Interviews, writing samples, and letters of recommendation now occupy that little part of my mind devoted to stress. Ok, well, it’s not so much a little part of my mind as it is an entire hemisphere. I’m convinced that if I were to have a stroke in a certain part of my brain, I’d retain all my functional capacity, but be a more happy person all the time. Just kidding…mostly.

Either way, I am once again at the mercy of people who I’m trying to impress in order to help solidify the future that I want. You see, a great research job will help my positioning for an orthopaedic surgery residency, and being in NYC will be so much better for TWG and I. So keep your fingers crossed for me everyone - I’m gonna need all the luck I can get to land the right job.

The unfortunate part of all of this is that this whole cycle won’t end with this. In just a couple years, I’ll be out traveling the country (ok, really just the East Coast) trying to get that great residency. And after that? Running around once more to look for an attending position at a hospital that I like. I know, I know, it’s all far in the future, but it’s still a crazy thing to think about. I mean really, how long can a resume actually get? (Hint, the answer is that I’ve seen some that are more than 6 pages long, and everything was necessary)

Well, I was in desperate need of updating this sad little corner of the internet, and since I have exam week coming up, I need to get back to work. Enjoy the end of February, because man, it seems like this year is flying by!

I hear you in my dreams
I feel your whisper across the sea
I keep you with me in my heart
You make it easier when life gets hard

However, what do I wish I could do? Of the million things that run through my mind when I say that phrase out loud, my current one is being able to sing. I’ve always loved music, and I’m totally comfortable when I’m behind a stand with my trumpet, waiting to blast out a kick-ass swing solo.

But singing.

I was never able to do it well, and people often wince a bit when it’s my turn to step up to the mic in Rock band, but it’s such a great talent that I’ve never had a grasp on. Background info: I’ve been listening to a lot of Michael Buble while I studied for the Neuroscience final that I had this morning. I’m very very jealous of that guy.

I’m gonna make this post relatively short because not only am I exhausted from said final, but I then spent my entire afternoon doing all of the errands that I had been putting off the entire week. That meant about 10 long e-mails, one interview report, and a further 15 short e-mails. Needless to say, I don’t particularly feel like typing for much more of today, and for those of you who get the info on my life from this blog, I’m sorry.

So, there you have it, another course down, and a nice weekend with TWG before I have to start worrying about the next load of courses.

So, what do you wish you could do? Climb a mountain? Learn to snowboard? Take a trans-Atlantic trip on a ship? Let me know - I’m always curious.

Fish in the sea
You know how I feel
River running free
You know how I feel
Blossom on a tree
You know how I feel

Back to Boston and right back into the brain (cue dramatic music, possibly scary, possibly from Young Frankenstein) with the class now focusing on pretty much everything we hadn’t done yet. That’s really the rest of what people normally think of as the brain. You know, the big gray thing with a bunch of lobes that has all those wrinkles?

After a week that flew by, mostly because I was still trying to get back into study mode, it was back in NYC for a quick trip (woohoo $1 fares both ways!) and a drive out to Windham Mountain to go skiing for the first time of the season. A wonderful day for being on the slopes, made better by TWG doing amazingly well, not only for her first time out for the year, but it seems that she’s even better than she ended the last season. The only downside to the entire day was the drive back (thanks Richard! We owe you one!) in a crazy snowstorm through rural New York. Well, that, and the fact that I had to get up early the next day to take the bus back to Boston. Lots of time sitting in one position does not work well for someone as tall as me.

This short story concludes with me back here in Boston, awaiting yet another exam in the endless train that seems to be my life for the next year and a half. Though, at the end of the week, I’ll be done with Neuro until Boards, which is a great feeling, let me tell you.

Some of the coolest news that I have for all of you has to deal with my other course that I’ve started this semester. We’ve begun our second semester of ICM which means that I’m on to the physical exam! That’s right, no longer will I be intruding just into patient’s lives, but their bodies as well! I’m really kidding, but we’ve been starting on the eye, ear, and cardiac exam (which by the way was more than a little awkward since we were practicing on each other…) and soon we’ll all be moving off to work one-on-one with physicians in their practices.

Well….

If you guys know anything about my luck (and many of you have had first hand experience with it), it came into full force that day of site announcements. We all got large manilla folders that contained a few items that were going to be of importance to us over the next semester. One of the sheets contained within had our clinical placements, well, mine said quite concisely, “We are sorry, but we do not have a placement for you at this time.”

Sigh.

As it turns out, they had a perfect place for me, one with an orthopaedic surgeon that would have been amazing, but literally the day before we were given our assignments, he canceled. So now, I’m stuck while the office and I scramble to get me a place to go for my first time in a week and a half.

Oh, did I mention that I’ve since talked to friends who were placed in Ortho here at BU (my original placement was ass-far away) who aren’t even that interested in it?

I love my luck…

P.S. The title of this post is in reference to a book by the same name that my siblings got me for Hanukkah that tells you how to live your life in the moment and appreciate the now. This is something I desperately needed. My parents, you ask? They got me a huge delivery of steak from Whole Foods.

it’s her hands on my hips, i can’t escape ‘em
it’s that mouth and those lips, try not to chase down
that’s just the way things are
and way they’ll always be

girls do what they want
whoa whoa
boys do what they can

All in all, the course has been pretty interesting at the very least (difficult for sure), and I’ve started to amass a good bit of knowledge that I hadn’t really been exposed to before. I’ve also started to acquire teasing comments from my father along the lines of, “Well Charles, you’re smarter than I ever was, so you better beat me [grade-wise] on this Neuro exam.” Needless to say, this freaked me out at first, because he aced Neuro like it was nothing. Then, I remembered a key fact.

My father started out as an M.D./PhD candidate with his area of focus being on spinal cord regeneration - of course he kicked ass in Neuro! It was his specialty!

Either way, the test shouldn’t be too horrible (knock on wood) and with any luck I’ll be back in my apartment with plenty of time to clean out the fridge, take out the garbage, and finish the other pre-break activities that need to get done. Also, I won’t be writing for at least the next week and a half, so Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year all at once for you!

(Hey at least this way, you won’t be left wondering why I haven’t posted in more than a week like normal)

You can sit beside me when the world comes down,
If it doesn’t matter then just turn around.
We don’t need our bags and we can just leave town.
You can sit beside me when the world comes down.

Neuroscience has been safely started, and while this class may only last for 5 weeks, it’s incredibly intensive - after all, it’ the only thing I have right now. All. Day. Long. Every. Day.

We’ve actually covered quite a bit so far, and it’s good, because I’ve been really excited about this subject since I’ve never had any experience with it before. I love learning new things, and this fits right into something that’s both interesting and a little practical for my future life. You might be thinking, “Charles! Only a little practical!? It’s the brain!” Well yeah, it’s the brain and it controls everything we do, but so far, all I’ve learned are the multitude of tracts that nerves take as they travel out from your brain and down your spinal cord.

Now don’t get me wrong, this can be pretty cool - did you know that there’s a set of neurons that specifically deals with integrating motion at your peripheral vision? Or how about the fact that there are nerves that just tell the brain how a limb is performing in 3d space? I also can’t forget one of my favorites, the nerves devoted to the reactions that you have when you touch something hot or otherwise painful and you jerk that part of your body back.

Also, what’s really cool is how, by learning all of this stuff, you can really see how humans have evolved neurologically. Simpler functions are at the lower end of the brain (things like those nerves looking at motion) and get more complex as you move higher and higher (more rostrally for those of you who want a word-of-the-day).

So, yeah, neuro has been fun so far, and while it’s really intense, it will be over in a relatively short amount of time.

Oh! How could I forget! We also have neuro lab, which I’m sure you all are much more interested in hearing about after the comments on anatomy lab that I used to get. So, in neuro lab, we essentially get buckets of brains. Yes, buckets of brains. There are whole brains, hemisected brains, dissected medullas, cerebelli, and even spinal cords (both attached to the brain and not attached). In fact, those spinal cords were what we were looking at on Thursday, and all I could think about were those cheesy ’80s movies where brains attack people and they’re there, standing up on their spinal cords, enslaving humanity.

It was really hard to keep a straight face for two hours.

Well, back to work for another week or so, then down to NYC to see TWG for the entirety of my break! Woohoo!

She knocks me off of my feet
And I can’t help myself
I don’t want anyone else

Anyways, tomorrow will also mark the end of the first “semester” classes as I’ve already finished biochem and my psych class last week. I really can’t believe that it’s all come to an end so suddenly, and with such a break between the first bit and Neuroscience which starts on Monday. These past few months have been full of work, but it was over a couple different subjects and it really felt like “normal school” with a twist. Sure it’s been incredible (at least anatomy and ICM have) and fun, but somewhere in the back of my mind, it wasn’t much different from the past four years at Columbia where I was in class and worked a lot. The difference now is that when Neuro starts up, that all I’ll be doing, 5 days a week, all day long for 5 weeks. Sure, after that’s over, we’ll go back to the normal schedule with ICM coming back in alongside Physiology and Histology, but the second semester, if you want to call it that, is still odd. Once we get into spring, we’ll have random classes come in and visit for a few weeks here and there (like immunology).

I’m not quite sure what my point was going to be here, something about how this abrupt end to the first “semester” is not really a semester in the sense of the word at all, but that’s kind of a boring observation, no? Either way, my brain is a bit fried from all of the studying that I’ve put in for this ridiculous test, so maybe that has something to do with it. Either way, all I can think of right now besides anatomy is going to see TWG after the exam tomorrow.

It should be a really good trip to NYC, and not only because I’m in huge need of some decompression, but because we’re planning on going to the MoMA to see the Van Gogh exhibit - he happens to be my favorite artist. Well, I’ve been putting off the last of my studying for too long now. Time to get some last reading in and get to sleep early for this test.

Wish me luck!

Wrap your arms around me
Come a little closer
Stumble in the twilight

Check out this year’s winner, as well as other amazing entries here

I’m particularly impressed by the sheer amount of time that must have gone into some of the refits because many of them are incredibly elaborate. Make sure you check out the fire truck, animal crackers, and Dr. Suess machine in the 2008 competition as well as the covered wagon and Mystery Machine from 2007. Ok, time to get back to work and wait until TWG gets back from going out so she can call me.

Standing by the best days of our lives
Magnificent, the best days of our lives
Big bang boom, the best days of our lives
Are coming right up
If we can just get through this one

In honor of this most horrible of non-holidays - why must everything have it’s own day in the calendar? - the BBC published an article by a philosopher from the University of Glasgow.

In it, he poses a set of four philosophical problems, which you should read first so you know what I’m referring to here. Now, I have some problems with philosophy for the same reasons as aspects of ethics; you can create a seemingly logical argument for just about anything. Let’s begin.

#2: YOU ARE NOT THE PERSON WHO STARTED READING THIS ARTICLE

The problem posits that you are defined by your mental experiences and the information that is encoded into your brain. Now, I can take this explanation of self, even though it completely disregards appearance and any other genetic marker of individuality like disease. Physically I am fundamentally different from everyone else down on a molecular level. My BME colleagues would agree - bone remodeling takes places dependent on load, previous injury (of which I have a few), and mineral composition. This is just one physiological aspect of our being. In either way, let’s say I agreed with the statement that we are our mental information. The problem at the end of your info being put into two different people and not being able to be in two different places makes no sense. Yes, you would be the same person for the exact moment that your brain was put into these bodies, but an infinitesimally small amount of time later, you would be different people by the argument that your mental experiences define you, especially if you were in two different places.

#3: IS THAT REALLY A COMPUTER SCREEN IN FRONT OF YOU?

I actually agree with this one, and it’s one of my favorite little things to make people think, especially when it comes to colors. With physical objects, the principle does not really get expressed as well - it’s obviously a keyboard that I’m typing on now, just as much as this table in front of me is still a table. But colors are an interpretation of light by our brain. What if what we see as purple is actually yellow? I have trouble distinguishing between dark blues, purple and black very often to TWG’s laughter usually, but who is to say what’s correct? Which one of us actually sees the colors for what they really are, or are we both completely off?

#4: YOU DID NOT FREELY AND RESPONSIBLY CHOOSE TO READ THIS ARTICLE

This is the one that I wholeheartedly disagree with, and the one that prompted me to take time here in the library to write this post. This fictional character Fred had, “Unlimited intelligence and memory, and knew all the scientific laws governing the universe and all the properties of every particle that then existed.” The author posits that this Fred would be able to predict everything that was then to come. This is not possible. While Fred would have been spot on for a few billion years, as there were only particle/particle interactions in the universe, as soon as sentient life developed he would start to be completely wrong and marginally better at guessing than you or me. Fred, with his infinite knowledge of particle physics, could no more predict the moment when I decided to raise my arm randomly here in the library than you could. He could not fathom what I would choose to buy at the grocery store or when I would get around to doing the laundry. As humans we are the very definition of free will, and while you might be able to argue that we are all predictable in very general terms, everyone has their moments. Every minute aspect of life is not foretold.

Enjoy the rest of the day!

Never underestimate the danger of sunset boulevard
I’ve been down this road so long
Seen miles and miles of freaks before

Favorite quote of the day:

‘I don’t know why people ever, ever try to stop nerds from doing things. It’s really the most incredible waste of time.”
-Penny Arcade

Let me tell you, holding a human brain in your hands is about as weird as it can get. For some reason, I was perfectly fine with the heart - it only took me a second to get over the fact that something so small was responsible for such an important part of our lives. The brain was different. Just holding a surprisingly heavy amount of nerves in your hands, you begin to realize the vastness of our abilities and the incongruity that this bundle of nerves contains our darkest secrets, our deepest memories, and the shameful memorization of N*SYNC lyrics. Everything about our bodies is controlled by the little lump that we worked so hard to get out of the cranium - a million different functions all acting in perfect concert with no mistakes. I know I’ve said this to you all before, but it’s impossible to understand exactly what I’m trying to express in words if you haven’t cradled the human brain in your hands. You can’t just see it in a museum, you need to hold it, feel the solidity of it, and make it an object rather than some mysterious force that allows us to do all the things that make up our lives.

To be a doctor is to have a window onto the world that no one else but those closest to you can see through. The things I’ve done over the past few months in anatomy have opened my eyes to the wondrous complexity of the body, showing me the door to my future of fixing the problems that arise. It’s a bit crazy to think of it like that, and somewhat daunting. Let me try to explain how I feel.

I took a course my last year at Columbia that dealt with science and technology and how they influenced art and writing of the times. Throughout a lot of the course we would read books or excerpts from the Industrial Revolution that praised the glory of machinery and personified the new inventions into something more human that the general populace could relate to. When I look at Beatrice and think about the past few months, I feel like I’ve entered the largest warehouse imaginable. It’s filled top to bottom, front to back, with gears churning, steam whistling, and pistons chugging away as far as the eye can see. In the chaos there is an order that I have just begun to see, but its vastness is overwhelming when I realize that it will be my job very soon to fix this monstrosity of metal.

A bit dramatic wouldn’t you say?

Either way, I remembered what I was going to tell you the other day - a VERY dirty mnemonic for remembering the cranial nerves. Very dirty, and yet, the most common one that everyone knows:

Oh, Oh, Oh, To Touch And Feel Virgin Girls’ Vaginas And Hymens.
(In order I-XII, olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, vestibulocochlear, glossopharyngeal, vagus, accessory, and hypoglossal)

Along with this is the one that describes the nerves themselves as sensory, motor, or both:

Some Say Marry Money, But My Brother Says Big Breasts Matter More

Enjoy

The Brain
There is nothing like the Brain
Hearts and lungs are simply tinker toys
When stacked against the Brain