rianjs.net

Today's quote of the day belongs to JohnnyG, who literally made me laugh out loud:

I am not ashamed to admit that I choose my medical school based upon its access to WaWa.

Hahaha!

med school, PCOM, WaWa

Jack Bauer >> Chuck Norris

• Jack Bauer can get McDonald’s breakfast after 10:30.
• When the boogie man goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Jack Bauer.
• Every mathematical inequality officially ends with "Jack Bauer".
• In kindergarten, Jack Bauer killed a terrorist for Show and Tell.

Last night while waiting to board my flight in Charlotte, NC, I signed up for Harvard's intensive 8-week Organic Chemistry I and II classes (+ labs). Ironically it's cheaper than taking them at MCP (and nearly as inexpensive as taking them at UMass), and they'll be over more quickly. I tend to do much better in classes when I completely immerse myself in the material. E.g. Calc II, biology 1, college writing II.

$4600 including student health insurance, and it includes the labs — which are usually more expensive than the actual class. I have free parking a 10-minute walk from campus at Paul's place, which is completely awesome. I intend to get A's, which won't be a problem if I actually study.

However I am getting ahead of myself, so I'll back up a bit.

After turning in an undergrad performance that more closely resembles this cat than a decent education, I have decided to forgo pharmacy school entirely. Instead, I've made up my mind to attend med school. Where, I don't know. Nor do I particularly care, to be honest. Any med school I attend will give me the tools I need to pass all three steps of the USMLE, and then it'll be up to me to learn during residency.

I feel like I've been fighting this decision for a long time. Probably two or three years. I've been resisting it because of the way healthcare policy in the country is set up. I have issues with things like EMTALA being an unfunded mandate, inclinations toward socialized medicine, medical malpractice insurance premiums, residency, and personal shortcomings. In a bizarre way, I feel like I'm better equipped than most who desire to go to med school who have their idealism ripped right out from under them when they hit the Real World because I don't have any in the first place.

I'm not worried about the MCAT. I rock at standardized testing, and I actually plan to prepare for this one. I never prepared for the SAT, and I did extremely well, and MCATs apparently correlate fairly well with SAT scores. How much better could I do on the MCAT if I prepared rather than going in blind, tired, and unprepared like I did with the SAT? I'm hoping to score at least a 33, which is easily within the realm of possibility.

My personal statement will be excellent because I'm a good writer, and I've thought about med school from a real world perspective more than I've thought about anything in a long time. I'll have recommendations in spades; I have a list of 16(!) different people, all of them in the medical field, who have agreed to write me a recommendation if I ask them. Many of them in unique positions of influence. This is a comfort to me because of:

My main trouble will by my GPA. I've got to rip up and repave my undergrad career in a few key places: organic chemistry, microbiology, and (perhaps) general biology. This will take some money, and probably six months to a year. If I decide to apply to a foreign medical school — which holds a great deal of appeal to me — I could probably forget retaking basic biology. Oh, and I'll probably have to take Physics II (+ lab). Not a huge deal there.

Looking back at my old transcripts and thinking about how I used to (not) study makes me cringe. It's like looking someone else's life and saying "And did you want to set yourself up for failure later?"

Anyway, regarding personal shortcomings. Two main things stand out to me: I tend to follow the path of least resistance. It is, for example, easier to watch TV than it is to study. I'll have to watch myself carefully. The other is sleep. I worry that residency will be a disaster because I'm one of those unlucky fools who needs 7-8 hours per night, otherwise I'm useless.

But I'll have to get there first.

I have so much on my mind I slept like utter shit. I have to be at the courthouse in less than an hour, and I really don't want to be there. I'm not particularly interested in someone else's problems and how they relate laws I don't care about. I don't think I've been this annoyed about having to do this something since… yesterday, when I wasted 2 hours of my life at the registry of motor vehicles.

I'm supposed to work 8-6 tomorrow, and then Thursday morning, my plane takes off at 6.30am.

What fantastic timing for my "civic duty."

Related reading: Richard Dawkins on why trial by jury is not a good institution.

Jury duty