Some days. Some days I love what I am doing. Some days I am convinced it is the best thing for me to do, that it is the right path. Some days I am truly excited about the future. Some days I wonder why I made such an idiotic decision. Some days I wish I had made some course corrections along the way. Some days I just want to be part of the standard, blue-collar working class. Some days this just sucks. Every day I pay out my nose (or other orifice if you prefer) to work for othe...

. . .And no one came? In our case, you have fun anyway. Last year we had quite a few friends over to our apartment to celebrate the arrival of the new year. Some came with their little ones, many left them home. We played games, ate treats, chatted, and generally had a great time. So this year we thought to repeat the feat. We invited some friends who live a couple hours away (they were planning on spending the night), some other friends who were still in town, and made sure we had ...

I just wanted to take a moment to wish all here at JU a very Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it), a happy holiday season, and a general sense of well wishes for all here. I have "met" some amazing people here, have formed some new e-friendships for which I am grateful, and have had my life generally enriched by those here and what they share with us. In particular I would like to thank those with whom I have connected perhaps a bit more, some of my favorite bloggers (in no particular ...

I would never claim to be the paragon of men's fashion. Even when I was a teenager and fashion is such a must to establish social status, I just went with what I felt comfortable wearing. But I have often taken care with how I dress when I am dressing up. I like looking sharp when I am wearing nice clothes. On Sundays, going to church, I usually wore either a nice suit and wingtips, or wingtips, slacks and one of my nice, 3 button sport coats. I have a good collection of ties that I ...

I have been thinking lately about the balance between rational thought and raw emotion. I generally try to err on the side of caution and act in a more rational way, but sometimes the emotion is too strong and I get caught in its lassos of madness. We have all experienced that heat of the moment. That rush of passion and energy that accompanies being in the middle of some experience. And we have all done stupid things while in that moment. And so, stupid is as stupid does. The stupid ...

This is sort of a hodge-podge, dealing with philosophical questions, yet still dealing with entertainment, maybe something else, so I am going Misc rather than either of those other two. Money can buy you anything in this world. Yes, according to the old adage, money can't buy you happiness, but I'm not convinced It sure can buy your integrity. I admit it, I occasionally watch "reality" television. "The Amazing Race" has some interesting challenges and the locations as beautifu...

Why is it that the only mail that I most certainly, absolutely want to tear into little pieces and throw away is the mail that invariably has the words "Please do not discard" or "Important information" on it? It has really made the process easier for me. I get an envelope that tells me on the front just how important it is to my life it instantly becomes confetti and litters the compactor before it ever even makes it into the house. Just how dumb do they think we are? Why does the fell...

I have a real problem with Valentine's Day. Always have. I must just be a cynic. It isn't exactly difficult to find out that the average class size in Elementary school in the US is 23.5 kids. Add in a teacher (or two) and you have right around 25.5 people. Take away the child sending the Valentine's Day cards (they don't need to send one to themselves, and if they do perhaps there are bigger problems), and you have a safe average of 25 people in school that your youngster has to tak...

White male. For many people, that label alone is enough them to hate me. Sticking a label on someone, placing them in a box, and reducing them to less than human makes the antipathy much easier to swallow. Sadly, I speak from personal experience, having been guilty on more than one occasion of reducing a human to a simple label. I felt much better about hating them. Fortunately, we are each multi-faceted beings. So if one label doesn't fit, we can use others. I have many myself: ...

Now that the match is over, and I have successfully secured my place of training for the next six years, I have a confession to make. I didn't do terribly well on step 1 of the USMLE (United States Medical Liscensing Exam), aka 'the boards". Oh, I passed, no question. And quite comfortably too. But I was not in the 99th percentile. There are lots of reasons I could toss out: um, 3 kids, our foster daughter chose that week to run away (for the first time, which was hands down the most...

Ugh, what a week it has been. Not bad, just tense. And this weekend is going to be the worst. Likely one of the most nerve-wracked of my life. I pretty much feel nauseous 24 hours a day these days. See, tomorrow night, at 12:01 am EST (just after midnight early Monday morning), the match results go out. I will be happy with anywhere I end up going. It is the thought of "maybe I didn't match" that is killing me. Urology is a very competitive field, with about 400 people applying th...

My wife and I really love humus. It is interesting, because it is one of those things we just never had before we moved out here to NC. Not a lot of humus to be found in good, old homogeneous Utah (perhaps there is more now, it has been a few years, and I don't really recall looking for it). But one of the things that really bugs me is just how dang expensive it is, for not a whole lot of stuff. So, for our New Year's party, I decided to make some on my own, along with homemade pita chi...

Perhaps this is common to all forms of higher education. But since (gratefully) I am only persuing one graduate degree, I can only speak of my personal experience. We are often admonished to remember that our time in medical school is our education. Academic advisors remind us that it was our choice to come to medical school, and as such, the primary onus of responsibility to make that education counts rests upon our shoulders. I agree with them. This is my education, I should engage...

Today was my first day back to school since my winter break. For reasons known only to the school, they decided that this winter break, during fourth year, would be the biggest since I started medical school. It was amazing! Between first and second year we got three weeks off. We spent half of that time visiting family back in Utah. That is great, but it is not a vacation. The flying, the driving to visit everyone, making sure you make the rounds and don't leave anyone out. And sinc...

Well, it happened. Last night in fact. I turned in my rank list. Now let's just hope I don't have constant diarrhea until Jan 23rd. For clarification, the rank list is me, listing the residency programs I interviewed at in order of my preference. The programs that interviewed me rank all the people they interview in order of their preference. A computer algorithm then looks first at my list, takes my top choice and compares me to that programs rank list. If I rank high enough there...