From: NY Times
Every year in October, when the Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine or physiology are announced, the predictable parade of American honorees is reported on television and in the papers with a combination of patriotic glee and almost total befuddlement about the nature of the work being honored. Hardly anyone pauses to think about the educational system that has been so fabulously productive in turning out scientists in this country. It is a system limited to about 120 research institutions, and at the upper, rarefied reaches of that system are the elite universities. As James Anderson, chairman of Harvard's chemistry department, puts it: ''The students here are spectacularly good, very bright, very committed. They want to win Nobel Prizes, and some of them will, and some of them want to do it before they're 30.''
Graduate study in the sciences, however, is a very unsentimental education. It requires the intellectual evolution from undergrad who can ace tests of textbook knowledge to original thinker who can initiate and execute research about which the textbooks have yet to be written. What is less often acknowledged is that this intense education involves an equally arduous psychological transition, almost a second rebellious adolescence. The passage from callow, eager-to-please first-year student in awe of an often-famous faculty adviser to confident, independent-minded researcher willing to challenge, and sometimes defy, a mentor is a requisite part of the journey.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
2009
This time last year: Nicaragua, Leon’s ancient stone cathedrals with bullet holes, joyful children with firecrackers in the street, large papier mache puppets, a beautiful young man swimming in the empty Pacific, we are gliding through tropical waters, sitting and sweating on sacks of grain on converted school buses, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, laughing
Resolutions last year: Improve posture, eat more lentil mush, survive school
Month 4: turned in a thesis. Declared a master of science. Passed my first medical licensing exam.
2 months of surgery, touch my first pancreas, see my first brain, place my first suture, run my first trauma
Watched a man die. And be brought to life again. And die again.
8 months of no breath and ascending madness.
Accrued frozen pictures:
(1) Code blue in the cath lab, a frenzied tableau framed in the window. The lone cardiologist quietly exits, drops his mask in the dark, curses softly. His wire punctured her heart. On the x-ray screen there is the dying woman’s rib cage, and the delicate bones of the intern’s hand pumping rhythmically. On the machine, all the bones are the same.
(2) The sun rise in the ICU
(3) The neurosurgeon’s precisely placed bolt in the doll faced toddler, 10 physicians and nurses crowded in the room staring intently at the ICP monitor, the wrong line, the wrong wave, the numbers incompatible with brain life, the machines still breathe, his cheeks are still pink.
(4) The labor suite had 9 women: the single new mother, her own mother, the ob-gyn residents, the students, the nurses, they strained against her body, like the soldiers in the famous photo—the soldiers of Iwo Jima, the women giving birth. The room was too warm, thick with everyone’s sweat, smelled of blood and shit. We are women too, the pediatric resident and me. We greet the only male in the room, a small wriggling gray thing amid the women, the blood and the shit.
1 more year of San Francisco, the warm glow of the city by the sea, now a maze of obstacles: a place to park, the bus to catch, shouting madmen to avoid, the young and carefree to resent.
A year to be weary of what is to come. A year to revel in the things I have seen.
2 years seeing the beautiful young man, who endures my madness, who fills me with light.
Bowls of lentil mush consumed: 1.6
Resolutions next year: Survive school. Nurture mental health. Build strength, build skill. Stop whining. Love the boy. Love the tribe. Buy fewer lattes.
Resolutions last year: Improve posture, eat more lentil mush, survive school
Month 4: turned in a thesis. Declared a master of science. Passed my first medical licensing exam.
2 months of surgery, touch my first pancreas, see my first brain, place my first suture, run my first trauma
Watched a man die. And be brought to life again. And die again.
8 months of no breath and ascending madness.
Accrued frozen pictures:
(1) Code blue in the cath lab, a frenzied tableau framed in the window. The lone cardiologist quietly exits, drops his mask in the dark, curses softly. His wire punctured her heart. On the x-ray screen there is the dying woman’s rib cage, and the delicate bones of the intern’s hand pumping rhythmically. On the machine, all the bones are the same.
(2) The sun rise in the ICU
(3) The neurosurgeon’s precisely placed bolt in the doll faced toddler, 10 physicians and nurses crowded in the room staring intently at the ICP monitor, the wrong line, the wrong wave, the numbers incompatible with brain life, the machines still breathe, his cheeks are still pink.
(4) The labor suite had 9 women: the single new mother, her own mother, the ob-gyn residents, the students, the nurses, they strained against her body, like the soldiers in the famous photo—the soldiers of Iwo Jima, the women giving birth. The room was too warm, thick with everyone’s sweat, smelled of blood and shit. We are women too, the pediatric resident and me. We greet the only male in the room, a small wriggling gray thing amid the women, the blood and the shit.
1 more year of San Francisco, the warm glow of the city by the sea, now a maze of obstacles: a place to park, the bus to catch, shouting madmen to avoid, the young and carefree to resent.
A year to be weary of what is to come. A year to revel in the things I have seen.
2 years seeing the beautiful young man, who endures my madness, who fills me with light.
Bowls of lentil mush consumed: 1.6
Resolutions next year: Survive school. Nurture mental health. Build strength, build skill. Stop whining. Love the boy. Love the tribe. Buy fewer lattes.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Final Manifesto
by Joshua Mehigan
1. We see you.
2. We know who you are.
3. Your ideas are worthless.
4. Your aesthetic is stupid.
5. Your “technique” is a welter of narcissism, superstition, and habit.
6. All your little tiny ideas, all your whoring attempts at creation, and you yourself are nothing, nobody wants you, we despise you, it’s in our nature.
7. You should be kept as a pet.
8. You are a Philistine, the Paul Bunyan of decadence, an acromegalic fraud.
9. You are a minnow, a speck, a stain.
10. The genre humain is sick, and you are to blame.
11. You are a necrophiliac.
12. You are a museum of irrelevance.
13. It will take years to make Art vital and important again.
14. You are from this moment forbidden.
15. As the Italians say, Parla quando piscia la gallina.
16. We are here now.
17. Our aesthetics is empirically grounded.
18. Our taste will be raised to principle.
19. You and your band of jays will be flushed out.
20. Yes, Art is resurrected today: Victory is ours!
21. History will forget you and salute us.
22. Here you are, and here is oblivion.
23. This is the final manifesto, and the only one.
1. We see you.
2. We know who you are.
3. Your ideas are worthless.
4. Your aesthetic is stupid.
5. Your “technique” is a welter of narcissism, superstition, and habit.
6. All your little tiny ideas, all your whoring attempts at creation, and you yourself are nothing, nobody wants you, we despise you, it’s in our nature.
7. You should be kept as a pet.
8. You are a Philistine, the Paul Bunyan of decadence, an acromegalic fraud.
9. You are a minnow, a speck, a stain.
10. The genre humain is sick, and you are to blame.
11. You are a necrophiliac.
12. You are a museum of irrelevance.
13. It will take years to make Art vital and important again.
14. You are from this moment forbidden.
15. As the Italians say, Parla quando piscia la gallina.
16. We are here now.
17. Our aesthetics is empirically grounded.
18. Our taste will be raised to principle.
19. You and your band of jays will be flushed out.
20. Yes, Art is resurrected today: Victory is ours!
21. History will forget you and salute us.
22. Here you are, and here is oblivion.
23. This is the final manifesto, and the only one.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Judgement
i am a smart geek, a guy this author wants to sleep with, a person who loves excess verbiage, confirmed 90s literati, someone who can start a fire. A liar. A drinker of scotch, good at crosswords, a girl who keeps a journal, a conspiracy theorist, (bigger than even the orwellian), a person who has read only one book my my life and it was to kill a mocking bird (and it was assigned reading in the 9th grade); a girl who loves guys in skinny jeans, a man who owns a cottage (one with an adjustable rate mortgage), a man who uses the words 'dubious' and 'tenacity'. I am that kid in your philosophy class with stupid tattoos, i am a premature ejaculator. I moved to Thailand after high school for the drug scene, I can quote the comic guy from the Simpsons I am a youth group leader that picked my nose in the 4th grade, a girl who cannot spell "leheim", who bought the first generation Amazon Kindle, i turned vegan to cover up my eating disorder, i played Creep while smoking pot and having sex, and I took care of my dying grandparents. Some of these are lies, some are not.
You too can stereotype people by their favorite author: Readers by Author
You too can stereotype people by their favorite author: Readers by Author
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Fantasy Receptionist
My favorite television shows now are Mad Men and The Office (if you consider the Daily Show in its own category). These are both good shows and nicely made and obviously someone put lots of talent and work into making these so very lovely. But I suppose some amount of my ravenous consumptions of these fantasy worlds—one in which everyone is elegantly fashionable and self assured in their discontent and racism/sexism and the other in which everyone is exquisitely absurd and thoroughly bathed in the light of pitch perfect witticism—is my fantasy to be a receptionist.
In this other life, I am a very happy secretary/receptionist/personal assistant. I bathe not to make up for lost hours of sleep but so I may smell fresh and brighten the office. I wear heals. Rather than scrubs and awkward ratty student white coats I wear clothing that comes with a waistline. I have a bee hive and in this fantasy world, I wear long bright red false nails not outlawed by the CDC. They only mildly hinder my typing speed and make a pleasant clackety tip tap noise.
As a receptionist, I am hot. This is helped by the fact that I don’t have to arrive anywhere at 530 am. Nor do years of cortisol overload lead to peculiar weight distributions, terrible skin, and a diet consisting of vending machine products. I don’t worry about getting sued if my cleavage shows, and I don’t have to worry about offending people by putting my boobs in their face while I examine their ear wax and nose hairs. This is because I will not be examining their ear wax and nose hairs. I can wear short skirts and offensively ugly earings that will not get caught in my stethescope. I will not have a stethescope.
Instead of 2 years of pre med, 4 years of medical school, 4 years of residency required for training, not to mention the additional 2-6 years spent discovering genes, reconstructing the health systems of small nations, and dicking around to salvage one’s mental health, I can get pretty good at a particular office space in less than 1 year. I can already type very well you see. My handwriting is very good. And I am excellent at filing, especially when stoned.
At 5 pm, I depart and arrive at my single young woman urban apartment, and I kick off my heals and lounge on a luxurious piece of furniture which I have purchased with my single young working woman salary (which is actually a positive rather than a negative number). I sensuously pet my cat and speak in a deep throaty voice to this creature of my day’s adventures. I am allergic to cats, but in this other life I may as well eliminate other burdensome details of this one.
A girl friend calls, shall we get cocktails and pick up handsome men, and I will say no dahling I must finish my novel tonight. I make dinner or someone makes it for me, and it has real vegetables in it. I drink an after dinner brandy, since in this other life I am mentally healthy and I do not worry about a single drink dissolving my threadbare semblance of sanity and wildly sobbing for the next several days. I type. In my underwear. What the hell, I am so mentally robust I have a beer. I have 2. I smoke a cigarette, which in this other life is sexy and not so bad for you and does not prompt me like a little seal into reciting cardiovascular outcome statistics and mortality rates for small cell lung carcinoma. I fall asleep in soft sheets.
On the weekends I attend a vigorous pilates class, followed by a bloody mary. Followed by another one. I sit around in my underwear some more, typing, scratching my belly, smoking drinking napping. I have a boyfriend and he is actually something I have kept from this life. I call him poopsie, but in the other life he permits this. We have a wild and exotic love life and frequently fly to tropical islands
Of course, in this other life, I would not be a particularly good secretary, as the same things that offend me about being a medical student would persist: being bossed around. Detail orientation. Doing meaningless work. I would forget things. I would stare away into space. And it is true, I would dearly miss being up to my elbows in intestines. I would miss poop jokes. Would miss being a voyeur of birth, sickness, triumph, death (so that i may remain a philosopher). The novel i will write in this life will be less boring. I can wear the heels tomorrow.
In this other life, I am a very happy secretary/receptionist/personal assistant. I bathe not to make up for lost hours of sleep but so I may smell fresh and brighten the office. I wear heals. Rather than scrubs and awkward ratty student white coats I wear clothing that comes with a waistline. I have a bee hive and in this fantasy world, I wear long bright red false nails not outlawed by the CDC. They only mildly hinder my typing speed and make a pleasant clackety tip tap noise.
As a receptionist, I am hot. This is helped by the fact that I don’t have to arrive anywhere at 530 am. Nor do years of cortisol overload lead to peculiar weight distributions, terrible skin, and a diet consisting of vending machine products. I don’t worry about getting sued if my cleavage shows, and I don’t have to worry about offending people by putting my boobs in their face while I examine their ear wax and nose hairs. This is because I will not be examining their ear wax and nose hairs. I can wear short skirts and offensively ugly earings that will not get caught in my stethescope. I will not have a stethescope.
Instead of 2 years of pre med, 4 years of medical school, 4 years of residency required for training, not to mention the additional 2-6 years spent discovering genes, reconstructing the health systems of small nations, and dicking around to salvage one’s mental health, I can get pretty good at a particular office space in less than 1 year. I can already type very well you see. My handwriting is very good. And I am excellent at filing, especially when stoned.
At 5 pm, I depart and arrive at my single young woman urban apartment, and I kick off my heals and lounge on a luxurious piece of furniture which I have purchased with my single young working woman salary (which is actually a positive rather than a negative number). I sensuously pet my cat and speak in a deep throaty voice to this creature of my day’s adventures. I am allergic to cats, but in this other life I may as well eliminate other burdensome details of this one.
A girl friend calls, shall we get cocktails and pick up handsome men, and I will say no dahling I must finish my novel tonight. I make dinner or someone makes it for me, and it has real vegetables in it. I drink an after dinner brandy, since in this other life I am mentally healthy and I do not worry about a single drink dissolving my threadbare semblance of sanity and wildly sobbing for the next several days. I type. In my underwear. What the hell, I am so mentally robust I have a beer. I have 2. I smoke a cigarette, which in this other life is sexy and not so bad for you and does not prompt me like a little seal into reciting cardiovascular outcome statistics and mortality rates for small cell lung carcinoma. I fall asleep in soft sheets.
On the weekends I attend a vigorous pilates class, followed by a bloody mary. Followed by another one. I sit around in my underwear some more, typing, scratching my belly, smoking drinking napping. I have a boyfriend and he is actually something I have kept from this life. I call him poopsie, but in the other life he permits this. We have a wild and exotic love life and frequently fly to tropical islands
Of course, in this other life, I would not be a particularly good secretary, as the same things that offend me about being a medical student would persist: being bossed around. Detail orientation. Doing meaningless work. I would forget things. I would stare away into space. And it is true, I would dearly miss being up to my elbows in intestines. I would miss poop jokes. Would miss being a voyeur of birth, sickness, triumph, death (so that i may remain a philosopher). The novel i will write in this life will be less boring. I can wear the heels tomorrow.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Geek Girl rises
A series of event
Akward bookish childhood--> embrace nerd/geek identity
college--> find i am not alone--> become emboldened
begin pseudoactivist stance of the underrepresented presence of the Geek Girl in popular culture. Contemplate implications for gender roles in society: why are 50 per cent of math bachelor degrees given to women but less than 20 percent to physics? Why do women outnumber men in higher education, all the more in communities of color? why in Beauty and the Geek are the beauties always female and the the geeks male? and what of the beautiful geek?
Contemplate neurophysiological implications: is geek on the autism-Asperger's spectrum? why is Asperger's more prevalanet in males? What are the neurolodevelpmental underpinnings of girls speaking before boys? the role of testosterone and estrogen in cognitive function? Why do chromosomal abberations that give a deficiency in either result in passive individuals? and why are there so few studies?
The geeks inherit the earth and their base is the South Bay. They also take over Wall Street and the White House, the former to our collective regret.
Today i saw a poster for Paper Heart. I roll my eyes with snobbish contempt at instant pattern recognition--oh another 'indie' movie with that pale technicolor aesthetic, scrawly text, 'low budget' charm and whimpery cooey soundtrack. But then i noted that the heroine appears to be a very dorky looking, chubby brown Asian girl.
woot!
a debate begins "how to seduce a geek girl" spawns "4 tips for Understanding 'Girl Geeks'
http://jezebel.com/5332327/4-tips-for-understanding-girl-geeks
And i realize i don't know why so late--the geek is cool. And like all great triumphs of outsiders who become recognized, the bittersweet prize--assimilation, and thus--obliteration.
"The history of 'geek':
1515-1916 A "fool, dupe, or simpleton"
1916-1970s A circus sideshow performer who bites the heads off chickens.
1970s-1980s Derogatory term for a socially awkward or unattractive person. Usually male.
1990s A computer genius with stock options. Possibly worth billions. (In the 1980s, these were called "nerds".)
2000s and beyond Actors, models, talk show hosts, iPhone owners, fans of the top grossing movies of all time, anyone whose job description is more complicated than "shopping" "
Disclaimer: i have been told i am but a nerd and a dilletante, not a geek proper. that's cool.
Akward bookish childhood--> embrace nerd/geek identity
college--> find i am not alone--> become emboldened
begin pseudoactivist stance of the underrepresented presence of the Geek Girl in popular culture. Contemplate implications for gender roles in society: why are 50 per cent of math bachelor degrees given to women but less than 20 percent to physics? Why do women outnumber men in higher education, all the more in communities of color? why in Beauty and the Geek are the beauties always female and the the geeks male? and what of the beautiful geek?
Contemplate neurophysiological implications: is geek on the autism-Asperger's spectrum? why is Asperger's more prevalanet in males? What are the neurolodevelpmental underpinnings of girls speaking before boys? the role of testosterone and estrogen in cognitive function? Why do chromosomal abberations that give a deficiency in either result in passive individuals? and why are there so few studies?
The geeks inherit the earth and their base is the South Bay. They also take over Wall Street and the White House, the former to our collective regret.
Today i saw a poster for Paper Heart. I roll my eyes with snobbish contempt at instant pattern recognition--oh another 'indie' movie with that pale technicolor aesthetic, scrawly text, 'low budget' charm and whimpery cooey soundtrack. But then i noted that the heroine appears to be a very dorky looking, chubby brown Asian girl.
woot!
a debate begins "how to seduce a geek girl" spawns "4 tips for Understanding 'Girl Geeks'
http://jezebel.com/5332327/4-tips-for-understanding-girl-geeks
And i realize i don't know why so late--the geek is cool. And like all great triumphs of outsiders who become recognized, the bittersweet prize--assimilation, and thus--obliteration.
"The history of 'geek':
1515-1916 A "fool, dupe, or simpleton"
1916-1970s A circus sideshow performer who bites the heads off chickens.
1970s-1980s Derogatory term for a socially awkward or unattractive person. Usually male.
1990s A computer genius with stock options. Possibly worth billions. (In the 1980s, these were called "nerds".)
2000s and beyond Actors, models, talk show hosts, iPhone owners, fans of the top grossing movies of all time, anyone whose job description is more complicated than "shopping" "
Disclaimer: i have been told i am but a nerd and a dilletante, not a geek proper. that's cool.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Malaise
I have settled into a 6 day hangover that began Tue night and has had no intoxicating percipitant. It continues unabated. How i dislike everything.
What could be the cause? I have taken almost 9 years of advanced education and training and done what the modern well-to do intellect does far too naturally--repeatedly ramming this education at the excessive dissection of my own neuroses. Is it the cold weather? am i hypothyroid? Is it a subclinical sinus infection? a dopamine failure? Perhaps i have been too inattentive to self reflection? A shortage of quiet meditation? Am i paralyzed by choice in the modern ennui of post industrial capitalism? Is my mental hygeine insufficient? And so goes the differential diagnosis of the incompletely trained young physician and meta-physician.
In my lucid moments i suspect i have merely run out of the shrill and hysterical enthusiasm that kept me afloat for the several weeks of surgery following the soul sucking devastation that is commonly known as the USMLE step 1 exam. Surgery and inpatient medicine furthermore was a great novelty. Plenty of dopamine to keep one afloat. The outpatient medicine scene i had wrongly assumed to familiar and thus easier. Although i do not arrive home in stuperous exhaustion every day, i maintain baseline level of anxiety that is mostly associated with a constant confusion as to where i am supposed to be at any given moment.
Its true, there is no 3 hours of excruciating rounds. No feigning interest in the 43rd hernia surgery you've seen and still don't get as its just a lot of flimsy layers being poked at and wasn't cooper's ligament in the boobs or something? So now i have arrived in the exotic lands of outpatient medicine and the time has come to open my soul to a new land, a new people, to patients who are not obtunded under anesthesia and have rich and complicated lives outside of the clinic, usually involving eating too much, smoking too much, etc.
Whatever the etiology of my malaise, the self-medication has remained worrisomely the same since age 14 - eating, internet, a bowl and someimes a passage or two of Bertrand Russell.
It is in these moments that the road ahead seems despairingly long. The thought of being a doctor, being organized, caring about other people, having responsibility, having any job at all, seems pointless and horrible and wouldn't i rather be...what? balancing a bowl of cereal on my gut and watching cartoons with lewd humor?
Such despair is often moderately improved with a well titrated dose of caffeine, usually with a little creme. At that point i am assured that i would indeed like to have a job, a meaningful, interesting one that affords me whatever minimal illusion that i am Part of Something Bigger, and making things on sum better rather than worse, one that i would like to be Very Good At, and always inspired to Do Even Better, and one with a steady income to boot, so as to allow funding for said bowl of cereal.
What could be the cause? I have taken almost 9 years of advanced education and training and done what the modern well-to do intellect does far too naturally--repeatedly ramming this education at the excessive dissection of my own neuroses. Is it the cold weather? am i hypothyroid? Is it a subclinical sinus infection? a dopamine failure? Perhaps i have been too inattentive to self reflection? A shortage of quiet meditation? Am i paralyzed by choice in the modern ennui of post industrial capitalism? Is my mental hygeine insufficient? And so goes the differential diagnosis of the incompletely trained young physician and meta-physician.
In my lucid moments i suspect i have merely run out of the shrill and hysterical enthusiasm that kept me afloat for the several weeks of surgery following the soul sucking devastation that is commonly known as the USMLE step 1 exam. Surgery and inpatient medicine furthermore was a great novelty. Plenty of dopamine to keep one afloat. The outpatient medicine scene i had wrongly assumed to familiar and thus easier. Although i do not arrive home in stuperous exhaustion every day, i maintain baseline level of anxiety that is mostly associated with a constant confusion as to where i am supposed to be at any given moment.
Its true, there is no 3 hours of excruciating rounds. No feigning interest in the 43rd hernia surgery you've seen and still don't get as its just a lot of flimsy layers being poked at and wasn't cooper's ligament in the boobs or something? So now i have arrived in the exotic lands of outpatient medicine and the time has come to open my soul to a new land, a new people, to patients who are not obtunded under anesthesia and have rich and complicated lives outside of the clinic, usually involving eating too much, smoking too much, etc.
Whatever the etiology of my malaise, the self-medication has remained worrisomely the same since age 14 - eating, internet, a bowl and someimes a passage or two of Bertrand Russell.
It is in these moments that the road ahead seems despairingly long. The thought of being a doctor, being organized, caring about other people, having responsibility, having any job at all, seems pointless and horrible and wouldn't i rather be...what? balancing a bowl of cereal on my gut and watching cartoons with lewd humor?
Such despair is often moderately improved with a well titrated dose of caffeine, usually with a little creme. At that point i am assured that i would indeed like to have a job, a meaningful, interesting one that affords me whatever minimal illusion that i am Part of Something Bigger, and making things on sum better rather than worse, one that i would like to be Very Good At, and always inspired to Do Even Better, and one with a steady income to boot, so as to allow funding for said bowl of cereal.
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