pyhee's Xanga

Friday, November 06, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:12:35 GMT

Update on today's post:

So I emailed the dean to let her know that I had canceled my appointment after speaking with my anatomy professor and apologizing if I had been intrusive; she wrote back saying that she had been "a bit tense" about a meeting she had that day. She also asked me to come back in to discuss a way to organize a group of med2 students who could serve as mentors for the med1 students next year.

A bit confused, but yay for happy endings...

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:11:11 GMT

When in a position of not-much-authority and attempting to get something done effectively from the bottom up--and when lack of insistence may result in lack of progress--I find that it is difficult to toe the line between being effectively persistent and being obnoxiously brazen.

"Brazenness" (yes, that's a word) implies "acting out of one's rightful place." What behooves us to restrain ourselves from acting "out of place"? Is such action inherently offensive? Well, I suppose nothing is "inherently" offensive...but do enough people get offended when others "act out of place" that it is reasonable to expect others to refrain from doing so? Is that even a legitimate criteria? (If enough people are irritated that I wear purple socks, does that mean I should stop wearing purple socks?) Or is it more along the lines of tacky, or lacking in decorum?

And while we're at it, I'm intrigued with this idea of "rightful place." Naturally it implies a hierarchy; in most cases, social or work hierarchy. What intrigues me is this idea of having a "rightful place" outside of an explicitly structured hierarchy (the workplace). In this setting, does acting out of place threaten something? Or am I just completely missing the point?

Exposition:

In case it wasn't reflected in my posts, I really liked anatomy. The material was enthralling, and I thrived on the learning atmosphere and the attention that the faculty gave their students. (Yes, I love it when my teachers pay attention to me. I am an insufferable teacher's pet. It makes learning easier.)

It is the policy here not to allow students that aren't in an alternative program (it's called the independent study program, or ISP; it's basically curriculum minus the lecture, where you learn everything on your own) to return as teaching assistants the following year for anatomy. I really, really, REALLY wanted to come back as a TA. I also refused to enroll in ISP. But the more I thought about it, the more I figured that asking around about the possibility of being a TA couldn't hurt.

So I asked. I emailed one of my anatomy professors (who is also the leader for the anatomy block), asked him about a good time to stop in, and spoke with him the next day about my interest. He was surprisingly receptive to the idea of having more student involvement in teaching, and I left his office feeling encouraged and enthusiastic about my prospects. He suggested that I email the academic program director and the associate dean of student life to get the ball rolling, and asked me to check back in with him about my progress.

So I did. I emailed, telling both of them about my idea and asking if there was a good time for me to swing by their respective offices. I waited about a week and a half, and heard nothing back. Our academic program director happens to be one of our professors, so after lecture one day I introduced myself and mentioned that I had sent the email. I could tell by the look on his face that he remembered, but the look on his face wasn't particularly encouraging. I laughed and told him so, and he admitted (good-naturedly) that he had received my email, but that it was not in his place to act on my behalf. He then suggested that I go speak with the associate dean of student life.

So I did. Since I had asked about a good time to swing by and hadn't heard back, I figured it wouldn't hurt to go by the office to see if I could introduce myself.

When I arrived, the dean's door was open, and she was on her computer. I knocked (on the open door) and said immediately, "Is this a bad time?" The dean said that she was trying to get some things together, and told me that I should have made an appointment. I apologized and introduced myself, clarified that I had sent her the email earlier, and told her that I had wanted to swing by to ask if there was a good time that I could meet with her. She told me (referring to my email), "I wasn't sure exactly what you wanted. You're welcome to volunteer, but I don't think I can do anything about it. I think its something between you and your instructor." She then reminded me that it wasn't something we could talk about by just "popping in", and that I should make an appointment.

The receptionist was out (the receptionist desk was literally about two feet away from the dean's door), so I waited for a while and chatted with my friend Rose, who was waiting for her appointment with someone else. I must have waited for about fifteen minutes, and the dean came back out and apologized that the receptionist was out for so long. I explained to the dean that I didn't need an appointment, and that if it wasn't something that she thought would be useful to discuss, I could leave; I just wasn't sure who I needed to speak to about my question. The dean said, "No, I can meet with you. Just not without an appointment."

The receptionist eventually came back, and I made my appointment, albeit feeling as though I wasn't really going to get anywhere. As a last ditch effort, I decided to run by my anatomy professor's office one more time.

After leaving the dean's office, I definitely felt in some way that I had been intrusive. But I couldn't pinpoint exactly how. Her tone seemed disapproving, and my immediate reaction was to wonder if I had overstepped a boundary in knocking on her door. My intent was to ask if there would be a good time to meet; of course, if she was busy, a referral to the receptionist made sense. But her repeated reminders that I SHOULD have made an appointment sort of implied that I shouldn't have knocked on the door in the first place. All of the staff and faculty contact information is listed on our website; I took this as a go-ahead to contact them if we had questions, even if it was, "is there a good time to meet?"

There is a happy ending, and I'm glad a went to my anatomy professor again. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have found out that his intent in having me run by the assistant dean and the program director was just to ensure that we wouldn't be stepping on any toes if he let me be a TA. Needless to say, there was a severe lack of communication going on, but all of this REALLY made me think: if knocking on the dean's door was being a little too insistent, going back to my professor was even more so. But it worked out. And I'm not quite sure what my take-home message from all of this should be.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:50:23 GMT

What I have learned so far in my training at the Suicide Prevention Hotline: It is both a blessing and a curse that, ultimately, our greatest sense of comfort and happiness lies in our relationships with others.

I believe it pays off to cultivate yourself so that others feel joy when they are around you. It almost never hurts to give, but I cannot even bring myself to imagine the pain of those who have no one.

"Overachiever"

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:12:49 GMT

After my last anatomy exam, I had a conversation with Alex about how the exam went. (You may remember my mention of this rather fetching young fellow intermittently on my blog for the past four years...four years, ladies and gentlemen, hold your applause.) I had done fairly well, and when I told Alex my score he chided me (good-naturedly): “overachiever.”

My attempt to give a light-hearted, nonchalant answer completely failed, and I proceeded to be silent for the next minute or so while I tried to figure out what exactly was bothering me.

I have been called an “overachiever” in my life more times than I can count. I honestly can’t remember how often the term has been lobbed at me in jest; what I can say is that sometimes it has bothered me, and other times it hasn’t.

Regardless of the times I have been able to shrug it off or laugh about it, I have to admit that the term “overachiever” has a bit of a sting to it. It is certainly not a compliment. The word “over-” implies “excess,” “unnecessary,” and “superfluous.” It is a hand-wave to a silly and compulsive tendency. The overachievers are the ones who work themselves into a tizzy (for no seemingly valid reason) while the sane and reasonable ones –the ones who know how to prioritize—sit back and grin at them in knowing amusement.

The first time I can remember being bothered by the name was when it was applied to me—rather matter-of-factly, now that I think of it—by a guy that I was pretty head-over-heels for in high school. I don’t quite remember the course of the conversation that led up to it (this was my freshman year), but I do remember that it was a response to his own performance in light of my own. I was a straight-A student, he was not. Of course, there was no reason for this to reflect poorly on his work ethic, because my grades were the product of a character trait that was very easily dismissed. Overachiever.

To wrap up the Alex story (and in his defense before I move on to my diatribe), I admit that I harbor a bit of a chip on my shoulder from those in high school who treated my studying tendencies as something exasperating or undesirable, somewhat akin to an utter lack of fashion style or social ineptitude (i.e. my volleyball coach rolling his eyes at me while I was trying to do my homework on a Friday afternoon, sighing, “Put it away, Sarah.”) Alex was teasing (as I hear significant others are occasionally prone to do), but I bristled nonetheless. Segue to apologetics.

For us “overachievers”...what exactly sets this “bar of sufficiency” that we overshoot to become not “achievers,” but “overachievers”? Is it the average performance of our peers? The minimum required to achieve our personal goals? The world would be a pretty dismal place if everyone strove to vacate the high end of the bell curve; we’d be saying goodbye to scientific breakthroughs, philosophical treatises, social revolutions. And when it comes to personal goals, I am almost certain that I would not be where I am right now if I hadn’t worked as hard as I did in high school and college. Apparently my work efforts were just right, and I am exactly where I want to be.

It is a shame that there is any stigma attached to a strong work ethic in itself. I make the "in itself" qualification because I am very much aware that tunnel-vision and selfish ambition—occasional by-products of a strong drive to succeed—can have some negative consequences. I recognize that at times, my desire to do well in academics cultivated behaviors that stifled my social life, damaged my emotional and physical health, and strained some relationships. I’m working on that. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Please, please, please recognize my accomplishments for what they are. Accomplishments come when you work for them. And work is hard.

Everyone derives a sense of satisfaction from something. I work hard for two reasons: first, I am often truly engaged in what I am learning, and second, I choose to derive satisfaction from my accomplishments. I fail to see how this is any worse than deriving satisfaction from a night on the town, or from one’s physical attractiveness, or from fancy cuisine. I think that it’s part of human nature to be proud of our creations and our abilities. I have the feeling that, if it weren’t, we wouldn’t have Beethoven’s symphonies, or Michelangelo’s sculptures.

I’m going to make a bold assertion here, and that is that those who wave around the term “overachiever” in an attempt to be dismissive are those who refuse to acknowledge the value of working hard for the sake of working hard. I won’t delve any further than that, but I will say this: suppose my volleyball coach or my high-school crush were rushed into an emergency room for some fun emergency surgery and had the privilege of choosing their own physician. Given the choice between an overachiever and your average Joe, you can bet your balls that they’re going to choose the overachiever.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:54:09 GMT

Once upon a time, you were nothing but a cell—a tiny sac of fluid, filled with nothing but globs of protein and 46 strings of deoxyribonucleic acid (23 from your mother, 23 from your father). You were no bigger than the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Then you started to divide, cleaving over and over, until you looked like a microscopic raspberry. Like origami or play-dough, you twisted and you folded, invaginated and budded, rolled and flattened. You transformed from little more than a hollow tube to a multi-chambered, multi-organed being with a beating heart, an impulse-firing brain, and a set of lungs waiting for their first breath of oxygen. All from one little cell.

For the past ten weeks, I spent three hours a day with a scalpel in one hand and my dissector in the other, chasing down tangles of arteries and nerves and separating muscles from fascia. It is, in fact, illegal to cut open a human body unless you are medical student. Dissection is a privilege that few people have. I don’t believe that the stigma of slicing through skin or sawing through bone is simply the product of our squeamish natures; there is something forbidding about violating our exteriors. We don’t even like to impinge on personal space. To take apart a body is, in a way, to reduce who and what we are to a series of moving parts. Sure, we’ve read in biology that the heart pumps blood or that the brain sends electrical impulses to our arms and legs. We’ve glanced at pictures. We’ve watched Discovery. But to actually cut...to be the one to delve from the outside in...that’s different. We start by staring the wizard in the face and proceed to find the man behind the curtain, and we fear that the magic will disappear.

A week before the end of anatomy, I pushed a bone-saw through the circumference of a skull, opening the calvaria like the lid of a cookie jar. I cut through cranial nerves that snaked through the grooves and holes of the skull and lifted a brain into my hands. It weighed about as much as an eggplant, and the sulci felt like boiled eggs through my nitrile gloves. I examined the optic nerves, two fibers that looked not unlike two strands of linguini. I looked up, took in the colors of the room, the shapes, the textures—the subjective experience of seeing—and looked back at those little linguini strands. I could not put the two together. It made the hair on my arms stand on end.

We are amazing works of art. I don’t know how we got here...but I don’t need to know. Seeing it all is enough to leave me floored with wonder, and to appreciate just how incredible life is.

I thanked my favorite professor after our last anatomy lecture today. I told him how grateful I was that the faculty was so attentive, passionate, and invested in their medical students. When he told me, “Well, you made it easy,” he had tears in his eyes. Then he gave me a hug.

I’m in the right place.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:39:41 GMT

I was on facebook the other week when an old friend, Ethan, messaged me. We hadn’t spoken since my junior year at Stanford, when we were dorm neighbors. We did a little catching up; Ethan was in the middle of his PhD candidacy, and he told me he was planning a trip to China with a friend. He asked if I wanted to come; I told him (somewhat facetiously) that if the Air Force would have let me defer medical school for a year, I would have. Before we said goodbye, he said: “I never told you how great of a neighbor you were when we lived in Jerry. You were always willing to take study breaks to talk, and I always felt comfortable talking to you.” I was thrilled and touched to reconnect with an old friend, not just because it had been such a long time since we last spoke, but also because he hadn’t hesitated to reach out.

When I was at Stanford, I thought of Ethan as my next-door McGuyver. I lived in a two-room double with my friend Jessi, and we locked each other (or ourselves) out on multiple occasions. One night when I was without my key and a roommate to let me in, I knocked on Ethan and Peter’s door to see if they had any bright ideas. Peter tried to actually break through the door (that didn’t work); Ethan produced a lock-pick kit and proceeded to pick my lock. It worked. When I couldn’t figure out why my computer wouldn’t let me print, he pointed out that I was printing to file (brilliant me). When I accidentally ordered a DVD with a region-2 code that wouldn’t work with my DVD player, Ethan found a media player that would play it.

I received a phone call two nights ago from Daniel, one of Ethan’s friends who had also lived in Jerry (and who amazed me with his juggling abilities and fake Japanese accents). He left a message asking me to call him back, and I imagined that, like Ethan, he simply had the urge to reconnect with old friends.

I called Daniel back last night, and he told me: Ethan passed away on Friday when he and a friend were hit by a landslide while hiking in China.

Sometimes I’m tempted to believe that things in life happen for a reason. I’m not talking about the landslide. I can’t see any reason in that whatsoever. Ethan couldn’t have known what was going to happen when he messaged me on facebook. But when I look back now, I think of it as his goodbye.

Here is the harder, more personal part of all of this. It feels strange to grieve. I almost feel a little guilty, because when I get sad, I think of the people who were so much closer to Ethan that I don’t even know. Emotions aren’t rational. But no combination of emotions feels good enough.

Our dorm was situated right behind a man-made lake. I walked around that lake every Tuesday and Thursday night for salsa practice. On one of my walks back to Jerry one night, I noticed a white smudge in the sky. I mentioned this to Ethan on my way to my room, and he pulled up a constellation map. I’m reposting the story from an earlier entry:

I had one of those nice, refreshing, "So that's why I'm in college" moments last night...

I was walking back from salsa practice across the lake, and there are no lights in that area, so it's really easy to see the stars. While I was looking up at the sky, I noticed a nebula--later I found out it was the Maia Nebula--which is something I've never seen for myself before. On my way back to my room, I said hi to Ethan and Peter, my next door neighbors. Since Ethan is one of the guys who knows everything and can do anything (he picked my lock when I locked myself out of my room, and solved my DVD viewing problems when I ordered a region 2 DVD), I asked him about the thing up in the sky, and he suggested we all trek out to the lake to figure out what it was.

While we were looking at the stars, we saw the most brilliant shooting star I have ever seen in my life. It must have lasted at least 3 seconds.

Inspired by our stargazing, Ethan suggested we walk the Dish--this path up in the foothills where the large satellite dish is. It's closed at night, but the fence is easy enough to climb over.

It was an incredibly clear, incredibly beautiful night (well, morning, it was about 12:30 am when we left). I was a little antsy because a) we weren't supposed to be there, and b) there are mountain lions up on the dish. We were walking by a couple of trees, and all of a sudden we heard this violent thrashing and squeaking that scared the SHIT out of me. I know mountain lions don't squeak, but for a second I thought one was going to jump out at me from the tree--don't judge, that's just how my mind works. The most logical conclusion we could come to was that they were bats, in which case the biggest danger was simply that one would get tangled in someone's hair.

We checked out the observatory, which, unfortunately, we couldn't get too close to because the lights were on and someone's car was parked in front of the building.

We got back at about 1:45 in the morning. Oddly enough, I'm not tired despite having woke up at 8:30 this morning.

Our next quest will be navigating the steam tunnels...

Rest in peace, Ethan. I can’t begin to imagine how many lives you touched.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:19:24 GMT

I received an email last week from the Assistant Dean for Diversity and Cultural Affairs. Well, I should clarify—I received an email from the assistant program manager on behalf of the dean, directing me to make an appointment with him at my earliest convenience so that I could “discuss my career aspirations and academic development.”

I sent an email back to the program manager, thanking her for her message and asking if the same email had been sent to all of the medical students. I was fairly certain that the answer would be “no”, but I wanted to cover all of my bases before I decided how I was going to react.

Her reply was a one-liner:

“No, just those who have been designated as underrepresented minorities.”

It was only after I chatted with a few people that I realized my reaction was not as understandable as I hoped it would be. The email chafed, but before I go on I should clarify that it was the directive nature of the email—not the division of jurisdiction over a particular ethnic group of students—that bothered me.

Well, maybe that’s too rigid a demarcation. I’ll admit it: I felt like I was being lumped into a category. I know, I know. I do belong in a category; everyone does when it comes to ethnicity. But there’s a type of category that is largely “judgment-neutral”, so to speak—man or woman (though, if you read some of my previous posts, I’m sure there are those who would contest that one), black or white, American citizen or Korean citizen, etc. But then there are the characteristics of those categories that are not so judgment-neutral.

I understand that trends between ethnicity and academics exist for a reason. I am also aware that African-American, Latino, and Native Americans (to name a few groups) are underrepresented in medicine. Socioeconomic status is, sadly, still linked to ethnicity. My issue exists because there is a disconnect between my ethnicity and my...hmmm...”projected” socioeconomic status. The military culture is a bit of an outlier in the three-tiered system of lower, upper, and middle class, but I think it’s safe to say that my social and educational climate largely paralleled that of a middle-class teenager. I am, technically, an “underrepresented minority,” but this had absolutely no impact on my chances to succeed in school.

I focus on socioeconomic status because I shudder to think that there would be any other correlating factor between ethnicity and academic achievement. Anyone who says that underrepresented minorities fail to thrive because of a physiologically-seated lack of intelligence deserves to be banned from any and all positions of policy-making in academia and the workplace. He or she should also be punched in the face. Fine, maybe not punched in the face. But you get my drift.

See, when I got that email telling me to make an appointment with the dean rather than saying, “Hey, here’s a resource if you need it,” here is the message I got: “You are a minority. Most minorities don’t do well in medicine. We don’t trust you to make your own decisions about the sort of guidance you will need in medical school. Come in so that we can keep an eye on you.”

I realized that my interpretation was quite a bit more nuanced than most people’s would have been, because most people I talked to didn't really get it right away. I asked my friend Duane about it (Duane is Chinese and is not an underrepresented minority in medicine, though he underrepresented at Ohio State), and he confessed that his perspective was one of an outsider. I am aware that my interpretation was colored by my own personal fears and biases. I hate the thought of anyone looking at me and saying, “If you weren’t a minority, you wouldn’t be where you are. Affirmative action has opened doors for you, not your competence.”

I ended up making an appointment with the assistant program manager (not the dean). When I asked her why the email was sent out, she told me pretty much what I expected to hear: minority students may have a hard time adjusting because they feel different.

The ironic thing was, I didn’t feel any different when I got to medical school. And then I got that email. What made me uncomfortable about that email was the realization that I had been set apart regarding my potential in medicine because of my ethnic background. In telling me to come in, the school had already placed me into a category--and not the judgment-neutral type. I felt like the school expected me to have a hard time, and those involved were trying to coddle me.

When I said this, the program manager said she understood and told me that I didn’t need to go see the dean if I didn’t want to. Overall the meeting seemed productive, and I made sure to mention that I did appreciate the sentiment of reaching out to students. But there’s a way to do it without seeming paternalistic. (Of course I didn’t mention that part; didn’t want to burn any bridges.)

To round out the entry, I thought I’d mention that it isn’t just one side of my ethnic background that brings up these issues.

Near the end of orientation, I was hanging out with a couple of med 1’s, eating Wendy’s and talking about health care reform, religion, and god knows what else. The conversation turned to our experiences as pre-meds in undergrad. When I mentioned how I often felt inadequate as an undergraduate, one of the students looked at me and said, “I don’t understand you Asians. You always freak out about academics.” He then went on to say that the only reason Asian students work so hard is because their parents make them.

I responded by saying that my desire to be a doctor never had anything to do with my parents, and that many premed students, regardless of ethnic background, felt anxious about the prospect of competing to get into medical school. His response?

“Yeah, that’s what they all say.”

He has been banned from our study group.

Friday, September 04, 2009

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:52:29 GMT

During cadaver (body) dissection today:

LAUREN (my dissection group member): Do you know what I need to do that I haven't done yet?

ME: What?

LAUREN: Go around the lab and look at other people's bodies.

ME: *grin*

LAUREN: Shut up. You know what I meant.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:55:09 GMT

I went to the library with my dissection group the other day to study. We were learning about the muscles and bones of the shoulder, and one of my group mates excused herself from our study room to ask for something at the front desk. She came back with a (real) scapula and a humerus.

Apparently the library desk holds a bunch of (real!) skeletons for check out.

Yesterday we had to turn our cadaver onto her back so that we could dissect her chest. Geoff, one of my group mates, wondered if we should have put a soaked towel under her back so that her muscles wouldn't dry out. I speculated (out loud) that, with the amount of formaldehyde that had formed a puddle on the dissection table, we shouldn't have to worry, as our cadaver would probably be marinating in fluid.

Upon saying the word "marinating", I got hungry.

Med school is seriously going to tweak my perception of what is normal and what isn't.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:05:15 GMT

I am cutting up my first cadaver on Monday.

This is very surreal.