The Culprit Life

Today I physically examined four adorable and well behaved little girls. Well, the one that was 5 days old was crying but its okay because she was new to this whole eating and breathing with lungs thing.
Seriously though, this whole pediatrics business is swaying my loyalty to surgery. Who wants to cut through a 47 year old’s fat deposits when you can pass out Dora the Explorer stickers to five year old girls after you listen to their lungs all day?!?! Pediatrics for the win!

Also in LCE today, I watched as 10 year old boy (who was about as big as a 16 year old) kicked and screamed while four nurses and a doctor held him down to give him a chicken pox vaccine. I was amazed at how my doctor remained upbeat and positive in the room and only became really serious at one point. It’s the dark side of pediatrics but it’s made a whole lot lighter with a positive, well trained staff.

But the real thing I took away from LCE today wasn’t even from my own experience. It was from the stories my LCE doctor told me as we sat in his office. It was like reading an award winning memoir. Medicine has a rich artistic and spiritual heritage and the three often intertwine so closely, both in history and in every day life, that it’s hard to tell whether someone is a physician, an artist, or a priest. I would argue that often they are all three to the patients they see. I wont get into everything that my LCE doctor told me but I will say that after hearing some of his stories I realized that when I become a physician, my being a Christian will allow me to experience and enjoy a whole aspect of medicine that perhaps many others are not able to. My connection with my patients will run far deeper than a simple exchange of scientific knowledge. I will be apt to pay close attention to all types of maladies present whether they be of the mind, the body, or the soul. By naturally being sensitive to the spiritual needs of my patients, I will be better equipped to navigate their situation and ease their concerns. This isn’t to say doctors who are not as personally focused on spirituality will not be excellent at what they do. I’m just relaying that I feel as though (and am happy that) the importance I place on spirituality personally will give me the opportunity engage in a unique relationship with my patients.

If for nothing else, the experiences doctors collect make it the most incredible profession in the world. I think most doctors are or become good story tellers. It makes sense. We’re trained to think in terms of a story. We don’t have questions on our tests that say “list the 5 types of necrosis”. We have questions that say “a scuba diver was 50 feet under water when she got scared and rushed to the surface. she experienced pain in her joints and …etc”. Why? Because our lives are stories and when people come to you as a doctor they are going to tell you a story in which they are the protagonist. They aren’t going to say “Doctor, the billirubin in my blood is markedly unconjugated and my hematocrit is at 30!”. Usually.

There were so many stories, so many powerful moments relayed to me today, I will not do them the injustice of trying to recount them in a haphazard manner. But I will mention one recent occurrence that my LCE doc told me about. He said he recently treated a boy who’s mother opened up to him about the loss of another son in a terrible accident. To make a long story short, the doctor ended up introducing this mother to another mother who’s children he had treated and who also had lost a son in a terrible accident many years before.
This is the real reason I think pediatrics is wooing me. Being a pediatrician means you get to do things like this. You get to foster community, real community between people that are hurting. And you get to form relationships with those people and their families. You play a pivotal role in the lives of hundreds (or thousands) of people on a day to day basis because (as my LCE doc so cleverly explained) you not only see them when they are sick, but you see them when they are well. I think very few doctors can say that. As far as I can deduce, in most surgical fields you don’t really build any substantial relationship with your patients or their families. In fact most of the time you spend with them they are unconscious. That’s a good thing because if they weren’t, you probably wouldn’t be able to heal them. Contrast this with pediatrics where your relationship with the patient, the way you communicate with them, could very well save their lives. In one relationships almost get in the way of healing; in the other, relationships play a central role in the healing. This is huge.

Of course that isn’t true of all surgical practice or pediatric practice for that matter, it’s just a very surface type observation. And here is where my decision gets complicated: while the relationship aspect of pediatrics seems to completely blow away the relationship aspect of surgery, the actual medicine involved (for me anyway) is somewhat boring in pediatrics and in surgery it’s anything but. When I’m in an operating room my blood is pumping, my heart rate’s up, I’m so excited and engaged I could stand there for literally 10 hours and never once complain. When I’m in the pediatric office I saunter around, occasionally jot down a drug name or two in my notebook, look in some kids ear… it’s dull. I mean it’s interesting, it really is, but compared to the procedures you get to perform in surgery, the pure medical aspect of pediatrics will put me in a coma. That’s not to say pediatricians don’t help just as many people or that what they do is any less important or less difficult. It’s just how I feel about the medicine involved.

This may very well be the most difficult decision of my life.

The test was… a test.
Of course it was hard, they’re always hard.
After leaving the 2hour 45minute individual portion I didn’t think it was too bad. But then when I got to the group test, I noticed there were a lot of questions I got wrong for no other reason than I think I was just anxious and put down the wrong answer when I clearly knew the right one. I think I prepared adequately for this exam, it just psyched me out in the end. Now there is nothing to do but slowly wait for the answers to come in. Promised time of arrival: 3 days. Estimated time of arrival: a week and a half.

I’ve learned over the years that when inspiration comes it’s usually inconvenient and, for me, downright disruptive. So I probably shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that in roughly an hour today, on the eve of my first exam of 2nd year, I created and scribbled down an entire six page screenplay for a new short film (minus some dialog that I’ll have to come up with later).
Why do my finest, most creative ideas decide to reveal themselves in the moments when I am the most stressed, in the moments when I need most to be free from them? I’m not sure I’ll ever know. What I do know is that when inspiration comes you have to let it consume you, if only for a brief time because you usually can’t tell when it’s going to come again. So I will stand by my decision to let my mind create worlds that have nothing to do with science for an hour today. I did muster enough self control to prevent myself from writing a good portion of the dialog which I feel I definitely could have done if it hadn’t of been for my need to study. Speaking of dialog, I love writing it. I feel like you almost have to be a little bit schizophrenic to do it too. You have to totally become another character for a moment, a character that only exists in your head, and then the next moment switch to a completely different character and back and forth until you have a realistic conversation. I don’t think there’s another experience quite like it in normal, non-disease ridden minds.

There is a lot more pharmacology on this test than I am apt to like. I realized it late yesterday and am just now feeling a little more in control of the material.

Adios tabula rasa.

Study Study Study

Timelapse Tree (Goodbye Old Friend)

I went to class for 4 straight hours this morning. 8 to 12. Actually 8 to 11:30 (Path Lab let out early). And although the first class was an immuno small group and the second class was a case study review of information we had already covered and the last hour and a half was a mandatory path lab, I’m still proud of myself for going. It’s a record for this year I think.

The previous paragraph expresses my unfounded, false, underlying feeling that I should feel guilty because I don’t attend class live. The truth is, people who watch lectures online just learn differently than people who attend live. Also, we are just trying to be more efficient. I don’t know. Maybe you could argue we aren’t able to focus as well or aren’t inquisitive enough to show up and ask questions. But I think we’re just different. And different is good. Sometimes. But maybe not in med school. I don’t know.

Tonight, my little sib in the class of 2014 gave up going to class. One week into her lectures.
I couldn’t be more proud. She quickly figured out that is wasn’t the way she learned best and didn’t let peer pressure or paranoia propagated by the faculty (even if they are well intentioned) stand in the way of acquiring information in the best way possible for her. It took me about 4 months to figure the same thing out and have the courage to do it.

Sometimes people get looked down on in medical school because they go about things a different way. The faculty is forever encouraging us to go to class and make it seem like if you don’t go you’re some sort of slacker. That’s wrong. There is a reason video lectures are provided. If a good amount of educators didn’t think there was then they wouldn’t be. But they are. So stop making us feel like we aren’t busting our butts like everyone else just because we study differently.


Different is not worse.
Different is not better.

Different is different.

This is getting hard.
Really hard.
I heard about some guy in a story today that got harpooned.
Remind me later to write that into my autobiography.

We had a pharmacology lecture today where they dropped a bunch of drug names on us to memorize. Five days before the test. Nice timing faculty.
There was a really good case study lecture for pathology that I’m glad I showed up for because it actually made me feel like I knew something and taught me a few things at the same time. Rarely does going to class ever produce those results.
In the afternoon, I went to a physical diagnosis review session where they explained just about everything we needed to do for our big evaluation that’s coming up. Basically we’re responsible for giving a whole physical exam minus the neuro and history in about 30 minutes. Not impossible but definitely a challenge.
And EBCP continues to be the largest waste of time of any class devised this century.
That’s an evidence based conclusion. In case you were wondering.

In fun news, I wrote the first few lyrics for what will possibly be the first song to make it onto the Year Two EP. And I discovered another new equation working in my life today: the number of days left before a test is inversely proportional to the percentage of medical terminology that finds its way into my lyrics. I think it’s the stress that brings it out.
And right about now, things are getting really, really stressful.

I love kids.

Absolutely. 100%. Love. Them.

My first pediatrics rotation by all practical standards would seem pretty low key and frankly boring to most and I would be tempted to think so too except for one thing.
The kids.

My new LCE doctor is a hispanic pediatrician who collects Mexican traditional catholic folk art and displays it in his clinic and office. That in itself is remarkable and we probably literally took half the time we spent today to talk about his collection. That aside, I noticed today that the work he does may seem routine but it means the world to the parents of the children he sees. Pretty much everyone of them I interacted with made a comment about how much they loved the doctor and how they can’t imagine their kids or grand kids going to anyone else. Some families had multiple generations going to see him. I guess when people find a good pediatrician they tend to stick with them.

I met a lot of the other healthcare workers in the office as well. It’s a new facility run by a group of people who seem like they’ve known each other for ages. There was the usual behind the scenes medical action: misrun tests, slightly inappropriate jokes, a dialog that brought to the surface the incredibly strong liberal and conservative points of view held in this profession, and the explanation of medication choices/treatment plans by the doctor to those of us with far less knowledge (primarily myself). But all of this with the added touch of a pediatric office: lollipops by the door, stickers being handed out, staff judging a child’s behavior by evaluating to what degree they scream when you stick a needle in them. Good stuff.

While I wont say that I feel completely at home in this environment yet, I am starting to recognize and enjoy the unique atmosphere created while in the company of physicians who are working to restore the health of a group of their fellow human beings. I can’t quite put it into words (at least not into the short amount that I am able to write before I fall asleep) but it’s like, to quote an excellent review of an indie band I once heard, doctors have “one foot in the library and one foot on the dance floor”. At least most of the ones I have been around up until this point.

But anyway, getting back to the kids, I really enjoyed watching them stumble around, talking to them about the toy trucks they had brought with them and attempting to sway their delicate emotional pendulums a little closer to smiling and a little farther away from crying hysterically. Overall, they are approximately 50 times more fun to be around than adults and I believe by the end of this rotation I will come up with some evidence based formula that says the height of the patient is inversely proportional to the amount of enjoyment that comes from interacting with them.

Oh and I would regret leaving out that at one point in the day, I heard we were about to see a 23 year old patient next. I thought it was a little odd that a 23 year old male would still be going to a pediatrician but when I walked in the exam room I found none other than my filmmaking friend, Andy Nguyen, sitting in a chair getting his finger pricked by the nurse. Awesome and hilarious. Apparently he and his two brothers, Dan and Aiden (Dan was in the waiting room), have been going to my LCE doc for ages. They’re all pretty healthy but they come in once a year for a check up. Nice timing gentlemen.

Needless to say, LCE was the highlight of my day, but I did have a really good small group meeting for immunology in the afternoon as well as a good study session in the library followed by eating ramen for dinner in the med school kitchen around 8 like a true college student.

So lately I’ve been pretty much nocturnal. Since I only watch lectures online (and since they aren’t actually uploaded till around 4pm every day) I stay up till about 3am studying and don’t wake up till about 10 or 10:30am (which is okay because I don’t have to be up early to go to classes). Everything’s been working out well like that for the last couple weeks but tomorrow LCE starts and that means that every tuesday I will have to be up around 7:30 or 8am which throws a big monkey wrench into my now normal pattern of living. I guess I could go to bed early and then wake up earlier to finish watching lectures but I have this thing about watching the lectures the same day they are given. I don’t know what it is but I feel majorly behind if I don’t get them all in that same day. So I’m predicting I will be feeling pretty tired every tuesday morning. Maybe I should start drinking coffee… Na.

Study Study Study

So Fresh and So Clean

When the new first year class took the stage during their White Coat Ceremony, I thought I would feel inspired, rejuvenated even. Instead, I realized just how jaded I had become over the past year. I was happy for them, yes, but my overwhelming thought was of how young, idealistic, and naive they all looked. I think I’ve aged by about a decade in the last year. I felt like a big brother who had come back from war only to see his little brother about to be shipped off to the same war. I found myself unable to connect to their bright and shining faces, to their optimistic grins. I empathized instead with their future selves, with the inevitable sadness, loss of self worth, feelings of incapability, and disillusionment many of them will experience in just a few months. And all of their parents, their aunts and uncles, their boyfriends and fiances and wives, all of them smiling and taking photos, drinking punch, eating cookies. They have no idea. No one has any idea.
If I sound grim it is because I have seen grim things. I have seen young men and women pushed to their mental limit, stripped of their youth, and denied the spirit of ease which is all but entitled to most at their age. I have seen myself, and the shadows of others, brace ourselves for the worst only to find out we had no idea how bad it could get. We have been knocked down, kicked, and allowed to rise to our knees only to be thrown flat on our faces again. It is a war, make no mistake about it. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, your future, your sanity, your character, and your humanity are on the line. Every week. Vacations, breaks, sleep, they are all illusions. You will be chained to this thing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the next four years. And that’s if you’re lucky. It could be five or six.
There was a statistic given by the guest speaker during the ceremony. He said that physicians make up about 0.25% of the population of the U.S. That means that about 750 thousand people are charged with the responsibility of providing for the physical well being of over 300 million people.
It is a tremendous burden and a humbling honor.
And if the four years leading up to the time when you join that 750 thousand are presented to you as anything but a monumental sacrifice, you are being lied to.

Later in the afternoon, I tracked some more violin with Emily. She has wonderful ideas for harmonies and such. I think we are getting very good at writing music together. Also, we recorded a violin part I wrote for her that comes toward the end of the album and it sounds incredible. When she picked up her bow and started playing it sounded just like I thought it would sound in my head when I wrote it which is a far cry from how it sounds with the synthesizer I used to document the notes for it. Maybe I am getting better at writing strings on my own too.

More studying, all day. Also, thinking about buying or at least borrowing a tripod. I should have one by now but honestly, I’d rarely use it. That’s why I haven’t felt compelled to get one for myself.

Nothing much to report here except another 6 hour dose of lectures, two of which were from the Evidence Based course. They were better than the previous two as far as interest and lecture quality goes but just because a lecture is bearable or entertaining doesn’t mean it should be included in the course load. It was filled with more research statistic tools that I don’t see myself using in any practical way for at least another 8 years.
Do you know what the difference is between educationally relevant material and fluff information?
Often, it’s the same as the difference between being able to save someone’s life and watching them die in front of you.
Timing.

Today was our first day of a class called Evidence Based Clinical Practice. I of course watched it sped up on the computer and I’m glad I did. The entire two hours of lecture was focused on case study, research related items that we would only use if: one, we were heading up our own research study somewhere, or two, we were attending physicians already who needed to read literature and determine what new tests may be beneficial to our patients. As you might have guessed, none of us fit into either of those categories (and probably wont for at least another 6 years) so the class seemed to me at least to be another massive waste of time. Here’s the deal, from now until after our 3, 4, 5, or 6 year residencies are over, we aren’t going to be calling any shots. We’re going to be taking orders. We aren’t going to be the ones to decide if one new screening test should be implemented over another one in our hospitals. We’re going to be performing whatever tests our attending physicians tell us to perform. So why teach us all of the things we need to make those kinds of decisions 6, 7, 8, or 9 years before we actually sit down to make them? The answer probably has something to do with scheduling or money or some other aspect of graduate education that has absolutely nothing to do with ACTUAL education. I’m not saying that this material isn’t important, or is irrelevant. The truth is that it’s very important to us as future doctors. So important in fact that it is ridiculous and probably dangerous to be showing us this type of information so many years before we will actually use it. Who is really going to remember all of this 8 years from now, especially when it is being taught along side such fundamental and time consuming subjects as immunology, pathology, and pharmacology??? I would venture to say very, very few. And that could mean that future attendings, who have forgotten how to distinguish a valid, evidence based journal article from a deeply flawed one, may one day base some of their practices off of the findings of erroneous studies and consequently put their patients at risk. This information is simply not necessary at this point in our medical education. But it will be necessary later in our careers and the logical time to present it would be around 5 years from now when we will need to start thinking about this. Otherwise the only thing our medical schools are creating with this course is a bunch of temporaily well informed readers of CNN Health. Oh and apart from being exceedingly boring these first two lectures were also generally a review of a couple points explained to us in Physical Diagnosis last year about how to determine if a test should be used. I’ve said before that I don’t intend for there to be so much complaining in this blog, and I really wish there wasn’t, but if there is something I notice that seems ridiculous about the way future doctors are being educated in this country, I’m going to say something about it. I call ‘em like I see ‘em.

In the morning, I watched my last lecture from the previous day about inflammation. Now I think I can officially say that the hammer has swung on second year. I’m about up to my shoulders in terms that I have never heard of before and expect to be fully submerged by the end of next week.

In the afternoon, despite the rain and financial red tape of trying to rent a wireless microphone from a state university, I managed to film the first anatomy video in a series I will be working on this year with the program’s course director. It’s a simple tour guide like intro to the environment of the cadaver lab that will be shown to all first years before they start. At night I edited it and slept while it exported. Now I understand while all of my filmmaking friends are always posting facebook updates about how they’re currently trapped in exporting purgatory.

Another problem solving session. This one with 100% more old school graph plotting. I feel like I’m in 10th grade. Really med school? Are we being reduced to menial high school exercises? Whatever. At least the problems weren’t too bad. What is bad is coming home to 6 lectures to watch. Here’s something I don’t understand, if the technology is there to record all of our lectures and put them online at around 5pm every day, shouldn’t we be able to put the lectures that started at 8am up online by at least noon for the HALF of the class that chooses to watch lectures virtually? That would be too much too ask. Or maybe the technology isn’t available yet. And by technology I mean the motivation of the person who is clearly not doing their job effectively in the IT department.

Today’s lecture highlights included one on HLA that was complete fluff and equivalent to studying the dewy decimal system and an immuno lecture that took half an hour to tell me 4 points that were all on one slide 3/4 of the way through the powerpoint. If there is one thing med students don’t like, it’s people wasting our time.

We had a pharmacology problem solving session today that was only graded for participation but did freak some of us out a little. We have to know how to do a lot of calculations. We worked in groups though so that was nice.
In other news, Joyce gave me all the files she could find on her and Dan’s Mac I was using to edit the Outwatch the Bear videos. It feels good to have everything all in one place.

I played a couple acoustic songs at my friend Joyce’s going away party tonight. And then later, I finished writing two short scenes for my screenplay. Other than that, just studying today. I actually read a good deal about pathology that will be taught to us this week. For once I am ahead of the game! It’s an odd feeling. When you’re in med school (or some other graduate programs from what I hear) you always have that voice in the back of your head that whispers “am I doing all that I can do?”. Right now, it feels like I’ve made the absolute most I could have out of this weekend studying wise even though on paper it appears that I did a lot of non-medical things. It’s weird. But I think we just didn’t have that much material this past week to where I couldn’t cover it all several times before the weekend was over. Maybe I’m becoming more efficient or more focused. I don’t know. Maybe the heavy hammer of second year just hasn’t hit quite yet. Yeah, that’s probably it.

I studied a lot and then my friend Grace came over and we recorded about 70% of the cello on the new EP. It was a pretty stellar experience as Grace is one of the finest musicians I’ve ever worked with and quiet possibly the most knowledgeable when it comes to composition. She has a masters in cello. Anyway, it was one of the most high yielding recording sessions I’ve ever had as we flew through 3 songs in probably an hour and half. Grace is one of those few classically trained musicians who has pop and folk songwriting sensibility so I value her opinion a lot when it comes to the placement of certain things on a song. Also, she spoke highly of Emily who is performing most of the violin on the record.

In med school news, I’ve been coming up with some ridiculously awesome stories to help me memorize all this science I’ve been learning. I’m keeping them all in this yellow spiral folder. At night I went to the college of medicine’s annual 80’s party for a little bit which was pretty exciting minus the part where they stopped playing 80’s music for a while. I missed it last year so I figured I would check it out and I’m glad to say all the shenanigans, outfits, and drunk first years lived up to the hype.

We had our first pathology lab today. I think it was better than our histo labs because it was more organized and we actually went through a case that was related to all of the images we were looking at which made it clinically relevant as opposed to a purely scientific endeavor. At night I recorded some more vocals that I may or may not keep for the new album.

We had a short session in physical diagnosis today on how to break bad news to patients such as cancer, death, or medical error. Some of my classmates acted as the patients while the instructor acted as the physician. The whole thing was interesting and somewhat helpful but I think there is another time when they teach us more about this kind of thing in 4th year from an ocological surgeon.

Later, in between watching lectures, I caught most of the live youtube stream of Arcade Fire performing at Madison Square Garden in NYC. Holy crap. That is one heck of a band. Not that I didn’t already know that but really, unbelievable. Of course it helps that they had 9 people on stage doing various things to keep your attention and a video screen to boot. It just affirmed my lack of desire to play any live shows unless I get to do them the way I want to do them which would require planning, practicing, and people; three things I’m typically incapable of producing due to lack of time mostly. So I’m thinking throughout the rest of med school I’ll probably only play maybe three more shows with a backing band. And I’m actually fine with that. Quality over quantity. I’d rather have a set of EPs by fourth year than a set of video clips of me playing with a band at various places.

I finally got in touch with my new LCE doctor today. He’s a pediatrician! I’m so excited to actually be working with kids for once (in med school). And I’ve heard good things about him from some people in my class.

I had a little time so I tried recording some guitar for the song “Half the Man”. No matter how many takes I did, I just couldn’t seem to get the sound out of the acoustic that I wanted to. So I recorded vocals for “The Proper Way to Raise the Dead” and had a similar issue. Sometimes the microphone seems incapable of capturing the emotion of a song. “Half the Man” worries me the most because, in a way, it’s probably the most emotionally charged song I’ve written and that doesn’t seem to be getting across. I may try something different with it eventually. Right now I’m just disappointed.

I went to about half of my lectures today and watched the other half at home. It’s way more efficient to watch them at home because I can speed them up, pause when I want to and take great notes the first time. I’m really glad I figured out that this works for me last year that way I can start on the right track this year. So far, everything I’m studying is really interesting. That moment came only after 3 months last year (when we finished with molecular medicine). It’s nice to reach a point where you’re studying what you really want to be studying all the time. I have a feeling this comes a lot sooner for most other professions.

In the Studio 8

As you can see, Emily came over tonight and tracked violin. We got two songs done. There are three more to go. This was the last guilt free recording session of the year seeing as how the 2nd year of med school proper starts tomorrow. Today was basically one big orientation marked by hour long introductions to classes that could have been 10 minutes each and a surprise TB test at the end of the day. I was at school from before 7:30am to about 5:15pm. Way. Too. Long.

But I did have a good time eating lunch with my “little” today. Each year, the 2nd year class is paired with “little siblings” from the incoming 1st year class so they can kind of guide them by the hand into this monstrosity of an academic environment we call med school. Typically, each student fills out a questionnaire that helps the people pairing you (volunteers from the 2nd year class) match you up with someone they deem appropriate. My little is an art studio major from Boston who happens to be really sincere and down to earth. Definitely the kind of empathetic personality I expect and am glad that USF accepts. Also, the kind of person I thought I would be paired up with because I am the token art kid in my class. Not complaining, just kind of a weird reputation I’ve picked up apparently. I can’t even really draw. Anyway, I think it’s a pretty awesome match and I’m looking forward to helping out in whatever way I can. My experience last year with my “big” wasn’t that great, I didn’t even talk to the guy after the first day really but I think it’s mostly my fault because I was pretty apathetic to the idea at the time and didn’t ask that many questions. This time around I get to make a small difference in someone else’s experience, an endeavor which brings a smile to my face and seems kind of odd to be honest. I never thought I’d be in any position to give advice about how to survive in med school to anybody.

The following is a photo I took of the largest single check I’ve ever signed my name to.

Yep. That’s one semester of a U.S. medical education. At this time, please feel free to erase all of your previously conceived notions of how rich physicians are and why they get paid so much in this country.

Best quote of the day goes to one of the now 3rd year students on a discussion panel we listened to. In reference to 2nd year he said something like:
“It’s the most important year in medical school”.

Awesome. Now lets hope I don’t goof this up.

In the Studio 7

Kevin and I did a lot of scattered recording today. We tracked pretty much all the bass on the album, all of the bells, and some acoustic rhythm guitar. We did nearly all we could do without the help of additional musicians (violinist, cellist, trumpet player). Of course I still have to do the vocals but that’s another story.

Tonight I watched the 1954 film, Seven Samurai and there’s only one word for it: EPIC.
Seriously, one of the most brilliant films ever made. The story is fantastic, the characters are memorable, and the whole thing is executed to well you have a hard time believing they made it in the 50’s. It’s the only film I’ve ever seen where I immediately wanted to buy a poster of it when it was finished. It was oddly inspirational.
And now it looks like it’s about time to start my second year of medical school. There was a time (okay, a lot of times) when I thought this day would never come. Seriously, I thought I would drop out or flunk out or have a premature heart attack because of all the stress and die (although I think they would award me an honorary MD if that happened, there’s an upside to everything). But low and behold I’ve made it. Of course not on my own and not without the help of countless others both divine and mortal. But I’m here. Second year. Crazy.
I think I’m actually looking forward to it a little bit. As weird as that sounds.
I’m sure there will come a time when I will kick myself for saying that.

But nevertheless…
I love beginnings, and this is the beginning of the middle.
A chance to start clean.
Or nearly clean.

Tabula Rasa

No recording done today but I did manage to pick up a first edition of Dave Eggers’ You Shall Know our Velocity for $8! It’s published solely by McSweeney’s which is cool because all subsequent editions are published solely by Vintage Books. I also bought The Chicago Way by Micheal Harvey. I’ve really been wanting to read both of these for quite some time and I don’t know when I will get the chance but I’m glad to have them in my bookshelf at least.

Another fun thing, I finished a small mixed media painting for my friend Krista today. I’m pretty sure this is the first painting I’ve ever done (besides maybe finger paints in K-5) and even though it wasn’t a strict painting (i used some newspaper, sheet music and marker as well) it felt neat to make something like that.

Finished recording piano today with Trey. I’m pretty happy with all of it. Good times.