politics are clogging things up. My anatomy course director was able to go over all of the test questions I didn’t understand why I got wrong. I felt that, in most of the ones we discussed, I came really close to the right answer but there was some minute detail why it was a different one that I just didn’t pick up on. It made me feel better and the course director was very encouraging. He is one of the few people around here who makes known his tremendous fascination with the complexities of the body. He has that “wonder” that was mentioned in the oath we took when we started. I spent the rest of the day (till 12:30am) in the histo lab studying and trying to rejuvenate the wonder I once had in being here.

Void

It’s like waking up from a nightmare and realizing you were never asleep.
No one has any answers. It’s really as bad as you thought.
This is your life falling through the cracks. Cracks that are the size of the Grand Canyon.
Thank God for moms who make you sandwiches, girlfriends who bring you hot chocolate and best friends who will hug you at the door for as long as you want. None of them have answers, but they will hold you just long enough so you can feel the heat from inside their chest start to seep into yours. And then they’re gone and you’re in the dark, frigid house alone again.

I sat in a meeting at lunch today for Christian medical students as everyone tried to answer the question “How do you know you are following God’s will for your life?”. When it got to me, I told them honestly I didn’t have an answer for that anymore and that I would have if they had asked me a year ago.

Later I went to the professional at the learning center again and watched her from across the table as she tried for 45 minutes to avoid telling me what we both knew she ultimately had to confess: “I don’t think there’s anything else we can do”.

I feel completely incapable and entirely unhappy.

I have never wanted to quit so much in my life.

I am finally starting to grasp the practical aspect of the art of elimination. It was something that Rob Bell spoke about a few months ago when I saw him give a speech at the performing arts center downtown. By the time I go to bed tonight I will have been awake for about 16 hours and out of that I am estimating about 13 of them were spent actively engaged in some kind of medical material either while I was sitting in class or studying. I was able to study some during lunch and after class with my friend Valerie and then on my own after she left, through dinner and up to now. The six hours of lecture today were long but bearable especially because I was sitting next to my friend Kimberly the whole time. I am hoping for more days like this. Days where I can work hard, stay awake, and feel like I grasped some significant piece of knowledge by the time I go to bed. All I want is the opportunity to work hard, the strength to keep doing so and the encouragement that comes from slow but steady and visible progress. I think that’s really all I ever wanted.

Today was cold. Very cold. But it was the perfect day to work on songwriting. So I sat at the piano and hammered out a few verses and chorus that seems too simplistic to me so I’m gonna push myself to write a better one later and not settle. The good thing is, this song will have piano, drums, and lead guitar like “Winter of ‘83” and that’s the direction I was hoping to go in. The bad thing is I don’t know when I will get a chance to record it.

In filmmaking news, Sarah Wilson and I checked out a house today that a friend of my family owns for the interior locations we need.

I’ve decided these next two weeks before I take test three for this block will contain very minimal social interaction. It will be passing interaction only really unless I decided to eat with someone else.

Medical school has been a constant cycle of death and rebirth for me. It’s a cycle that usually is synced with the test cycle but sometimes more frequent. Recent observations of the people around me make me believe that most of them don’t really understand the extreme highs and lows that I go through on a daily basis. I am frequently depressed. Seriously depressed. Not suicidal depressed but considering packing a backpack, buying a plane ticket, and not telling anyone where I’m going depressed. Dropping out of medical school depressed. Probably clinically depressed but I haven’t reached that point in my education so I can’t give a definite self-diagnosis. I am also happy. Really happy on occasion. Happy in circumstances most people find odd or in an abundance that others find peculiar or are put off by. I think I value the time I spend with people far greater than I used too, far greater than perhaps they value the time they spend with me. Because it is so precious to me, so rare to spend any amount of extended time enjoying someone instead of studying science. It is so precious in fact that I will do things and go places I wouldn’t normally do and go when I have a break just so I can be with those people. And again, I think many of them are blind to that fact but I do not fault them because they aren’t in my shoes. Their hearts do not yearn for normal, easy, human interaction like mine does because they have not been deprived of it.

I am a third world country. A country filled with hunger, starvation, restlessness and instability. Parts of me are eroding and falling off into the sea as I speak. You can tell there was once a sort of grandeur about the place, some remaining classic architecture pokes out from under the overgrown vines. Now, there are tin shacks and dirt roads that the elements of my soul have been displaced to when their fine palaces were sold off to a corporate monster only to fall into disrepair from improper and disuse. From my mountains I can see the wealthy nations of the world with their innumerable hours and fruitless distractions running on and on into an infinity of meaninglessness and I envy them. Every once in a great while a diplomat reaches my shores and extends a lengthy greeting and blessings and in return I offer a glimpse of the poverty I am now seeped in. I give a tour of my ravaged beaches, my corrupt policies, my violent militias. And they leave, sober, questions answered, more confident in the path they’ve chosen or in their lack thereof. I cry as they leave my shores. I sob. I mourn my outcast state. I watch from my mountains as they make their way back to their wealthy nations and forget. Oh how quickly they forget! But I do not hold it against them. My loneliness, my wretched state, is a result of my own determination to place myself here, at the intersection of failure and doubt. It is an intersection disguised as success and ambition, an intersection of the most dangerous kind. It is a place that ruins lives.

For the next two and a half weeks I will be a ghost. I will quietly pass through walls bearing name tags of the people I love the most.

Here are my top 15 favorite albums of 2009:
1. St. Vincent – Actor
2. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
3. Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything To Nothing
4. Sleeping At Last – Storyboards
5. Sufjan Stevens – The BQE
6. MuteMath – Armistice
7. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
9. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Vs. Children
10. Kevin Devine – Brother’s Blood
11. Tegan and Sara – Sainthood
12. Fun. – Aim and Ignite
13. David Bazan – Curse Your Branches
14. Miniature Tigers – Tell It to the Volcano
15. The Von Bondies – Love, Hate, and Then There’s You

Of course this is a list of what I think were the BEST records of 2009, not just my favorite, but when you say that you tend to ruffle feathers a bit. I’m sure no one agrees with me and I don’t expect them too. This is more for just documentation purposes.
I went to ybor with Nick today to do the art walk where they open all the galleries and invite you in. It was fun and we met a couple interesting artists. Then, once again, I was supposed to film the horses for the Outwatch the Bear video but the guy who owns them wouldn’t call me back. I think it’s time to reconsider my options.

Kicking off the new year right, I went over to Sarah Wilson’s house in the morning to storyboard one of the most tricky scenes in the film with her and our director of photography, Colin. It was nice to finally work with Colin after hearing about him and storyboarding on our own. He obviously has a much larger grasp on lighting techniques than I do and throws out some terms that Sarah and I don’t quite understand but never in a condescending way. He is in film school and thus is required to posses such knowledge. It went well and we were able to use a camera to really see how the scene would flow. I told Colin that I would most likely not be on set at all because of school and I think he was kind of surprised. Sarah helped me explain, I am in medical school. As much as it will kill me to not be on set though, I think my job as associate producer is not vital during actual production. Pre-production, yes, but on set we will have sufficient team made up of people who I have a lot of faith in so I’m not worried. But it sure would be a lot of fun to be there. I’m still not exactly sure where my role as assistant art director will play out though. Talking to Sarah later, we both concluded that we had really gotten a lot done on this break. And that’s good for me because I plan on working non-stop at school starting monday.

Fire Works

New Years Eve included half a day of working on the new film with decent results. First wardrobe shopping with Nick Cakouros and Sarah Wilson during which we found various return policies that may allow us to buy nice costumes and return them without spending anything really. Also, we found a really nice white jacket for Nick’s character. In the afternoon, we decided to check out a blue house in Dan’s neighborhood to see if we could shoot an exterior scene there. A little girl (about 9) came to the door and told us her parents weren’t home. Sarah gave her an info sheet to give to them and told her we were making a movie and would like to use her house in it. The little girl was so excited, she told us she thought her parents would approve. Then, after looking at a house two doors down and walking back to our cars, the little girl ran out of our house to ask us if she could be in the movie if we were allowed to film at her house. Sarah responded with a yes of course and the girl continued to indicate how she would like her name to be mentioned in the credits. It was all very cute and watching Sarah speak to her on the lawn was like watching some three time Superbowl winner sign autographs during a practice. It felt like we were part of a real film production crew. People were actually excited to be working with us. I know it was just a little girl and we may never even use the house but it’s just an odd feeling for us as young, student filmmakers who are constantly begging people to let us shoot on their property or give us permission to use music or borrow equipment to meet someone who is actually excited about what we’re doing. It doesn’t matter if she was 9 or 49, it’s that someone in the community is actually excited about the art that we’re creating and, believe it or not, that’s a rare thing.
In closing, fireworks are quite hard to capture accurately with my camera.