student govt

I am officially part of the student government now, as a member of the student council of the class of 2010. I'm not sure when I start doing stuff, but it's pretty exciting. I've never done anything like this before.. so I'm not exactly sure what to expect, but I think it'll be a good experience. really tired though, so I'm going to sleep.

interview #2

I got the ok to post my interview experiences so here they are. I feel like it's not that interesting for any med school people but maybe people outside of med school might like it.

9/14/2006
I feel like I learned a lot and gained some good experiences with this weeks interview. It was my turn to be the primary interviewer and it was really difficult because we spoke to a really depressed patient this week. During the beginning of the interview, the patient started talking about a lot of sad events that happened in her life, and it didn't seem like they would stop. I really wanted to ask her some questions that would perhaps make her think about more happy things, but I got pretty flustered because my mind was racing so fast trying to find a good question to ask. Apparently my classmates could tell I was getting nervous, I wasn't aware that it was so obvious. A suggestion was that I just continue asking questions about the patient no matter where it might bring me. I will follow that advice next time, and listen to the patient and try to think of a leading question relevant to what they are saying, rather than try to think of a question that would make the patient feel better.

I think I will be interacting with a lot of people that may not be very happy because sick people are usually sad, or simply not happy. A good question asked today was "What are some happy moments with ____?" I think it was a really good way of turning a conversation around if someone is talking about a really tragic incident with someone and it seems like it will only get worse. But this question should be asked after the patient is finished telling their story so they can get everything out.

I felt like I asked some questions a little to bluntly, but our 4th year preceptor said it was ok, and I could afford to be even more blunt in asking questions, to just ask what I want to know. I just have to figure out the appropriate time and delivery. I feel like I also need to say more encouraging things and/or reassuring things. The people in my group are really good at that, it seems to come naturally cause it's always at the right times and they seem to say the right things. These interviewing experiences have been great because this has been a different way of talking to people than I am used to. I really enjoy meeting new people and learning about them, but interviewing people at the hospital is a completely different experience. I don't feel as relaxed as I usually do, and sometimes the questions seem a lot more forced. Hopefully it will become more natural as the semester goes on, and I learn from the experiences.

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I haven't actually read this entry in a while, but it should be ok. I guess more about what's been going on in my everyday life. Most of my posts are just kinda random stuff that happens. I've been studying, but not as much as I expected? I'm not sure. I don't feel like I'm studying all the time, but I am really busy, not sure why it's so busy. Elections are going on right now and I am running for student council. This is the first time I'm doing such a thing, it's kinda crazy. I really think it would be a good experience and interesting to serve on student govt. I will try to post my last interview journal tomorrow, and then I will be all caught up.

2nd thing

So the second thing I wanted to talk about was the neighborhood I live in. So I never believed it until last week. but guess what. there ARE transvestite hookers walking around late at night. for some reason, I never saw them before, but last week on thursday night, there they were! my god. their frames are way too manly, and they are really tall. unbelievable. I feel like I want to go up to one and see if they will take a picture with me so I can post it on my blog. But that just seems wrong. plus, they might get the wrong idea... no thanks!

today my friends here at school finally told me they were getting a little bit annoyed with me. Not annoyed with any of my mannerisms, but just with something that is just part of my personality. I think it's due to the fact that we hang out basically every single day, or at least 6 days out of the week. I haven't gotten annoyed with them, but the rate at which I've gotten comfortable around them has been accelerated, so I feel they are experiencing a "different" side of me faster than most other people do. I feel like it's easier to write about it here, because I can actually think clearly and my mind doesn't seize up when I get put on the spot.

so the actual "annoying" part is that I'm really outgoing and talkative with people I don't know, and not so talkative with people I do know. I think my friends back home know this too, but they never really had a problem with it (or if they did, they never said anything). I feel like this arose sort of like a defense mechanism back in junior high when I was coming from a different school, and it was magnified when I went to Berkeley and became a CalSO counselor. Back in junior high, I was nice to everyone because I was somewhat new (there was nobody from my elementary school except for 2 people, and we didn't really hang out). Then in college, I learned to make small talk and put a lot of energy into meeting new people. It was awesome, but I guess it might give people false impressions about me sometimes. This might just be a lot of crap but I'm trying to think about it...

I usually talk a lot when I don't know someone very well. I hate awkward silences and avoid them at all costs. When I'm with friends, silence is ok, I usually just don't have much to say. My friends at home can probably agree on that. The group I hang out with in med school is full of talkers. and I say that in the nicest way possible. They usually talk, and I usually listen, with an occasional comment here and there from me. I've already gotten into my "quiet" listen/spacey mode with my good friends at med school. maybe this has gotten worse throughout the years. I don't remember being quite so bad before. maybe I was? and talking about myself and this stuff with other people is weird, it makes me feel very self-conscious and then my mind starts seizing up and I don't know what to say, and I basically want to crawl into a hole and shut the world out.

and that's the end of my stream of consciousness, it seems to have run out now. sorry if I've offended you guys by being more energetic with people I don't know. I'll try harder to talk more, but sometimes I just don't have much to say. why does this feel like so much drama to me already? I think maybe this is why I haven't had a girlfriend in a long long long long time. these things can just stay on my mind for a long time and interfere with everything I do. I think I'm also blowing this up more than it is. and now I need my sleep if I'm going to make my 8am class. good night everyone!

too much to say, too little time

I really need to go to sleep, but there are 3 things I needed to talk about. maybe I'll just say one thing right now and I'll write about the other 2 later. the most important thing. Jerry is fricking awesome. He's a friend of mine who just started medical school as well. but apparently his life is 10 times worse than mine. maybe not 10 times worse, but he seems to be under a lot more stress than I am. 10 classes? 4 hours of sleep? ughh... ok. but he said the funniest thing the other day. a little history:
this past year we started mountain biking. It was awesome, I should find pictures of when we went, and I'll post them on facebook or something. we biked at a lot of places around the bay area. The golden gate bridge was probably the most unique and fun, although that isn't really considered mountain biking. but omg. I could not stop laughing after this comment.

TaiLz9682: yea dude
TaiLz9682: i miss mtn biking
TaiLz9682: no fucking hils here
TaiLz9682: its flatter than asian boobs

Jerry, don't hate me for posting this. it was just toooooo funny. you totally made my day. maybe even the whole freaking week. to all my friends out there who don't know jerry, he's a really nice guy, and funny and smart and all that good stuff. not a jack ass at all, and I'm being completely serious, although these words may seem to indicate otherwise =). alright, I'm gonna go to sleep. 2 more things to say later!

ughhhh

I got a haircut this weekend. I think it's terrible! hopefully it'll grow out soon so it's not so ridiculous. And I am finally done with the first round of tests. Today was the epidemiology/biostatistics test, it was kinda annoying because there were a few small things that didn't seem to be covered in much detail.

I went to bodyworlds on Friday w/ my classmate Cedar. It was pretty interesting, but I feel like I'll be seeing a lot of it and more when I start anatomy next semester. It got somewhat old/boring after 1.5 hours, so we started speeding up, and we finished the whole exhibit within 2 hours.

I turned in my platform for student council. I decided not to run for president, cause I think that's too much work for me to handle. There are other things I would like to do, like startup a forum or messageboard for the class, and an online database of study guides. Not sure when elections are, but I'll let you people know what happens.

Today is Khoa's birthday, we're gonna go to parish cafe for dinner.. and then I dunno. maybe go out to a bar, or go watch a movie. still not sure.

match maker

so I went interviewing again today, but I'm going to wait on posting my journal entry until after I get approval from my 4th year preceptor. this post is more about match making and recent conversations I have listened to, and not really participated in. So two of my good friends here are ridiculously infatuated with hooking people up and playing match maker. I've already seen 4 offers of finding people a gf/bf (including myself). It's kinda funny. It's the whole "living vicariously" through others bit. heh.. the word vicarious reminds me of Tool (the band). that song is great, although I don't think it's called vicarious, but they say it a lot in the song. never mind, I lied, I just looked it up, and the song is called vicarious. back on topic. to me, dating people in my med school class is kinda iffy. I'm afraid of all the drama and bad stuff that might ensue. Cliques have already been formed, and unless you're dating someone within your clique, won't that be kinda weird? as in... maybe you're gonna study together, study w/ your respective cliques? or go off on your own? or one person gets absorbed into a different clique, and there's a migration? won't friends feel like they are being ignored? who knows, it's all very weird to me. too much drama, and the dynamic is weird but maybe I'm just thinking too much about it. I never really wanted to date a computer science girl (because a girl that is into computer science just seems kinda odd to me...). not that there's anything wrong with it, but come on! you people must also think it's kinda weird. I also never really wanted to date someone that's in the same field as I am, I'm not sure why. This is another topic that could be explored, but maybe talking about it in real life.

so maybe not a medical student (I said maybe, it's still possible...), but dental students on the other hand... I was working yesterday and this really cute dental student came by the desk. I mean.. if I saw her in my class, I probably would have tried to approach her already. anyways, I saw her again when I was walking down the street going to grab lunch w/ some friends. she was standing on the sidewalk with her dental school friends and our eyes met. it was kinda weird cause we just kinda looked at each other, a pole got in the way, and we were still kinda eyeing each other, and I wanted to say hi or wave or something, but I just kinda grinned awkwardly and kept going. *@#$!!!! terrible. I wanted to say hi and introduce myself on the way back, but by then they were already gone. These are the moments when I wished my inhibitions did not exist. you know those moments. you think twice about something, and your mind is racing, and you don't act on it. well, if I see her again, I will introduce myself and try to strike up a conversation. and now my mind is drawing a blank because I've been thinking too much about what to write. I'm going out to party with my class tonight because we just finished 2 tests this week. it should be fun.

I should really be studying butttt....

I've been procrastinating all night, so why stop now? maybe cause I have another test on thursday... oh well. This is a picture entry. w/ a ton of pictures. so here goes!

these are in chronological order, this is Jeff, Diana, Kristi, and Kelly.
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me and some friends...
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Jeff and I before we went inside, he's my fellow engineer
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that would be me and my mom! she helped out a lot this past weekend, and all my friends loved her.
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real life frogger! it really was, bunch of cars on the right that you can't see
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me and kelly, this was the pre-party before we went to umbria. I'm somewhat red because....
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of that big bottle of wine. yeah right. I had a screwdriver courtesy of mika.

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and here I am in the library w/ ronak. this is what I should be doing now...

whitecoat ceremony

so my whitecoat ceremony was this past weekend, and I had a lot of fun. It was great to finally get the coat and be one step closer to becoming a doctor. My mom came and helped out a lot by cooking some food and teaching me how to make stuff! it was awesome. My friends came over and loved it =D... I think.

Tomorrow is my first midterm. I haven't been this relaxed about a test ever. Maybe because I've been doing fine on the practice tests and I only need to pass, which is like.. high 60%. I've been scoring like 80-90 so I will be fine. Last week was way different then this week. I'm not so sure why I was so stressed out last week, maybe it was all the stuff we had to do. I'm not sure all test weeks are this chill, but I only have classes on friday. Monday through thursday I just have review sessions and 2 tests. I also found out that I'm only supposed to work 3 days out of the week, not 4. They put me down as working on sat, sun, wed, but I think I'm gonna be doing monday instead of wednesday. which is fine w/ me. weekday work days are more stressful than the weekend.

I will try to get pictures of whitecoat from my friend jeff since I took some pictures with his camera. there are some other pictures too.. somewhere. I just need to get off my lazy ass and post them. maybe later.

interview journal #1

*poof* back. I was approved to put my interview journal online

9/7/2006
So I'm supposed to keep a journal of my interviewing experience, so I decided that I wanted to just share w/ my friends here. I'll be mainly focusing on myself and my reactions because I can't say anything specific about the patients blahblahblah.

Today was my first interviewing experience and it was interesting. I didn't really know what to expect out of it, I guess I didn't really think about it too much because then I would have psyched myself out and gotten nervous. Much like the way I treated the whole medical school application process. I still got nervous, but I didn't become a psychopath about it. My group was assigned to the psychiatric inpatient ward and we will be interviewing patients for a few weeks. When I first heard we were going to interview psychiatric patients, I was a little apprehensive, but after discussing it with my peers and hearing about other groups, I felt lucky to have such an interesting demographic. And after todays experience, I'm very glad that I have this opportunity to interview patients at this unique place.

When I first walked into the psychiatric ward, all the stereotypes rushed into my mind and I felt bad about it. But I think it was only natural, since I've never been in such a setting. Everything looked normal, which should not be surprising, but I guess I didn't really think about it before. They had sets of locked double doors, like ones you would pass through to go to a dust free environment, except this wasn't to keep dust in or out. Our patient was an interesting person who kept talking and talking. He came in very energetic and immediately started talking about himself and his life story. I thought "wow this is going to be easy if he just comes out and tells us everything." However, It was difficult for the assigned interviewer to ask questions because none of us really knew how to interrupt the patient in a polite manner. He was talking about things that were not relevant to us as medical professionals practicing medical interviewing skills, so we really needed to direct him to tell us more relevant information. After a while he became more comfortable and we were able to ask some questions to find out more about the patient and his condition. He said he was in the hospital for depression and I believed everything he said. I learned that I need to take things with a grain of salt and think about what I'm hearing rather than just believe anything that anyone says. There were some far fetched stories, but I didn't really take a step back and think about them until afterwards, when our group got together and discussed our experience with our first interview. It turns out our patient had a more serious condition because he was admitted to the hospital. Depression is not severe enough to warrant a hospital stay.

I didn't get a chance to ask any questions because I wasn't able to interrupt our patient when he was speaking. And later when there was a little bit of dead time, the question I wanted to ask was no longer relevant and seemed out of place. Next week I will be the main interviewer which will be kind of exciting, and kind of nerve wracking. I thought everyone asked really good questions this week, and I hope I can do the same.

that's it, I think that was pretty vague. I hope I don't get in trouble... I'll probably take this down after a few days but I want to let friends back home read about it.

tireeeeddddd

I am tired. I need to regain those time management skills that helped me so much in college. I think I'm screwing around too much or just spending too much time doing things inefficiently. take this blog for example. this would be screwing around, but I felt like I had something to write about so I am. ummm I can't think of anything else where I could have cut corners today and made more time. maybe the gym. I could make my workout faster and then come home to study. I could just start eating crap so I waste less time preparing food. crap as in.. go out and buy stuff, or eat instant food-ish stuff. I need to carry around my pda with me again, or make my to-do list. then I need to add things to do, and cross them off. like getting through biochem sections. damnit, buying a yoga mat is also a waste of time. I'm considering not going, but this is the first week! I wonder if they will kick me out if I don't go. hmmmmm maybe it'll make me feel better though. I'll continue wasting my time later...

end of a three day weekend

today is the end of a 3 day weekend, it worked out pretty well for me. got a little bit of studying done, not as much as I wanted to, but I don't think I will ever study as much as I hope to. work was good, not too busy. ummm my life has been pretty boring. I've almost developed a routine. My new roommate is moving in on thursday, that will be cool, I hope we get along well.

The world is a very small place. This weekend I made a bunch of random connections. One of my classmates, Alex, is friends with Tyler Eliot (one L or 2?), a friend of mine from Berkeley. So very weird. Then today, I met Catherine when I was working at the computer lab. She's a first year dental student, who is connected to me and my friends in multiple ways (friends from college and high school). My network is growing! it's kinda cool/neat.

Anyways. Here's a picture of when we went to that "asian" club 2 nights ago.

If you don't know who I am, too bad...
(left to right) Mika, Jen, Kristi, Kelly, ..., Ken
to my friends back home, yeah I know I'm dressed kinda weird, (I guess not like I would normally at home). I wanted to try something different =) I still wear my white tshirts and track pants/jeans all the time. there just aren't any pictures of them. Mika went to tufts undergrad, she's a cool japanese girl that can apparently swim like a fish. Jen is Mika's friend from tufts, she is awesome for putting up with all of the geeky med school students. I can imagine some of you pointing at me when I say geeky. but that's ok! Kristi is another double Jumbo who knew my cousin when they were at tufts undergrad. Apparently Allen told her she wouldn't like me, and Annie told her I'm a big dork and didn't expect her to hang out w/ me as much as she has! I'm glad I could shatter all those expectations. I'm also waiting for her to send me some pictures so I can post them up here. Kelly is my fellow Cal Bear! which is awesome, I was so excited to meet another Cal Bear on the first day of orientation. Apparently we took bio1a over the summer together, but we did not know each other back then. such a small world. After Kelly it's me, if you're reading my blog, I hope you know who you're reading about, unless you're one of those who goes around reading random blogs. Read one of my earlier posts to see what I think about you! (I just think you're weird.) then there's ken, a 4th year dental student who is also connected in many different ways. Ronak is not in this picture, but I had to talk about her cause she should be in this picture. I should photoshop her face in. I'll do that later and post another photo. She's another double jumbo, and a really cool girl who's going to teach me bhangara someday for the multicultural show.

ok! that's enough for tonight. I'm going to sleep now.

I'm at the library

working and studying. This past week was the first week of school, it's been somewhat stressful already. There's a lot of material, thankfully most of it is review. The new job is also pretty good, I've been studying most of the time today, but yesterday there were a few more problems and I only got to study for maybe 1 hour. I've been going out every night since thursday. It's kinda crazy. In the past 2 weeks, I've gone out 9 nights. which is probably more than I went out in one year during college. and by go out, I mean go to a bar or club.

I'm also already part of a small clique that hangs out a lot, I'll try to post pictures sometime. For my interviewing course, I got assigned to the psychiatric ward of a hospital. I'm in a group with 4 other people and 2 4th year advisors. We're going to our first session this coming thursday. I think it'll be pretty exciting, even though I don't sound all that excited. I really am. really!

ok, I was also sent this link. http://theunderweardrawer.homestead.com/twelvemedstudents.html
I think I'm the one-track mind, like I've always been.

I thought I would have so much more to say, but I just can't think of anything now. It just seems so boring to talk about. how I wake up at 7:15 for 8 am classes, have all sorts of one-time administrative things still going on. I ordered my stethescope last week, should be here in october. almost time to leave work. I'm gonna go eat dinner w/ some friends and then watch Talladega nights. more to come later