Back at Dartmouth

Back in Lebanon, NH! Yay, quiz coming up, study study study . . . trying also to get a summer job. I’m still back and forth about whether or not I want to work or take it easy and study for the boards. Relaxing and more vacation sounds pretty good right now . . .

Just had some damn good kimchi bokum at Yama’s (the one good Asian restaurant around here) . . . yum yum yum

Happy 2006!

3. . . 2 . . .1. . .

Happy 2006 from Taipei everyone!

My NY resolutions:
1. More studying, more sleep
2. Lose the 20lbs I gained in first term med school

Sleepless in Taipei

Damn these mosquitos! Yep, back in Taipei and still up at 5 am fighting mosquitos. Hopefully I can get back to sleep soon, don’t seem to be any more for some reason. Hmmmm, rumor has it that Ron Artest is coming to the Lakers, great another idiot to deal with . . . hopefully we get rid of Kwame so that our team IQ stays at the same level – really really low

Which way is home?

Long plane rides are great because of what you can’t do: you can’t read cuz the light is usually pointed at the wrong angle, you can’t sleep cuz the person next to you has smelly feet, you try to watch the movies but either the headphones don’t work right or you’re at such a weird angle that you end up seeing the back of the head of the guy in front better than the movie screen. So you just relax and think about stuff . . . on this flight, I thought about my new path in med/biz school and where it will take me.

I find that when it comes to defining my place in society, I am constantly striving for balance: between being a physician and a businessman, helping the less fortunate or selling out an making $$$, being American or Chinese or Japanese or Latin (yes, I’ve been mistaken for Chinese Peruvian). Despite all the career paths and all the social roleplaying I’ve tried or am trying, I have yet to find one that really suits me. Instead, I either try to do multipe things at once or more recently try to combine various disciplines together. Based on my track record to date, as a doctor, I will keep trying to make the untenable tenable: practice medicine while running a business on the side, help the impoverished while making enough money to buy lots of stuff, focus on my local community while being involved in international projects . . . I will try to do it all, and probably end up failing to do any one thing well.

The more I think about why I want to combine all of these things in the first place, the more I start to think about what really drives me. What I have been able to come up with so far is that most of all, I am afraid of “missing the bus”. I fear missing out on opportunities. Whether it is a new real estate investment, job opportunity or even a social activity, I always find myself wishing or hoping that I can contribute, become a useful contributor or be recognized as such. That’s why it is hard for me to make decisions without weighing all the possibilities. Its not that I want to be thorough but rather that I do not want to miss a good opportunity and come to regret it later. So I choose what I decide is the “correct balance” of my own interests, familial acceptability, social prestige and will still allow me the flexibility to not miss out on other opportunities.

When I think about it this way, my life thus far sounds petty and meaningless. It has worked for me thus far because I have been fortunate enough to be coddled by my parents, various mentors and employers I have met along the way. Through it all, I have yet to make a really tough decision that goes against everyone’s interests and my own but a one which defines who I am. For example, in my business school application essay, I describe my vision of a non-governmental medical clinic that provides both health care and financial services to the poor. Its interesting now as I train to become a doctor but doing something like this would go against everything I’ve been raised to believe about financial stability, providing for my family not to mention giving up the comforts of my life to date.

Is helping the underserved truly a vocation or is it just a passing interest? Would I really do it if the stakes became high and I could no longer balance the other forces in my life? When will I begin to choose my own path instead of letting the “right path” choose me?

10 hours until freedom

Its 10:50pm and I am in a hidden place on campus, studying immunology, hidden far far away from other med students and the distractions of this world.

In 10 short hours I will be walking out of Kellogg having finished the first set of quizzes of this new term a FREE MAN!!! (well for two weeks that is)

Then its a 6hr drive to New York and two weeks of VACATION BABY! :)

Lakers lose 96-93

Kobe scores 43 and the Lakers lose . . . thats just ggggrreeeeaaaat

1/72 of the way there!

In the last month, I think I’ve really gone from being on a high about med school/becoming a doctor to “just trying to pass”.

The information just piles up . . . and its hard to find time to catch your breathe . . . I had to learn most of human development (Embryology) in about 5 days and then take a final which I had to pass in order to stay in med school.

Just had my first two finals in Human Anatomy, histology and about 7 hrs away from my next final in Biochem.
I think my brain is shutting down . . .

Well, at least the Lakers are up on Chicago . . .

Harold & Kumar Go to Halloween Party

H&K’s Halloween special

Jane and Ako gettin’ jiggy wit it

Kumar, what the #&@% are you doing?

Kenton’s distracted, but otherwise a nice pic of me and the classmates

still in med school

Wow, been a while since my last posting. Life is still good, we are having a mini heat wave up here after last week’s first snow. Mid-sixties and sunny although its still getting dark early (around 5pm). I really hope I don’t have SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Maybe food can cheer me up. We have this Korean-Japanese place here that is pretty darn good, just had some tofu chige, stone pot bibimbap and bulkoki last night . . . mmmmm bibim bap. I swear I don’t know what I would do without that place.

I recently turned in my MD/MBA application. I have decided to go forward with it after all. More options on the table, surgery? internal medicine? dermatology? non-profit aid work? business? More indecision, that’s for sure.

Okay, enough rambling, back to studying anatomy and CTO. Finals are in two weeks and then, hurrah hurrah, the end of my first term in med school!!

Tired . . .

Exhaustion may be a better word to describe how I feel right now. Emotionally, physically and mentally drained. Its the weekend before another set of quizzes and I feel so unprepared. Somehow I think going to some review sessions and seeing how unprepared I was relative to the material I was supposed to know and be reviewing and compared to my classmates, I definitely feel a small sense of inadequacy and anxiety. That coupled with feeling really tired has really got me bummin.

Its less than a month until finals . . .
Right now, all I want to do is to isolate myself and lick my wounds and study study study.