Day 620: Mentorship, Biochemistry and Baking

My Stanford mentorship held a meeting/get-together this Tuesday. The Dean of Admissions and first-year medical students gave presentations about how to be a better applicant to medical school. I was annoyed because the Dean came, spoke, and left ASAP. There was no chance for any one-on-one time, which would have been ideal to ask about me specifically as an applicant. Oh well, such is life.

On Thursday, I had my first day of Biochemistry. A ton of the kids in that class are applying to medical school and shared that little tidbit when we talked about ourselves. I don't enjoy sharing things, especially something so banal and common, so I just said I had some trouble finding parking :P

The professor is this cute little pregnant Asian woman who seems adamant about making the class as relaxed as possible. It was pretty low-key, so that was nice. The first day was just a review of some biology and chemistry that will relate to future lectures. All of her lectures/notes are given via PowerPoint, of which she will be emailing us future lecture slides/notes in advance. It isn't all that great because she zips through her lectures and doesn't give me any time to copy them down. It was fine the first day because she gave us a hard-copy of her notes, but still, I prefer hand-writing my notes. Call me old-fashioned that way.

I don't have the textbook required for the course. My friend who took Biochem in NC gave me his book and I'm using that for now. We'll see how things pan out when I head back to class with the reading from my book instead of hers. If it doesn't work, then I'll buy the book. I thought I'd give it a go my way first.
My hole from the previous post is healing nicely. The entire situation was just so odd. The oral surgeon says it happens sometimes. One of the reasons may be that the hole(s) healed too quickly the first time and they reopen, which the doctor said was a good sign...? I don't know. Overall, everything seems to be healing nicely.

In other news, my biggest obession in life at the moment is baking macarons. I literally bake at least a batch a week. It took me a while to get the knack of everything, but I have perfected them! Now, I'm playing around with flavors and colors (as seen below).

Just a regular dark chocolate ganache. I added some blue dye to the sugar,

which gave the macaron shells a blue-ish twinge. Yummy.

Day 550: Simulations, rejections and fatalism

So my suture tutorial on Thursday was pretty fun. We learned how to tie knots like surgeons--you never let go of the string. The surgery residents were extremely friendly and nice. It was refreshing to meet them. We also got to use some killer simulators and I got to take out a gall bladder. Overall, the suture tutorial showed me three things.

One, I still want to be a doctor. There's a lot of cool, fun stuff you can do and the possibility of constant learning ensures constant engagement. Who could ask for more?

Two, surgeons have crazy spatial abilities! It took me a minute to acclimate myself to the simulators. I also had to use tools to move objects but I couldn't actually see the objects I was moving so I was staring at a screen and I won't lie, it was mildly difficult.

Three, my internship actually lets me do a lot. A) All the Chinese post-docs are a ton of fun. B) They let me perform surgeries (e.g. when I removed that rat's spleen) and what was so crazy was that the simulation I performed Thursday night was just like the one I actually performed a few months back on that rat. They electrocauterize out the organs and there's a lot of stapling and tying of arteries to prevent bleeding out.

In other news, I received another rejection yesterday. This one was from UCSF and that one was to be expected. I'm too lazy to type up the letter they sent me but it was more "we're sorry blah blah blah...this doesn't mean you're not qualified to be a physician blah blah blah...we hope you get in somewhere this year."

And now that my batting average is 0/3, I'm feeling incredibly resigned. I have decided to fill out the supplemental applications to a few schools that I wasn't so hot on. If nothing works out this cycle, I am looking ahead to the next application cycle and I plan on doing everything right. I am a complete believer in things happening (not necessarily for a reason) so this is how things are happening for me. I really am just so tired of selling myself and telling people why they should accept me and this and that. I'm sick of trying to find something original to say. I'm not feeling very original or intelligent or wanted at the moment. I'm not feeling much of anything to be honest. I think that's even sadder. There are no emotions, just a numbness that prevents me from actually caring anymore.

Day 524: Humble before the human body

My dad loves to tell me to be humble in my pursuit of medicine. More often than not, I tend to say "okay" half-heartedly and move on with my life. However, my dad's words never rang more true than this past Saturday.

Saturday was my Stanford School of Medicine mentorship lunch. The gist of the get-together was to get a better idea of the program and to meet our med student mentors. The whole experience was refreshing on a number of levels. I was amazed to discover how normal and, dare I say, cool these med students were. They were all incredibly diverse and interesting and sociable. My mentor and I are going to get along fine. I don't foresee us becoming best friends or even genuine friends for that matter, but I do think he's got a lot to impart.

The coolest, most wicked thing about Saturday (and my mentor) was when he took me (and a few others) to the Gross Anatomy lab. The whole experience was surreal and amazing and I am now dubbing it surrealazing. As he was unzipping the bag to his cadaver, I wasn't sure what to expect. I tried to pray as fast as I could to the universe and to this woman for giving her body up to science. I was just trying to be thankful and humble and understanding and open and a whole lot of emotions I couldn't even acknowledge, much less name.

The body, all in all, looked a lot like meat. As flippant as that sounds, it's honestly the best description I have. The body didn't even look like anything I recognized. And that helped me view it more scientifically. I saw nerves and lungs and a heart, oh my! It was just sincerely surrealazing.

The whole experience invigorated me towards the application process. Having completed around 13 secondaries (I've actually lost count and am guessing it's around thirteen), I am feeling a little done. Flip me over. I'm sick of selling myself in a new and original way to each school. I can recycle a little but not enough that I don't put actual effort into each one. Meeting the med students and seeing the cadavers and just being on the School of Medicine campus really showed me that this is what I want. It's nice to know that my passion for this isn't going to die down any time soon and it's not something I did because I could.

I really, really want this.

Day 521: Recent happenings

For lack of a better title, this is me updating you all on the past week's events.

Let's see, on Sunday (10/18), I received word that I was accepted into a Stanford School of Medicine mentorship program. The gist of it involves community service, application workshops, a med student mentor and possible shadowing of physicians and suture tutorial. There is a mandatory lunch tomorrow that I'll be attending and hopefully I'll have more to report later.

I had my first exam yesterday. It was multiple choice and all about evolution (micro and macro) and cladistics and the like. It went okay. We'll see though, won't we?

Aside from that, I'm taking today off. I didn't make the volunteer cut for Habitat for Humanity this week (there's usually a waitlist you have to try and get off of) but I spoke with the site director and I'm going to be an actual regular volunteer. So since that'll be starting soon, I wanted to take today to just relax and get some stuff done. I have a University of Miami secondary to complete and classwork and errands and such to do so I figure I'll be kept busy.