Missing This

I write to you now, briefly, as someone who has dis- and then re- appeared.

I have successfully completed the final two years of medical school.  Most people view the two clinical years as the most interesting years of medical school.  I think I agree with that.

I have gone through the process of applying for a competitive specialty.  I have gone through the match.  I have landed a job.  And I have thinkings about all of it which I’d love to share.

I probably will.

For those of you that still check back to this space, that still wonder “what the hell happened?!”, this is for you.  What do you want to know?

Whatever you suggest, I will address.  Be my impetus.

I can’t wait to start – topher.

Keeping busy.

I am still writing.  I have a bank of stories that I’m going to release after the Match about everything that has happened over the last two years.  With all my free time since ignoring the internets, I’ve been able to do other fun things.  This is one of them.  Also, this is my face and my voice.

As far as the cube goes, I bought one in November of 2007 and went to Lars Petraus’ website. 

1. Step 1 – Build a 2×2x2 corner
2. Step 2 – Expand to 2×2x3
3. Step 3 – Twist the edges (I use one algorithm from this)
4. Step 4 – Finish 2 layers (I use one algorithm from this)
5. Step 5 – Position the corners (I use one algorithm from this)
6. Step 6 – Twist the corners (I use three algorithms from this)
7. Step 7 – Position the edges (I use one algorithm from this)

It took my about two days to figure out my first solve (basically following the website move for move).  It was another week before I could solve it without looking at my cheat sheet of written algorithms.  Another week before I was sub-5 minutes.  A week later it was 3 minutes.  I spent about a month hovering around 90 seconds and have been stuck at 45-60 seconds for the past three months without any real improvement.

I have no plans to solve it blindfolded, but appreciate all the people that tell me they won’t be impressed until that happens.  You people suck.

Don’t let the books swallow you, topher.

Brevity is the Soul of Wit

A friend asked in a letter,

Still thinking of being a people doctor? have you switched at all more toward research?

The question has been on my mind a lot, and I guess it had built up enough pressure. My response was disproportionate.

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Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief:It’s funny. I’m applying to transfer into a US medical school pretty soon which means a handful of personal statements. And for all the writing that I’ve done, I still have no idea how to do it correctly. I’ve tried to get to a point in my life where I understand who I am and why I do the things that I do, but I’m just not there yet. Which is fine, it just makes it hard to convince someone else that you’ve got the reigns in your hand, so to speak. It’s always ugly, but whenever you can’t prove or demonstrate something positively, there’s always the reductio ad absurdum. As far as I go, it’s the best I can do.

As it stands, I’m still curious about damn near everything. I have a folder called “million dollar ideas,” one called “essays” and one called “research.” I see problems everywhere and I love obsessing over solutions, and all of these interests pull me deeper into medicine. It’s just so deep and so wide, there’s enough room for anyone to lose themselves or find themselves. That’s why I’m here, I guess.

I’ve always joked with people when they ask me, “So why do you want to be a doctor?” My typical answer is that I’d be too bored with anything else, and that’s a half truth. I only see the rest when I work backwards:

I’d love to be a surgeon, but the malpractice risk and insurance along with dropping pay are off-putting, so I guess I want to be paid well according to my skill and don’t want to enter a field where that may not happen. I’d love to be a pathologist with all the time to write, do research, dissect. But I’d miss the patients. I’m reluctant to admit it, but I would miss the satisfaction that comes from someone you’ve treated thanking you with their eyes. Internal medicine is appealing for the challenge of trying to know everything about everything, but the patient exposure is above what I’d like and the pay seems off the worth. I guess I want to see people, but not all the time. I want to write, I want to teach, I want to cut, I want to cure, I want to be paid what I’m worth and I want time to enjoy the fruits and to share it with a family. I have two years left to figure out if anything fits those criteria, but from here things still look pretty messy.

I still don’t know what I’ll end up doing, but I hold fast to the belief that something fits. I want to transfer because I feel like I’m running out of time to make that decision cleanly. More exposure, more people, more resources and all of it right now would go a long ways to convincing me that I’d seen the field, taken stock, and decided on my future. If it turns out that there’s some unanswered question that I think I can tackle and is worth my life’s efforts, then I want to be exposed to it. I worry, a lot, that I’ll miss that opportunity if I stay with my current school.

The facilities, the people, and the open doors of a US medical school would be an embarrassment of riches for me at this point. In the time that I’ve studied with less, I feel like I’ve used everything available so that now, finally, I know how valuable those opportunities are and I’m ready to make the most of them. I’m praying for the chance.

Until that happens, I won’t know if it’s people or research.

O Tell Me The Truth About Love

Seen on the R subway line between Atlantic-Pacific and 7th street.

When it comes, will it come without warning?

Just as I’m picking my nose?

Will it knock on my door in the morning?

Or step in the bus on my toes?

Will it comes like a change in the weather?

Will its greeting be courteous or rough?

Will it alter my life altogether?

Or tell me the truth about love?

I still don’t know what “it” is. Any thoughts?

How to Prepare for the USMLE: How Early Should I Start?

I have received a version of the following email half a dozen times in the last few weeks concerning when in the first two years of medical school it is best to begin preparing for the USMLE. Here is one response.

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Hello,I wanted to thank you for that information regarding studying for the BEAST!. It is well informed and I loved the reasons behind your study schedule. I am going to start my first term at SGU this coming august. With your experience the past two years is there any advice that you can give me. Does using first aid while studying for exams help to prepare for USMLE. Is it too early to even use it as a reference. Also doing well in the classes help drastically on your performance in the exam. Did you find that having done well made you recall alot of things that you found on the exam or is the details very nitty that it isn’t and needs to be refreshed within the 6 weeks. Wanted to know if it would be a wast of time to use the First aid as a supplement and note margin for my regular classes to be familiar when it comes time too kick but those 6 weeks. Again, thank you for the information.

Knight

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Hey Knight.As far as advice goes about starting early, I have only this: I couldn’t do it. It takes a certain amount of pressure and dread to study effectively for the USMLE, and that’s not just going to be absent, it’s going to be appropriately focused on your other courses. I’m sure you could annotate the FA during these classes, but you’ll soon find that the breadth and depth of your SGU classes will simply dwarf what’s in the FA. The best advice I could give is to work as hard as you can for as long as you can in your classes. While the game of getting A’s isn’t all there is to your education (and you will feel at times that you are learning stupid things to do it), I can think of no better long-term preparation for the USMLE. Those members of my class that have scored the highest were all very strong students from front to end in Grenada and not for being especially intelligent, but instead for their consistent hard work.

The extra mile here is tutoring. I tutored Anatomy, Biochemistry, Neuro and Physio. In this way, I had a full year’s exposure to each topic instead of the four month term. This was invaluable. What many people found while studying for the USMLE, I discovered in tutoring: it’s only the second time around that all the connections fall into place and the interrelationships become intuitive. I was a much stronger student for it.

In a nutshell: don’t buy a First Aid until it’s time (around 5th term, I’d say), do your absolute best in every class, regardless of how innane the material, and tutor with a friend for every class that you can. That, if done, should fetch you a fantastic score.

All the best, topher.

Back from Vacation

Finally, I am back in the States. I brought back with me custom-tailored shirts, shoes, and suits, a tan (no tattoos) and a few stories. It’s going to take me a while to get back in the swing of things, what with the big move to New York just around the corner.

One great thing that happened while I was gone was the posting of a preliminary errata list by the First Aid folks. After looking through the pdf, I’m thrilled to say that we have been thorough: fourty-three of the the fifty official errors were already listed here. Whether or not we were responsible for submitting them first is unclear, but at least we’re catching them. Five of the errors were added from readers of this site (thanks guys).

I’m going to spend the next few days going through what everyone has submitted and then updating each section, as well as the word documents. I don’t anticipate there being another major update before the July 15th deadline.

For those students asking about my transfer status, the schools to which I applied, etc.. I do not plan on addressing those topics until mid-June. Sorry to put it off.  The remainder of this week will include a few stories from Asia and a few miscellaneous thoughts about the USMLE before I put it behind me.

It’s good to be back.

Important Announcement

I have many stories from the trip that I cannot wait to write but that will have to wait since they charge me by the minute to use the Vietnamese computers.  Greetings from Vietnam, by the way.

Dr. Le of the First Aid team just sent me an email, and the team now has their own blog for updates.  Still no forum for responding, but I’m sure that will come soon enough.  Thanks everyone for the suggestions and please keep them coming.  I have read them all, but (as described above) I cannot respond to them now.  Look for more come mid-May.

WOO HOO!

WOO HOO!

I’m in Cambodia right now and I just received my USMLE score after 3 weeks.

240/99

WOO HOO!

See you in 6 weeks!

The complete list of all the corrections/suggestions for the First Aid is now available for download as two Word documents in the First Aid section. All of the individual sections are updated as well.

I have cobbled together the best of my advice into a 6-week guide for the Boards. Expand or contract according to your whim.

I’m off to Asia, so I will be slow to respond to comments, suggestions and the like. I will read them all eventually, so please keep them coming. Thank you, everyone, for contributing. Everything here is better for it.

And with that, I am off!

Applications Away!

It’s done. At eight o’clock tonight, I sent out the last FedEx package and now my home is empty of all things “transfer”. A few schools wanted to know what high school I attended. Even after two years of medical school and having taken the boards, they still wanted to know what my undergraduate science GPA was. Will you ever stop haunting me, 3.145 Science GPA?

I’m past the point of handling AIDS kittens for the homeless Inuit clans of Alaska, so I had to scratch real hard for an essay topic.

Would it surprise you that for all the writing that I do, I can’t write a personal statement to save my life? That’s not true. I can’t write a good personal statement to save my life. I’d love to post all of them here so that we could all share a hearty laugh, but I’ve decided that I’m competing with other students and the advice here is too easy to find. I’ll post them all after the last deadline of June 1st. We’ll laugh then.

I was sort of shocked at how much of a pain in the ass it all was. It took three solid days of inefficient work to get every application, every transcript and test score, every recommendation and every check heading in the right directions. One school wanted my reasons for transfer. Another wanted my compassionate and compelling reason for transfer. Another wanted the name of the family member dying of a flesh-eating bacteria that was already attending their medical school whose care would require my transfer so that I could be by her side as we both wrote SOAP notes. But only if I was a resident of the state.

It stretches my imagination none to think of students looking at some of the applications that I just waded through and deciding, “Screw it. Not worth it. I’ll apply somewhere else.” I hope they all do.