Everything I've Ever Wanted

Reality Check Lab Meeting

2010-04-25T21:07:00.000-07:00

Each member of my lab presents in lab meeting only once every 5 months so that one meeting's importance becomes amplified much more than it should be. I went into mine a week ago thinking I was just awesome. I had been optimizing set up for a screen and had what I thought was a very strong positive control and very low background noise, basically a perfect setup for the next legs of the experiment. Perhaps I had thought too highly of myself, because my PI's suggestions that the parameters still needed to be even better and further optimized came out sounding like "This data sucks. Do better." His critical attitude and shrewd comments are precisely why I like working with him, but sometimes encouragement is hard to come by. Thankfully, one of the postdocs came up to me afterward to tell that he thought my data was very high quality and reassured me that the PI was impressed but would not be the type to say so outright. I was tearing up because I was so glad that at least someone had encouraging words and seemed to understand that I needed them then!

Balance

2009-12-28T10:28:00.000-08:00

I've been so lazy during the holidays!! I had so many plans for how much I want to study and learn for my thesis project and quals coming up in January. But I spent most of it hanging out with relatives and watching movies.

When I do read, I get so involved -- I love my project, I love my topic. But it's exhausting. So when I'm not reading and thinking, I feel too lazy to get started, so days go by where I make no progress followed by continuous days of study and planning. I definitely cannot go on this way or I will definitely wear out before I get through my thesis..

2009-10-04T16:58:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I've blogged, but I just noticed that my site actually has followers... and is actually linked to other MD/PhD blogs.. Makes me feel like I should write something to maintain my popularity :)

The past year has been stale in terms of science but a lot has changed in just the past few months. I finished 2nd year medical school in May; then I jumped into 2 months clinical rotations in medicine at MGH; then immediately dropped straight into graduate school. I am loving the graduate school lifestyle. I am still working crazy hours, but the freedom of choosing my breaks during the day and deciding which evenings I take off makes such a huge difference. I can't imagine how I stood the 6am-7pm strict daily hours just a few weeks ago on medicine.

I've been having a lot of fun plotting up different potential thesis topics, but unfortunately I am now spread more thin than I had planned. Every time I meet with my PI, I just want to discuss new ideas and plan out different projects -- but he has now given me an ultimatum that I need to decide what I will work on by this week. Everyone else thinks it's crazy since I've only been working in lab for 4 weeks. But he's right -- if I don't focus now, no way I can reach a 3 year goal. I guess there are some things you give up as MD/PhD too..

Family

2008-03-15T07:23:00.001-07:00

Our spring break just started, and many of my classmates have gone home to see their families. I was almost dismissive of this idea, as I felt that I wanted to visit friends, see places, do newer more interesting things while I had the chance. Last night, I was thinking about where I'd like to go during the week, and realized how little chance I have to be at home anymore. I've never been a very good daughter, only calling home every few months, getting annoyed at my mom for disturbing my work even though she only calls once every few weeks and only for a few minutes, planning to do everything except go home. This summer, I will have almost no extra time to visit family, but it had been reasonable to me.

But last night, I decided that I need to see my family. So I switched the airplane ticket from May to a ticket 2 days from now. It's going to be a surprise. I changed my dad's airline email account so he wouldn't get the confirmation email. I'll just take a passenger shuttle home. I think it's a good plan, and the thought of this surprise is making me happy.

Researching Researchers

2008-03-05T11:17:00.001-08:00

I have been wanting to visit Singapore's famous Biopolis for a while now to experience the multibillion dollar investment in biotechnology and its rumored international mixing pot of acclaimed faculty members. Finally this summer I am going to go talk to researchers there to study the nature of the global networks that connect researchers there to the rest of the world. I am excited about this opportunity to be involved in an entirely new project outside my expertise, to visit new places and meet new people, and think about science from a different perspective.

In talking to faculty members about my projects, I have so far received two dramatically different responses. One is exuberantly optimistic about the type of stories I'll be able to hear from people and how reasonable it would be to write a publishable article at the end. The other sits rather high in the ivory tower of academia and wonders why anyone thinks they can even attempt such a project without a background in the field. I have had a few good leads on people to talk to.. so I will barge ahead and see what happens..

Since I am working in a stem cell lab right now, my mentor suggested that I do some research on the members of my own lab. All together, I could put together an interesting comparative case on the high profile stem cell labs in the most prominent biomedical centers in the world.

Snow

2007-12-14T13:22:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was my first Boston blizzard. We got a foot of snow, and now everything looks like a picture perfect winter. I went to play outside and became ridiculously covered in snow from snowballs, making snow angels, and rolling around in snow. And when I got thirsty.. just ate some snow. hehe. The excitement of snow is helping to offset the onset of finals period. Oh yay for holiday season.

Primary Care Interview

2007-12-01T18:45:00.001-08:00

As I was studying in the education center today, a woman comes over and introduces herself as a journalist. I agree to be interviewed for her article, and we start the tape. The first question is, have you had influences that encourage you to pursue primary care. hahah... my response? "Let me share a bit of my background, I am actually an HST MD/PhD student... (read: very very likely not ever primary care)." But she was still interested in hearing from me, and in fact, we had a very interesting conversation. I made two points about primary care that I honestly had never thought about before the moment I said them.

1. The payoff for going into primary care right now is not worth the investment. This is true economically, socially (the glam of the profession), or intellectually. But as the numbers decline, and this profession comes into high demand, then the relative value of this field will increase and again attract more students to it.

2. In terms of how to attract more people to the field. Just as how in HST/MSTP, we are on a set path and are passionate about academic research, if there were such a program for primary care, we would have equally passionate people dedicated to going into that field. If such a program existed at Harvard, these students would be backed by the prestige and opportunities available.

Right now, I'm thinking that Harvard doesn't deem the shortage in primary care as significant enough to initiate such a program. The journalist also said that of all the people she's interviewed here, no one has suggested such a possibility (which I believe also speaks to the general mindset).

Skulls

2007-11-06T21:30:00.001-08:00

I haven't written in here for a while mainly because every time I feel like I have something to share, I realize that it is unbelievably nerdy and no one would possibly interested except for me. Well, no, I think some things would be interesting to share, but a weblog would not do them justice.

What is neat though is what's sitting on the table in front of me right now. A real human skull. There's something creepily satisfying about it being midnight right now and having a dead person's head in front of me. Every person in our class has one on loan for the semester. It costs several thousand dollars, and is as real as can be. The funny thing is, I was carrying it in its box a few days ago when a random person stopped me to ask what was in my black box. I hesitated a moment before saying truthfully "a skull." They stared a moment, then gave a knowing smile, replying "human? ..haha, i'm just kidding.." Before I could reply, they had already walked off, snickering at the good joke between us.

Gait

2007-10-28T21:08:00.001-07:00

Ever since medical school started, I realize that I've been subconsciously evaluating everyone that passed on the street. Many of the diseases have characteristic features, and at least for anatomic issues, they're easy to spot. Today i was studying in the bookstore when this lady passes by who definitely had impaired abduction in her left leg! Every time she stepped with her right foot, her right hip would fall down (since she can't shift weight appropriately to her left side) and she had to walk with her legs crossing over each other and her body tilting up and down with each step. Interesting interesting..

Tug of War

2007-10-08T21:32:00.001-07:00

It's the night before the first pathology exam, and I have been completely side tracked by all the amazing diseases featured in the pathology textbook. I've also been reading up on the rare disease of the patient that I'll visit tomorrow with my clinical mentor. It's devastating. My heart feels wrung with anxiety at what the patient's presentation will be like. I am fascinated and saddened. So this is medicine?

Disease Frequencies

2007-10-02T21:20:00.001-07:00

I think I wouldn't want to be a clinical geneticist. Today our class focused on the topic of genetic testing to assess the disease risk of a couple planning to have children. Everyone carries their own risks, be it from ethnicity or other factors. For a single patient though, the risks 1/50 and 1/100 are virtually the same and whether their child has a disease or not is pretty much arbitrary if you think about it. I asked the speaker whether he has actually been able to catch any devastating diseases in the couples that go to see him. He said no, that the numbers of people that seek genetic risk information is so low that it is in no way a viable screening method.

When some other students also asked questions along the lines of methods to avoid or prevent disease, he seemed to become a little flustered. "I don't know where all these questions about changing the allele frequencies of disease are coming from. I'm simply talking about testing for and assessing risk. The goal is not to change people's decisions because of it." This response seemed very paradoxical in my mind and caught me off guard. Actually it caught me in the undercurrent of my thoughts, making me realize that I WAS in fact thinking in terms of how the risk assessment could influence and prevent disease.

I see how his approach makes him a good doctor, faithfully trying to get his patients to understand the underlying genetic phenomenon so that they can make their own decisions. At the same time, it is very well known that such information very seldom makes any difference either in care or in the action of the advice-seeking couple. I'm not sure I would want to stand by every day, watching the natural game of genetics play out its course.

Advertising to Prospectives

2007-09-27T21:05:00.001-07:00

As the interview season is starting, I'd like to say a few words about the lifestyle here. Although all my recent entries have been about classes, and of course they are important at this point in our education, I find that I can put as much time into other activities as I would like. I think my classmates range from those who are studying 100% to those who are involved in multiple activities. As for myself, I've had some good times..

I've been going to talks that I'm interested in, social medicine and scientific research. Last night, I went sailing on the Charles with some classmates. Weekends are full of activities that classmates organize, and I've gone out to many of them. Also, as part of HST, we have unlimited access to MIT resources so I went to their salsa class last week. Both Harvard and MIT have numerous mixers and socials for their graduate students. Shopping, movies, game nights (board games) have all been on my agenda at some point. And on evenings when there are no activities planned, I try to stop by a classmates room just to chat. I've found the time and motivation to practice piano 1-2 times a week, and have been reading a book for leisure in meanwhile.

Next weekend is an HST retreat, and the weekend after that is the M.D./Ph.D. retreat. Cape Cod and New Hampshire. Beautiful.

There is definitely no shortage of activities, and as long as you feel that it is important to have fun, you will. Medical school is great. Seriously. Be excited :)

Anatomical Deviant!!

2007-09-27T20:42:00.001-07:00

I was excited to find out today that my left arm ... *drumroll*... is missing the palmaris longus muscle!

Up until today, I had been identifying anatomy on my right arm (since our books display that side as an example).. but today, as I ran my right finger over my left wrist, moving from the thumb side toward the pinky, I felt each structure in turn.. abductor pollicis longus, radial artery, flexor pollicis radialis, median nerve, palmaris longus.... *feels again for palmaris longus*... *jabs at place where palmaris longus is supposed to be*...

Whoa, I don't have one!

Now, if you ever meet someone here in the Harvard MSTP, you can check whether it's me by looking for the absence of the palmaris longus on my left side. :)

Amazing Cases

2007-09-25T17:17:00.001-07:00

The patients we see in class are so inspiring, personally and medically. They remind us that as doctors or scientists, we know far from everything, and amazing things do happen.

Last week, we had a patient with cystic fibrosis-- one allele of the disease gene essentially had a mutation preventing its expression at the cell surface and the other allele had a premature stop codon. But with virtually no functional protein, usually presenting as cases with early degeneration, the patient we saw was well and active at age 20+.

Today we had a patient who had severe hemophiliac for 50+ years of his life, living through so many medical developments and setbacks (including the HIV/HepC transmission era by serum concentrate in the 70-80s), finally ending up with liver cancer. He also went through a huge ordeal to get a transplant, which finally happened earlier this year. The replacement liver was obviously from a non-hemophiliac and the endothelial cells produced the factor that body lacked. Now his cancer is in check, and for the first time in his life, cured of hemophilia.

Wow. My ears were popping out of my head when I heard that. How many people in the world, in history, have been CURED of hemophilia? How many get to survive with almost 100% quality of life homozygous for cystic fibrosis? Apparently people can... wow.

Autopsy

2007-09-22T10:56:00.001-07:00

As part of our pathology class, we're required to view an autopsy. While you would think being around a dead body a few times a week would fully prepare us for what to expect, a freshly dead, nonfixed cadaver is quite a different matter. The first difference is that there is blood, a lot of it, and the fact that our patient had a form of leukemia and had poor platelet production really didn't help. Then there was the fact that the organs are soft.. as you would expect, right? But somehow you still expect the freshly dead to feel the same as the one on our dissecting table each day. Finally, there's the face. Despite working on the same body for 15 hours a week, we still have never seen our cadavers face which we keep carefully covered up in cloth. On the autopsy table though, there's no hesitation to take the cloth off when it come times to remove the brain.

As I watch the dead body, I wonder if I should feel afraid or shocked or any of those other feeling you read about in both fiction and nonfiction. All I felt was fascination. It was cool. Sure, I felt that it was unfortunate that the person had died, death happens; but it's not common that I have this chance to observe how and why it does. While I could see that the residents and technicians working on the case felt the same sentiments, we were far from insensitive. They all seemed so fascinated, exclaiming over various anatomical variations they described as "cute", and gushed over how great it was that the woman's family allowed them to do something as wonderful as the autopsy. I was grateful, and fascinated, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

So is death supposed to be shocking? What happened to the book descriptions of the feelings that someone is supposed to go through? I doubt the desensitization process has taken over me that fast.. the only conclusion I can come to is that death happens, and we should and do make the best of it.

Scientific Personality

2007-09-15T20:35:00.001-07:00

The other day a classmate and I were discussing whether or not scientific writing left any room for personality. He felt that all the data presentation was very dry, but I feel very strongly that the personality of the scientist really shows through. When I read papers by the people I know well, the document reads with a feeling that they are right there talking to me about the work. Then there's always the discussion and conclusion where some scientists take the time to entertain their readers with speculation or engaging comment.

A recent class required reading some scientific articles about taste receptors. The manuscript ended with the line "and in a small but significant way, we may eliminate bitterness from the world."

Just now, I was reading our genetics text, and under one complicated case for calculation, it printed, "Only a masochist would attempt this without a computational aid."

Ah, those writers. Humor is still appreciated even in the thick of science.

Alex

2007-09-11T22:27:00.001-07:00

www.alexfoundation.org

Last year, I remember attending Dr. Irene Pepperberg's lecture at Rice and being completely floored and in love with this bird. He showed us that an animal could in fact communicate with humans, and even more amazingly, he could be seen to operate with the mental capacity of a 2-year old child. From what she mentioned in her lecture, I remember that Alex had begun to teach what he learned to their new, younger birds. Perhaps he knew how important it was for research to continue.

Searching for Vessels

2007-09-10T21:41:00.001-07:00

I am inordinately fond of poking around for nerves and vessels during anatomy. It's like a scavenger hunt, with the items hidden in very well defined locations, but there's still a puzzle to figuring out exactly where they are and then how to get them out. I think we're all getting the hang of the dissection business now and can focus more on what to learn rather than wondering what the heck we are doing.

Big Update On the First Week of HST

2007-09-08T22:27:00.001-07:00

I sat down to write this post and realized just how many interesting things have happened that I can't possibly write about them all. So I will describe a few highlights, the moments I felt were thought-provoking, memorable, or representative of the medical school experience. I'm going to go semi-chronologically starting from Tuesday.

Pathology: In addition to the standard fare of pathology, we have an invited lecturer every class, following which a few students can have lunch with the speaker. The first class was an academician who was very much involved with developing a marketable drug, and in Michael Moore style argued that the pharmaceutical companies are really what have made medicine progress. I made a mental note to read up more on the subject, but now realized I never got around to it.. The second lecture was about autopsy, with a presentation by Dr. Mark Flomenbaum, New York's first deputy medical examiner during the time of 9/11. The cases he described sounded just like cases that might be seen in CSI. My particular favorite was when one truck driver turned in a cargo of embryos suspended in jars. He found himself with 38 embryos that the owner claimed to be both fake and non-human faced with threats if he even so much as scraped a single cell for analysis. He took x-rays and sure enough, the embryos were real. And how to tell if they are human? Well, despite all our lofty thoughts about ourselves, apparently our most distinguishing feature is our footprint. Some more dramatic cases involved a girl who appeared to have died as a result of HIV which he uncovered to have suffered child abuse; and a case of a dead criminal who he found was shot by a police officer not out of defense but out of malice due to the shape of the shot wound...

Immunology: Our professor is incredibly entertaining and quite beloved by his students. I liked his story of Mithridates, one of the most formidable enemies of the Roman Empire, as one of the first to challenge the immune system to induce tolerance. He drank incrementally increasing amounts of all the toxins he could find to become invincible. Unfortunately for him, when he finally wanted to commit suicide, he was unable to do so by poison!

Anatomy: First, I was surprised and elated to find out that we will be learning anatomy from the developmental perspective! Despite my interest in the field, I find that others have very little sense of the kinds of questions that are asked and what studying development even means. Our first lecture covered the formation of the germ layers and explained how it relates to the arrangement of certain organs and how such understanding can explain some anomalies and congenital defects we might see. As for dissection-- it's the essence of medical school isn't it? I've always thought of the experience as one to look forward to, but that the names of anatomical parts are simply dull facts to be memorized. Since the course started though, I find myself extremely engaged in poring over the anatomy text, trying to identify all that I can. I realized that we need to know all these parts not because it's the name that matters, but that the "identification" means tracing each vessel from where it came from to see how they connect to one another; and finding out how the muscles go to understand how they produce movement. I'm very fond of our cadaver.. so far it looks like a natural death, as we haven't found obvious signs of medical distress as many other groups have. She's been pretty capable of showing us all the parts that we need so far!

Also, some anatomy tidbits from our professor. Look up a dermatome map... next time you can insult someone without their knowing it by calling him an S5! Your assignment for Friday night is to impress someone by asking to put salt and tequila on their jugular notch and drink if off of them without spilling it down their shirt...

Genetics: Little happening here so far; but we have a patient coming to visit us almost every class period!

I am pleasantly surprised that despite all the pro-science-and-technology hype of HST, we actually have clinical components integrated in our curriculum. Two of our courses require interaction with physicians and also case studies of disease processes.

And for fun, you might ask? We still got to see the rest of our classmates on the annual first year cruise on Friday night. The harbor is so beautiful! I miss the unique Dallas skyline, but I suppose I have traded it for the ocean breeze!

Facial Recognition

2007-08-26T14:07:00.001-07:00

http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/facetests/

I took this test recently and I scored in the 28th percentile for facial recognition (I remembered 11 of 20 faces), while my object recognition was 86 percentile (19 of 20 objects), and verbal recognition was 84 percentile (11 of 12 names). Unfortunately, I am quite sure I remembered the faces by memorizing how exactly that face was placed on the page, and the expression I remembered rather than the face itself.

Recently, I've been really proud of myself for meeting so many people and "remembering" so many names and faces. I actually felt confident that I had actually overcome my problems with names and faces. A few days ago, one of my classmates who I have already met and spoken with several times already got a haircut... and upon meeting him the next time, I promptly stuck out my hand and re-introduced myself. He looked confused, and said "but I just talked to you a couple hours ago. I just got a haircut..." I've also been having trouble with our recent outing to the lake because people began to put their hair up, or not wear makeup, or any number of changes that are completely throwing me off.

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2006/06/14/when_faces_have_no_name/?page=2

Learning about prosopagnosics in cognitive psychology, I was sure that I was not, since I easily identify faces as such. But the article above hypothesizes that problems in facial identity may be more widespread than we think. It really shocks me about how much I go through to try to remember enough about a person so that I'll identify them again the next time. When it was at interviews and I knew I'd only see the interviewer once, I would simply remember what they were wearing. Since it is classmates, I've been taking note of hairstyles and body build and general expressions that people wear around.

White Coat

2007-08-22T15:03:00.001-07:00

Today, our third day in medical school, we have now run through the logistics of being here and already ceremoniously received our white coats, and have proceeded to explore the patient-doctor dynamic. In one encounter, the physician and I visited an old man who had just come out of his second round of chemotherapy with harsh side effects that rendered him hospitalized. He most strongly desired to go home, now unwilling to go through more rounds of treatment. Despite his discomfort, he gives us a huge toothless smile, a smile that so filled me up with happiness that I couldn't help laughing out loud. After a few moments of genial remarks all around, his wife asked the doctor what his options were and the "real facts and figures". The doctor tells them that if the patient were to simply go home, he would be looking at 6-8 more months to live. If he went through another round of chemo, he would "only" have 15% chance of the negative effects again and "better than even odds" of complete cure.

What struck a chord in me was what the physician said after we left the room. "They told me they wanted just the facts," he said, "but patients do not ever really just want the facts--they want you to tell them what they should think about the facts. And even if you wanted to give just the facts, there is no way to do so without coloring it in some way." He could have given the exact same "facts" as "If you go through chemotherapy again, there is a 1 in 8 chance that you will be stuck back on this hospital bed" in which case the patient would be compelled to avoid the treatment and go home. The truth may be facts and figures, but they can be made to fit any scenario.

He warned me that patients are always reading signals, and that we are constantly sending them. Say I had gone in, and been really sympathetic: "Oh hi mister. Gee you look a bit tired today. I hope the next round of chemo doesn't take too much more out of you." My opinion medically as an essentially pseudodoctor would not have mattered, but even such a simple comment would reinforce the patient's own feeling that maybe he should forgo treatment to avoid the negative side effects.

While I've often heard stories of medical students are mistakenly held up as doctors in the eyes of patients, I had not thought much about the implicit signals are always being sent despite their knowing that we are only medical students. The medical encounters and interactions today were not way outside the realm of my experience, but I did feel a new dawning of awareness that comes with the white coat. I felt proud that the patients had mainly positive things to say about their care at MGH and even traveled for miles just to be treated there. They commended us for being students at Harvard Med and wished us successful careers. Our past few days have been filled with accolades and welcomes by the many prominent deans and faculty, yet only today do I feel that I truly should be here. I am finally believing that one day I might be needed because I have been told so by the most important people of all, the patients.

Errors

2007-08-19T14:35:00.001-07:00

This process is maddening. I can't imagine what they think taking away coverage for these in-hospital "mistakes" will actually DO.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/washington/19hospital.html

Riddles

2007-08-10T22:23:00.001-07:00

Riddles are fun. This post is for you Phillip. :)

I've figured out the first two easily enough (<3 min of thinking). I'll post the answers in the comments section of this post. The third I am still pondering although the answer is also available. I've taken this from another blogger I happened across. I always wonder where my common sense for riddles comes from since lack it so often in everyday life, where it would actually be useful...

Stephanie takes the Caltrain every afternoon to go home. From the Palo Alto train station, she can either go north to San Francisco or south to Mountain View. Both north and south trains arrive at the station every 10 minutes. Instead of deciding which train to take everyday, Stephanie decides to place her destination in the hands of fate and resolves to arrive at the Palo Alto station at random times between the hours of 4-6 p.m. and to take the first train that reaches the platform (only one platform). However, after a few weeks, Stephanie realizes that 9/10 times, she takes the San Francisco train from Stanford. How can this be?

The Davis lab used to have a lot of Swedish post-docs. Let's pretend that the PI was in Sweden when 4 postdocs -- Simon, Fredrik, Bob, and Johan -- ask the PI for lab positions in the States. The PI has 2 black hats and 2 white hats. He distributes the hats randomly to the four postdocs and takes them to the men's restroom (Joe invented this scenario, not me). The man cannot see which hat they are wearing. He places one postdoct in the bathroom stall, and no one can see in or out of this stall. The other 3 postdocs are lined up vertically facing the wall of the stall, and can see the hats in front of them (see Figure 1). The PI says that whoever can tell which hat they are wearing can come to Stanford. There is a LONG PAUSE before one man speaks up. Which man correctly guesses which hat he is wearing (black or white) and why?

The Mafia sends you into a completely dark room. On the table, there is a full deck of cards, randomly shuffled. The black cards are all face-up, and the red cards are all face-down. You must separate the card deck into two equal piles (26 cards in each pile) and manipulate the deck so that the same number of cards are facing "up" in each pile. You may flip cards over. How do you solve the puzzle?

Studying Ourselves

2007-08-10T14:37:00.001-07:00

Problems are so entertaining, especially with a well-stocked, large lab that has just about any ingredients I could possibly want. Because of the resources, I've tried all sorts of different things this summer... choosing to switch techniques when one doesn't get results rather than troubleshoot the same one. The latest problem I've been having is in trying to clone the 3'UTR of a particular gene from human cDNA. Having tried many times, always ending up with the wrong gene, I began to suspect that perhaps the library I'm using simply doesn't have it.

Finally today I had the idea that since UTRs are not dependent on RNA splicing.. human genomic DNA should have my sequence. And where do I get human genomic DNA? Well, there's plenty of that lying around too! hahaha. So I took a pipette tip and rubbed off some of my cheek cells, pulled out a few strands of my hair and took the follicle cells. Broke the cells apart, got some DNA. And hopefully, voila.. We'll see how it goes!

As some of you know, my undergraduate project involved studying blood samples from various people. My most frequent subject (although excluded from the official data analysis) was myself. I've never felt any fear of needles, and always felt intrigued (and even safe from disease) when working with my own blood. I've gotten to see how the composition of my white blood cells changed dependent on the season and even what they look like in different settings. The things I've studied of myself have been harmless, but what about when it comes to real disease?

Consider the story of the Nobel Prize winners for medicine in 2005. They faced strong resistance to their data which showed that H. pylori (bacteria) was the primary cause of gastric ulcers rather than stress or acid. When infection in animals did not produce similar disease, they used themselves as subjects. In an exhibition of their dedication and belief in their work, they drank a bunch of H.pylori and showed, first, that it caused ulcers. Then they treated themselves with an antibiotic regimen to show that they could be cured. Prior to their work, companies were spending great amounts of money on treating ulcers, but few were investing in research on H. pylori (since also from the economic view, you'd earn more by having people continually pay for treatment rather than a one-time, final solution). Amazing what results confidence and dedication can get, but would you, would I, have been able to do such an experiment?

Tourists

2007-08-07T16:40:00.001-07:00

Every day I feel like I'm in the middle of a huge tourist attraction. Before 8am, there is already a crowd is taking photos of John Harvard's statue. On my way home, a lost group stops me to ask for directions. As I exit the gate, there are three gigantic tour buses parked outside. Walking into the Harvard Coop, I hear several different foreign languages being spoken. When I reach the bookshelves, the first books that greet me are "50 Successful Harvard Admission Essays" "How to get into Harvard Law/Medical/Business/..." and so on, surrounded by families with children discussing the possibility of admission. I guess the Harvard students get used to it every single day, but coming from Rice, where the campus feels so much like our own little home, I am again surprised by the visitor smorgasboard each time I walk through.

But one thing bothers me even more than just the huge numbers of people. The myth is not true--touching John Harvard's statue's foot doesn't help you get admitted. I've never touched it and neither have many other students here. The real reason why the foot is golden is not simply from being rubbed by tourists from around the world (I will not go into the explicit details). Yet whenever I walk past, there is inevitably someone touching the foot, and I have to really restrain myself to keep silent and let the tourists enjoy their visit.. So please, if you come here, DON'T TOUCH JOHN HARVARD'S FOOT!

Medicine and Science

2007-08-06T20:21:00.001-07:00

I feel like I gathered a number of interesting items for thought today.

Our lecturer during the first half of class engaged us in a discussion about a published study on the effects of a egfr inhibitor in treating a certain type of cancer. Although the sample size was small, it was compelling in that virtually everyone fitting a certain criteria was cured by the treatment. Then he posed the question whether, if we had 2 untreated patients come in who fit the criteria perfectly, would we treat them too? (Otherwise, the prognosis is 1 year; plus, the drug has virtually no side effects.) From the preliminary results, we feel personally certain that the treatment works-- isn't that what doctors do? Try to make decisions that they believe are for the best interest of their patients? On the other hand, scientifically, we would want to do randomized controls and withhold treatment from one population to prove efficacy first. This means those two specific people may or may not benefit. We are at odds between doing the best for a population overall versus doing the best for individual patients. I had never thought of a dilemma such as this before..

The second half of class, we had a lecture on genome-wide associations with disease. Those of you in these fields probably can guess that Dr. David Altschuler gave the lecture. In short, he is interested in understanding how genetics are linked to common disease (perhaps think of it in relation to why each person looks just a little bit different due to just due to the haplotypes scattered throughout the genome). These kinds of associations are tricky and elusive, and the millions of combinations considered means sample sizes must be in the thousands before changes such as 20% increased chance of diabetes can be shown with a significance of p<10E-10. I think there has been some resistance to his work, since in the reductionist point of view (which pretty much forms the foundation of science) is used to thinking about one gene one disease. Even with treatments such as combination therapy for HIV/AIDS, the targets are specific components chosen by circumstance rather than an understanding consideration of the entire disease pathway. Many feel like his methods and results are intractable.. what can we do with information about thousands of changes, each contributing a miniscule amount to a disease. Nonetheless, this brings me to my second interesting dilemma. There are many things that would be interesting to study, but considerations on the impact of results on career must be taken into account. It's amazing that Dr.Altschuler has found the means to study the things that most scientists consider too vague to tackle. For myself, I am really interested in the issue of robustness, how cells can be stable under environmental or just its own random fluctuations, and I've even found a pretty neat project that is related. In our recent poster session, one faculty member asked me where I wanted to go with my project. Truthfully, I said I didn't know. It's one thing to say, oh look at this cool phenomenon, maybe there's something that specifically makes the cell stay in balance... and entirely a different matter to prove to the scientific community that something that was already pretty good must critically have a factor that makes it just a tiny bit better.

4 Degrees

2007-08-05T22:27:00.001-07:00

This morning, I injected some mRNA into some zebrafish embryos. I think they are so beautiful, and I never get tired of looking at them, except I was hurrying so that I could do some other procedure. A sign on the normal incubator read: "Incubator broken, plates moved to ---->>>" pointing directly at another incubator-looking box. Quickly, I open it, see a bunch of other plates inside, and stick mine in also.

12 hours later: I come back to check on my fish. I open the door.. yikes, it feels a bit chilly... I look at my fish under the microscope. They are still at the 4-cell stage!! (The same they were at this morning). I start laughing at the absurdity. I've just incubated my fish at 4 degrees for the day. (They simply couldn't grow.) Then I have an cool idea.. I'd been wanting to see expression at the 4-cell stage, except that it normally happens so soon after injecting mRNA that the fluorescent proteins don't have time to get produced. But now, they've had all day to form, and the embryos are still 4 cells. Awesome.

I love how research is all about using the tools handed to you in new ways to observe new things. I like how as scientists, we get to plan out everything we do, but many things don't go as planned. If this were a more important experiment, I'd be upset at my wasted time.. but as it is, all I was doing was a little testing (and it worked), plus I get cool green 4-celled fish by a method I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

Also this morning, I had to get the security officer to open the doors to my lab for me (I don't have the key). Very deferentially, he kept calling me doctor. "Hi doctor, how are you today. What can I do for you, doctor. Yes, doctor. Doctor, show me which door." I wanted to correct him the first time, but he had said doctor so many times already that I no longer felt it polite to tell him he was wrong. He definitely puts me ahead of the game. I won't have my first "doctor" until at least 5 years from now...

Getting Home

2007-07-30T22:21:00.000-07:00

Although I've only been here three weeks, I've collected an impressive number of disaster stories about returning home from the lab, usually happening late at night while I'm stumbling around braindead and sleepy.

1. can't find an open gate to exit harvard yard
2. waiting for a bus that isn't coming
3. arriving back to find my door's lock is stuck
4. forgetting my key in lab
5. missing my stop and having to walk
6. missing my stop and riding the shuttle all the way back to lab
7. getting off too early before the train stop
8. planning to get off at the right stop, but the driver doesn't open the door, and so i miss my stop
9. getting on a shuttle that is going back to base

Today, I decide that I should try a new route.. getting the free harvard safety shuttle service to drop me off at the furthest location, where I take a direct bus back (instead of my usual 40 minutes of subway and walking). It hasn't been a great day, and as I'm sitting at the stop by the street in a random part of town, I'm wondering what might happen today. I got back in record time, a total of 25 minutes, and I didn't have to walk a single step! haha, I bet you guys were expecting another disaster story. :P

In contrast to my moody ramblings just a week ago, I am feeling a lot more comfortable and balanced these days. It feels really good to be able to take the not-so-good things in stride. Experiments aren't always working out, but looking back on these few weeks, I see that I've definitely made significant progress, especially since I've had to learn all the techniques from scratch. People here work incredibly hard, but it's heartening to feel that it is part of the fabric of being here, and I feel like everyone is working by their own choice. There's none of the usual begrudging attitude that accompanies people working long hours. My rotation is a lot more serious than I had known rotations could be, yet I am happy that I am keeping up my goals of getting out to socialize. I'm beginning to really figure out this work hard play hard thing.

A typical ideal day? My loveliest day was Sunday. I got up at around 7 to head to lab. The sun rises so early in Boston, so the day was already bright and welcoming by then. In the afternoon, I left to join some friends at Walden Pond. Yes, the Walden pond where Thoreau lived. It was so picturesque, and was quite large so we could avoid the crowds. I sat on a rock with the sun overhead highlighting the ripples on the water and read some thoreau in his pond. From time to time, there would be an excerpt describing the area, and I would look around to see whether the description still held accurate now almost 2 centuries later. 6pm, I get back, cook myself dinner, then head back over to Cambridge. Actually had positive results to gather and set up for the next day's experiments. All totalled.. 10 hours work, 6 hours play, 7 hours sleep. I'll have to watch how this ratio changes throughout the year...

Pharma

2007-07-26T20:57:00.001-07:00

Today I attended a reception for the Health Sciences Technology program at MIT. The point was to let scientists from all walks of life get together to meet each other to find mentors and friends. One person at my table was the VP of research at a nearby pharmaceutical company. He had a lot to say about the bad rap that pharma gets, and especially the attitude of academic scientists toward those who go into industry. I am a bit shamed to admit, when he first said he was in industry, the first thoughts that really came to my mind were poor guy, i guess something happened along the way so he didn't make it... which of course, illustrates his point of the stereotype exactly. From talking to him for the evening, he seemed like an extremely intelligent person with a real interest in making a difference. He brought up some good points like, how he got to give a dying person a new drug, and suddenly they weren't dying anymore. Academic scientists just don't make drugs, he said. He spoke reasonably about both science and industry, which shouldn't have been a surprise since he obviously had to have been trained at an academic institution before going into industry. I have no explanation why he surprised me so much at so many points during the conversation, except that the negative perception of industry also dominates in my mind. He addressed the gathering at one point, and he stressed "going into industry is not just about 'selling out'. there are actually good reasons.."

One of the central components in the study of cancer these days has to deal with the turmor environment, for example the fact that tumors need blood vessels to carry nutrients to them for survival. Judah Folkman, who pioneered this concept had so much trouble getting funding to study this phenomenon. The scientific community simply didn't believe him. So he turns to industry, in a never before heard of collaboration. Apparently there's now a book on his story.

So I think, in my ongoing pursuit of an open mind, I should revamp my perceptions. Industry and academia have different goals, and although we each hold our own goals high and mighty, they serve a purpose together.

I apologize for my scrambled entries lately, as I haven't had much time to muse or write. I see I've gotten quite a few faithful readers now.

In All Seriousness

2007-07-24T16:21:00.001-07:00

I was pleased by two counts today. I had been worried I might be becoming too serious. The first was when somone asked me if I was an undergraduate. The other was when randomly a stranger looked at me and them smiles and waves. It made me realize that I was smiling, and glad that I still do so unconsciously.

I was unpleased by one count. One of the grad students from California said I seemed like I could fit the southern California stereotype. I've met a few of those.. I am soo not.

The events of today are not entirely counter to my possibly being too serious. I think that in comparison to the usual northeastern personality, an open texas personality does seem a bit overly jovial, even when toned down a shade.

When Newness Wears Off

2007-07-22T08:04:00.001-07:00

The harshness of being in a new place struck me a little bit this week, the sugar coating of the initial excitement having worn off slightly. I had gotten used to always having close friends nearby in Texas. Now that everyone I meet, no matter how nice or interesting, is still an acquaintance, I am somewhat struggling to derive comfort from this place. At Rice, I knew where I would like to relax, maybe the commons, or the teahouse, or nearby restaurants, and I would know exactly who I would like to accompany me. I would know where I wanted to have lunch because I was familiar with the menus and schedules. While it might be exciting to begin exploring the options here, there's no replacement for the comfort of knowing your surroundings.

This struck me because on Friday night, I had been really looking forward to taking a break since I feel like I haven't stopped working all week. We had an organized outing to see the new Harry Potter, which was entertaining, but then afterwards, when it's midnight in a new place, what can you do? Everyone is tired from the week and needs to rest, Boston is closing down already. I was craving coimpany but had no idea where to look. I am envious, too, of the close relationship of the people in my lab. They are all so familiar with each other and will accompany each other... it's interesting that when a group of people are really close, you feel outside the loop no matter how considerate or nice they are. I miss the familiarity of my old lab and the people in it.. that they would make sure I don't work too hard and have amusing anecdotes to share..

I am struggling a bit also with priorities. Our class is very diligent and there's an expectation that we should studiously prepare each class discussion. This makes for a productive session and interesting discussions, but it takes time from our other duties in rotation. I was excited that I would be starting something new and learning so much, and hopefully going to lectures and talking to people. But preparing experiments themselves takes so much time that I barely have any to just read and think. I am very sad about all these intrusions on my time to read and think about my own interests, as I feel like it should be the essence of my experience here. If this were at Rice, I would probably drop in to visit my mentor, who always has an understanding ear and won't fail to produce interesting food for though. But I'm not there, and emails are sparse. I have no mentors yet here.. those relationships take time too..

How do find balance? I know that with time, I will find people to be close to... it's been less than three weeks after all. But at certain times, I just wish I could be comfortable. I want to do so many things, but I feel like I'm torn by my frustrations with time and friends.. I am working too much, but unfortunately driven by the necessity of the workplace and academics rather than the passion of ideas and deep comprehension.

Dear friends, leaving has not been entirely easy.

Mishaps

2007-07-16T20:51:00.001-07:00

Today was definitely my worst evening in Boston. I had stayed late in lab hoping to finish up the first segment of my summer project, and then realized that one part wasn't working right. I decided to give up for the night and get back to the dorms and take a break. So I hop on the 10pm shuttle to the dorms. Unbeknownst to me, this shuttle takes a different route than usual, which I didn't recognize. In fact, I didn't even recognize the stop that was supposed to be for the dorms... until I realized I had started to go around back the way I came. No matter, I thought, I'll just take it back around again in an hour, and meanwhile just read these papers. So the bus takes me all the way back to my lab, everyone gets off, and it turns back around again. Suddenly all the lights go off. I realized that perhaps this bus was already on its last shift for the night. When I approached the driver, he was surprised to see me and said he would try to drop me off at the nearest metro station. So he does, but unfortunately this station is on a different branch than the one I need, so I take it back one stop to try to get on the other branch, but there was no way to transfer! I had to wait for another train, take it back another stop before heading back down the right track. sigh. well I am finally back and my evening is all gone. I guess at least I got a bit of reading done on the long long trip home.

Online Shopping

2007-07-10T13:47:00.001-07:00

I've recently begun a comparison shopping spree online to replace all the items I couldn't bring with me, and to avoid the trouble of carrying bulky items back to the dorm myself. I've been proud of myself for finding some pretty good deals.

I spent most of today comparison shopping for something else entirely -- genes. I've never purchased lab materials for myself before, so I relished the chance to find the best product for the best price. It's interesting, because while buying a computer means you get a computer (no one sells half-made computers), genes are a bit trickier. Do I want to pay more and have my target shipped individually, ready to go? Or do I not mind the rest of the genome floating around and amplify and clone my targets myself? There's even custom designing, where I could pick exactly what I want and how I want it (for an exorbitant price tag of course). I finally decided, well, it's a summer project, I could use some experience and the challenge, and settled on the
cheapest option. Just mail me all the cDNA, no little kits or bacteria please, I'll sort and transform and clone it out myself. Besides, the perks are that in addition to the genes I need, I'll get to keep the rest to play with later. Buying computers isn't like that either. I can't PCR them up and get bunches more.

Intuition

2007-07-09T21:49:00.001-07:00

I bought a book called Intuition by Allegra Goodman a few days ago at the Harvard Bookstore. Its cover touts it as a New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of the Year. On the back, my eye caught on one reviewer's comment, " How could an outsider, someone who has not been bathed in the culture and mores of science, get it so right?" As I've mentioned in other entries, I've found it fascinating how artists can present a world so clearly, and even more interesting when the world is not their own.

I started reading it that afternoon on my commute back to the dorms. I soon realized that it might not be the best book to be reading at the moment, as it portrayed some of the very real struggles of scientists. The frustration of experiments, the desire to succeed coupling with insurmountable obstacles. Fortunately, it soon delved into the possibility of the postdoc's (the main character) very dramatic success.

In complete agreement with the reviewer, I am astounded by the shrewdness of the author's observations about science. Her descriptions of lab interactions and general culture are amazingly accurate. She mentions the importance of volleyball as the researcher's pasttime. Today we had a fire alarm go off, and every single lab brought their own volleyball out to the yard, snatching the chance to take a break from science and play ball. Imagine, a whole yard filled with ball-playing scientists.

Soon following the volleyball mention, I read "Feng headed through grand doors adorned with gold friezes of animal, insect, and plant life: giant wasps, ants, bees, mushrooms, elands. ..Cliff scooped up an icy snowball. He took careful aim and pelted one of the brass rhinoceroses that guarded the building..."

And I realized, hey! That's my building! That's where I'm working! What a strange book. It feels so real.

On the Subject of Weekends

2007-07-08T20:10:00.001-07:00

On Friday, the graduate student in the lab said "I might take it easy this weekend, and just come in on Sunday for a little while," in a tone that very much implied that not taking it easy over the weekend was the norm. I went to lab today to observe her do the procedure, and, surprised, I found that the entire lab was there. Not just the grad students rushing to graduate, or just the overachieving postdocs, but everyone, including the undergraduate. While I am glad that everyone is very much into their work, and while I very much enjoyed my first attempts at playing with the pretty fish, I am wondering what this means for my prospects of visiting friends in New York and elsewhere in the upcoming months...

Rat Science

2007-07-05T21:03:00.001-07:00

Our MSTP class is required to take a class designed for us during the summer. Last year, the students began a tradition of dressing up on Fridays just for fun. Their first class day, the student all (yes all 10 of them) dressed up as pirates and brought a parrot costume for the director of the program. We decided to continue the tradition, and this year celebrate Ratatouille, so our class made rat ears out of cardboard. And our director? He's going to be the chef.

I was already really looking forward to class. It opens with one of my favorite topics: signaling in development and disease, how developmental biology relates to human diseases. It's all primary article based, and each subject module is taught by an expert in the field. I've heard such great things. Now, even better, we have some entertainment with our costumes. Oh, and we get free breakfast and lunch. What could be better? Maybe they'll even have some cheese...

Firework Cubes

2007-07-04T21:51:00.001-07:00

Wow, I just saw the best fireworks display in my life. Firework technology, why haven't they brought these cutting edge developments to the rest of the firework deprived country. I can't explain most of them, because in words they sound like they do what any fireworks do, but when you're watching these, you think "how is this possible? can fireworks really travel at that speed in that formation? how on earth.." They had firework hearts, and firework numbers (2,3, and 5), and firework multicolored smiley faces.. but most impressively, they had firework cubes.

How is that possible? Firework cubes? Straight lines and angles shot up from a bunch of powder setting off in the sky? What?

This reminds me of some challenge I'd heard about, where a guy was claiming that he could blow bubbles into any shape, and someone challenged him to make a bubble cube. The mathematics of soap bubbles have actually been studied extensively, as they have the amazing property that they will always find the smallest surface area between points or edges. So for one single bubble, this means a sphere (spheres have the smallest surface area for a given volume). For multiple bubbles, this means complex interacts that still follow these rules. So how do you make a bubble cube? Blow six bubbles for the sides of a cube, and they are bound to make a cube in the center! (Disclaimer: They are not perfect cubes, since when 3 bubbles come together they make angles of 120 degrees, but this just means the sides of the cube just curve inwards/outwards a little bit to make up for it.)

I wonder if they had to figure out a cool thing like that for these fireworks. Beautiful.

Boston Surprises

2007-07-03T22:50:00.001-07:00

Surprising things happen in new cities.

Yesterday, I was walking down the hall to visit a classmate when I ran into my student interviewer for the medical school. It turns out that he was a Rice alumni too, and now is just finishing up his PhD part of the MD/PhD. Interestingly enough, he was working on some aspects of a project that is related to the work in the lab that I chose this summer.

Later that night, I realized I couldn't get into the bathroom on my hall. I spent an hour first punching in random numbers, then pushing at it, then searching through all my papers to see if a code was written somewhere. Finally I decide to go to the front desk to ask what the code is... and the lady confusedly tells me "I don't think any of the bathrooms are locked." huh?? So i go back to my room, trying every women's bathroom along the way, and sure enough, none of them are locked! Then I got to mine, giving the knob a halfhearted turn, fully expecting it to stay shut. It opens! With further experimental trials, I realize that the door only opens if you turn it just a certain amount, too much and too little, and it keeps you out. What a great lock system..

I decided that Boston nights are too cold (bought a new blanket today). Last night I froze for a few hours because the sequence of the fan setting is apparently OFF-HIGH-MED-LOW. Very reasonably, I push the knob towards the low end, expecting it to turn off. Finally I decided I should use some extra force, and to add momentum, dragged the knob all the way to the left past the "high". What do you know, it turns off!

This morning, I woke up and went out to wander around. I go in a vague direction rumored to have some shops to buy supplies. I'm thinking, hmm, I'm rather hungry, wonder where I can eat.. so i follow a couple women up into some building and hooray, i'm in a cafeteria. I go and order "a muffin and a cup of milk." "A cup? We don't have cups of milk." "I mean, whatever container the milk comes in." "Oh, a container of milk?" "Yeah. Thanks." hahaha.

After breakfast, I continue on my way, and soon discover that I have wandered into a hospital. Oh, but then I looked at the signs, and realized I wasn't in just any hospital, but I was in Brigham and Women's! Wow cool. Brigham and Women's. I'm sure that I'm in Boston now. :)

Done

2007-07-02T01:27:00.000-07:00

It's 3:22am and I am officially packed and ready for tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have many interesting stories to tell in the upcoming months. Good night!

Weblogging

2007-06-30T23:15:00.001-07:00

I really do like keeping a weblog. It makes me feel like there's actually some use for all the random thoughts that float through my head every day. I like to collect them into one entity, although they may not really be related.. as you might notice from linking twins to zebrafish, movies to religion, etc etc etc. haha. The only problem seems to be that I have trouble completely typing out my thoughts. In the past 2 days, I've started an entry about peer advising, one about the mathematics of democracy, one about Sicko, and one about absentmindedness. Good thing gmail has automatic draft saving, or I would have forgotten what all I had planned/started to write about.

In recent years, I've found that I need more and more new thoughts to find them interesting. The act of test-taking began to frustrate me unbearably because I felt like it was a waste of my time to write down answers that I knew that the professor knew and that I knew that I had learned. I am becoming desperate to learn research articles by only looking at figures so I won't have to plod through the text. I compulsively analyze data from my research projects hoping that I can see the result as early as possible. I watched a movie just now, simultaneously browsing the newspaper and then reading the comics and then clipping out coupons and then doing sit-ups.

I almost stopped writing this entry before I got to this third paragraph. It would be ironic, wouldn't it, if I didn't finish an entry about not finishing entries, but then, there's no use in saving the irony for myself.

Sicko

2007-06-30T23:14:00.005-07:00

I just watched Sicko, the new Michael Moore documentary about the US healthcare system. While the argument was persuasive, and the film so well-done I can't but admire it, I am not sure the Guaranteed Healthcare it support will solve all our problems. For one, the US is not Canada, or France, or England.. the economics systems and population and countless other issues interact with the problems in healthcare. There are certain points from their systems that could be very well taken...

Advice

2007-06-30T23:14:00.003-07:00

I think I should learn to take advice better. Before college, I used to never ask. Now, I do ask for advice, often and from many people, but I rarely take it. I always ask already knowing my decision, and knowing that I will use any discussion to further my own opinion. I am never outwardly argumentative, but in my mind, I reaffirm my thoughts to myself.

In recent years, though, others have asked me for advice many times. My youngest advisee is a high school 9th grader whose parents decided I should make sure he stays on track for high school toward college and a successful career. Talking to him, though, I am sure he is personally motivated and I doubt that my "advice" really makes any difference. Nonetheless, he comes with a notebook and pen and we sit and chat about his classes and plans. His parents thought I could impart some wisdom, having been ranked first in my high school class. Funny enough, he recently became rank one in his class at that high school.. and although I am sure I don't get any credit for it, I think they feel like the "advice" is working..

My other advisees are older: 2 high school seniors, younger peers at Rice going into medicine, up to the anonymous forums for science and medicine. I always have much to say, an endless number of experiences and thoughts I'd willingly share. But no matter what, I am doubtful of the effect, because inherently I believe each person will ultimately do as I do -- that is, decide for themselves.

Absentmindedness

2007-06-30T23:14:00.001-07:00

I identify very well with Phoebe from the television show Friends. The way I see it, she sees everything as new and interesting, and anything that happens is a coincidental, delightful surprise. I spent most of my high school years pretending to be absentminded and clueless, and then when my facade came away, realized that I am in fact really rather so.

Four Boxes

2007-06-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to fit everything I want to keep into 2 suitcases and 2 boxes. When I get there, I will take these 4 boxes and lug them up to the 3rd floor. Then I'll buy some appliances like a refrigerator and lamps and lug those up there too. In a year, I'll bring them all back down, and do it all over again. I will miss not lugging my humongous duck chair and most of my stuffed animals and my wonderful bookshelf along with most of its books. boo.

Small World of Science

2007-06-26T11:01:00.001-07:00

Scientists are so connected to one another! In "The World is Flat", Friedman credits the scientific community with producing the original "community developed software":

"The first community-developed software movement really to make a mark took the intellectual commons approach. It came out of the academic and collaborative academic and scientific communities, where for a long time self-organized collaborative communities of scientists have come together through private networks (and eventually the Internet) to pool their brainpower or share insights around a particular science or math problem. The Apache Web server had its roots in this form of open-sourcing..."

What a great ideal to strive for. Collaborative, self-organized, sharing, the scientific ideal expressed in terms of the modern world. In the past semester, I've met quite a number of academics from interviews and revisits, and I found it is amazing that, without even the services of something like Facebook, I rarely find more than one degree of separation from me to them just by virtue of the number of people in the scientific community each one of them has connections to. The younger set will be very familiar with my younger mentors, the older set had all known my former boss as an HHMI member, and everyone in between had some collaboration or connecting interest.

In one instance, one of my interviewers insisted on walking me to my next interview despite my protests that I knew the way. His reason? The next interviewer was a high-power guy that he, as a new faculty, might not mingle with for a long time yet, so he wanted to use the excuse for a visit. haha so I can serve as connector too.

I am terrible at remembering names and faces, and I thought I was terrible at remembering names and scientific interests too. My first discussions always entailed the words "um and that scientist whose name I can't remember but he did such-and-such an experiment.." Once, I met the person who DID the experiments and almost referred to him in the third person!! But I've found that even after even short conversations, I remember names, the institution where I we met, and their specific area of expertise quite well, and could begin referring to them by name. I can't remember what most of them looked like, but perhaps this is what it means to remember names and not faces!

I was just reflecting on all this, because friends coming across articles I might be interested in have been sending me articles relating to developmental biology. In the past month, of 3 articles sent to me, I have met at least one major player in each study and already made plans to meet others. What I found most intriguing is that I found a link to this article on one of my friends' facebook ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26devo.html?pagewanted=5&ei=5124&en=bfa5e85c192de12d&ex=1340510400&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook ). Now, I have no strong interest in evo-devo and have not even tried to meet anyone in the field. Imagine my surprise when I met cliff tabin (cited in this article), and instead of talking about everything that I wanted to talk to him about, he went through all the places in the world where he had set up study sites and all the animals he now kept in his lab and how they were doing comparisons between this and that... I can't say I was wholly intrigued, but here I see his name in nytimes and think "I met this guy. I know what he's like. Imagine that."

Family Parting

2007-06-25T00:48:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, my family had its last meal all together. Our next might not be for a very long time. My mother already left today for abroad, and in a few days the rest of my family will be joining her for vacation. Before they come back home, I'll have moved away. I might visit during the semester, but if my schedule gets busy (they say first semester of HST is most intense), I won't return until December.

I actually rarely visit home. Not counting this summer, I haven't even been home for more than a 5 day stretch at a time, maybe 3-4 times a year, since college; but there is something comforting about the fact that living not too far away, I *could* if i wanted to. It feels weird thinking that soon, I *can't*.

My family is not particularly close. From our once-every-few-weeks short phone calls, my parents impressions of me never had a chance to change. They still think of me as all the same as when I was living at home prior to 11th grade. For years now, they've told their friends that I'm generally not very busy, and that I'm doing well in school, although they have not seen my grades since high school nor have they even asked to realize that my schedule is always full. I sometimes wonder what they think I do all day. I am sure they can't even name a single activity or club I'm involved with, or any interest of mine outside of science, and even then they only know the easy and cool version of "stem cells". Even with something as major as deciding what I'll be doing with my life, they are minimally involved, or rather not involved at all. I couldn't find them for several days to tell them I'd gotten into medical school, and they were one of the last to know of my decisions. I call to tell them such facts more out of familial obligation that they should know something rather than any feeling of necessity on either of our parts.

I can't say that my family members and I truly know each other, and maybe we never will get a chance to, but we are far from being strangers. Knowing that I'll be moving away soon, I've been spending much more time in the house than I generally do when I am at home. It's been a happy and carefree summer and I've chatted with my mother more than I have for a long time. My dad and I browsed cookbooks. I took my brother out for movies and ice cream, and went shopping with my grandfather.

The good thing is, as we are, I won't have to get used to an absence upon moving away. I can only say that there is a feeling that there is a *can't*, and that makes me melancholy enough to write this entry on family..

Facebook

2007-06-22T23:17:00.001-07:00

Amazing. I decided to check today to see if there was a group for Harvard Medicine class of 2011 on Facebook yet... and I found out that 110 of the total 150ish people had already joined it. Apparently, I am the one behind the times.

Mellow and Upbeat

2007-06-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

The title of this entry is the way I describe the type of songs I like. However, I just realized, the "upbeat" part is open to interpretation. As in the song below, I have an overwhelming sense that it is such an enjoyable, upbeat, happy song that I am almost guilty to be so glad to hear it knowing it is actually about dying of a broken heart! I just realized this today. Perhaps it was better when I never carefully listened to the lyrics.

Symmetry

2007-06-20T12:21:00.001-07:00

I spent all morning looking for two pairs of flipflops that are mismatched yet can be worn together (one on each foot) in a matched kind of way. haha. For any of you who remember, I used to have a pair that I loved that had the same pattern on the sole but the strap on one was blue and the other yellow. My friend and I switched them years ago, and wore them down to the cloth, but haven't been able to find a replacement. I've finally decided on one (after weeks of searching)! One is black with white polka dots and a white bow and the other is white with black polka dots and a black bow. Wonderful! I spent my whole way home thinking about why finding symmetrical yet differently colored flip flops is such an interesting idea to me. By the way, if you need a certain type of flip flop, I'm happy to advise as to where you can look.. I've checked at least 30 different shoe stores this week.

I love symmetry. My favorite research question of all time is the question of pattern formation, essentially the study of asymmetry or how forms break out of their uniform mold. You would think that, coming from a single cell, we'd just expand and grow evenly but somehow we get a head that's different than our foot with a spine in between. But even as the uniformity breaks.. the important thing is to find symmetry once again..

Last semester, we had a guest lecturer who was studying asymmetry in the zebrafish brain, that signal A would only stimulate one side and therefore be asymmetric. I asked him where signal A came from and why it only stimulated one side.. and he said well because signal B only signaled to A at that point.. I kept asking him this question until we got to the single cell stage. Now, how does it happen? He said, well, some people studying xenopus showed that there is a directional electrical current.......... sigh, so how did the current choose its direction? What mysteries.

A long time ago (in my previous weblog), I made several entries about twins. I mentioned that as much as 30% of identical twins are also mirror images of each other. I imagine this must happen because the the cells of the embryo are already no longer all equivalent.. they split and divide their asymmetries symetrically and so you get mirror images.

My last reflection on the beauty of symmetries is that they also suggest the idea of inverses. We have them all the time in mathematics: add/subtract, sin/arcsin, even complicated ideas like matrices and fourier have their corresponding opposite. We also know so many examples in biology, in just a slightly different way, i.e. a protein doesn't go backwards in the ribosome to be degrades, but each amino acid undergoes a "decision" process and attaches and unattaches itself by the same/inverse chemical processes before proceeding.

Anyway, this leads to my second favorite question of all time. The question of precision. So if every single thing in the world is fluctuating and deciding, how is it that we get exact patterns and not a funny vague idea of things happening? There's such a balance in fact, and we have absolutely no idea how it happens. There's all sorts of vague ideas of turing stability and etc etc but when it comes down to it, biology does not work "just like turing describes".. there are so many nuts and bolts and possible deterrents in the way.

Funny how you can come to two conclusions with this. I never realized this before. One is, how amazing it is to be alive!! The other is: we should all be dead.

Decisions

2007-06-18T09:20:00.001-07:00

I realized that in the next 7-8ish years, I will have to decide on:

1. Graduate school
2. a. A lab mentor
    b. A lab mentor
    c. A lab mentor
3. Some new friends
    a. friend 1
    b. friend 2..... (this list could hopefully be long)
4. A thesis topic
5. A boyfriend
6. A medical specialty
7. A research specialization
8. What I will do with the rest of my life after I graduate

I can cross #1 off my list. I've gotten through part #2a by choosing at least a mentor for this summer.

In two weeks I can start on #3.

#5 and #8 might get a bit tricky. What am I talking about, the other numbers aren't that much easier.

Today I am on part #2a(sub 1). Figuring out a topic for #2a.

Note to self: Please try not to make too many stupid decisions.

What if I don't want to grow up? Is that an option too?

Accurate Lines

2007-06-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

"The college dreamed on--awake. He felt a nervous excitement that might have been the very throb of its slow heart. It was a stream where he was to throw a stone whose faint ripple would be vanishing almost as it left his hand. As yet he had given nothing, he had taken nothing."
--Description of Amory in college, This Side of Paradise

Four sentences about an American college youth waiting for the world to form its impressions on him. How accurately the author captures the sentiments we all experience at some point. In fact, I feel like this description at this very moment!

It is miserable to never be able to fully capture beautiful things. You would think that with a camera, you could easily trap reality, but photographs only dissappoint. I used to feel that I could do a passable job with music, on the piano, but now from lack of practice, my attempts at capturing emotions become frustrating sessions that first must overcome the barriers of techniques and familiarity with the music. I realize that it takes time and effort, things I don't have, to be able to have the luxury of expression. Listening to music, reading books, enjoying others' art, is always such a welcome pasttime. It is unfortunate that I must rely on others to portray my own sentiments.

I've only ever been noted for literary achievement three times in my life, but I deep down, I feel that they were won for an idea rather than for the execution. Without an idea, all I write is nothing. I can't capture, I can only analyze. I won something once writing about an essay by Charles Dickens, but not because I understood him and showed the true nature of his work, but because I extracted a single line from his essay, took it apart and turned it both upside down and inside out in bizzare permutations that produced an entertaining 1000 words on the use of imagination in Dickens's writing.

I took a creative writing class this past semester. We all shared what we wrote in class, and in general, it was very englightening to see how each person's writing is such a reflection of themselves. My instructors comments showed that I wrote ironically, I always had juxtaposed streams of thought running through, subtly, and one must read thoughtfully to catch them. But that is so boring to read! It's interesting enough in my own mind, as often I am lost in these thoughts, and they are understandable to myself, but I find them of utmost boredom on paper. Perhaps because we never just think in sequential ideas, but in idea trees that branch off in several places at once. I imagine the growth of fractals, but without such predictable arrangements. At any rate, my goal was to write a complete essay on my experience abroad last summer. I finally decided that, on paper under my hand, the experience becomes so cliched that it is better left in my private thoughts and reflections.

Jet Lag

2007-06-16T00:42:00.001-07:00

I am reverse reversing my jet lag.

I managed to sleep through to a nice 7am yesterday. Although I fell asleep on the living room couch at around 5pm, the very unfortunate part was that my parents decided I should not be disturbed. They turn off all the lights and the family leaves the house. When they came back at 1am, they were surprised to find that I was still asleep! What did they expect, giving me all the clues that it was nighttime and I should go to bed.. Anyway, I am awake at 2am, and I think I've already had my fill of sleep for tonight. sigh.

Double-edged Internet

2007-06-14T12:12:00.001-07:00

Darn cyber world.

Someone used my credit card information to set up a scam website. Beats me if I know how that happened, because although I sometimes make purchases online, I never go for those email traps where they ask you to enter your information. I'll bet some website sold it...

Interestingly, the same resources that made such an atrocity happen in the first place also alerted me to the issue. A freelance writer investigating internet scams found out that my information had been used to set up an account, and simply with the internet was able to find my contact information and alert me to what had happened. He encouraged me to check my statement for a particular day, and in fact, there was a charge I did not recognize and which corresponded to the location and date of the scam website.

It could possibly be my fault for not checking my bills carefully enough, but I've been all over the U.S. and the world in the past few months, and charges are made sometimes by a service agency rather than the company that you make a purchase from. Even when I contacted my credit card company, they said that the name could possibly just be a general service agency that I used for a common online purchase. Only after I saw my name and numbers listed on the search website could I have any certainty of the problem.

Yikes.

Art and Science

2007-06-12T16:53:00.001-07:00

The museum of natural history and museum of fine arts in Vienna are exactly mirror images of each other on the outside. The equality really struck me, as did the effort inside the natural sciences museum to join art and science. A cheesy effort was setting botticelli's famous painting of Venus standing in a clam shell next to a real shell. But the most effective effort was simply situating the museum in such an artistically beautiful setting!

More and more, I wonder what the difference is between science, at least biology from my experience, and the forms of music, literature, and design that we consider creative art. As scientists, we call our process of discovery "stories". It's not uncommon to say of a published paper, wow that was a great story. And we say that those who come up with the most ingenious experiments are creative, which they are.

Mainly, though, both art and science are obsessed with the search for truth. For science, a more general truth about the universal world, and for art, an expression of personal truth. If you think about it, though, don't we commend the art that expresses a personal truth that can relate to the most people? I'd say, each piece of artwork is an artist's experiment to find out something more about the world. Works are under constant revision, and there is a power of the artistic community to build on each other and create dialogue to gather the most truth about the universe from the tools that they have.

Today I learned about Arnold Schoenberg, a composer who pioneered the use of a twelve-tone scale in composition. The pieces are composed mathematically, using specified transpositions from performing different operations on the scale ( e.g. multiplication, inversion..). While the rigor is interesting (and generally I absolutely love math/science references in art), I question a little bit the works in which Schoenberg and his followers are so disinclined to deviate from their formula that it creates discordant meaningless sounds. When trying to do an "experiment" to understand more about the world, how can they impose order on it? Isn't this like the scientists who fudges the data just enough so that his data will fit perfectly with his model? How can we discover more by imposing our rules on the world? Anyway, I have bought a Schoenberg CD and I plan to explore the matter a little big further.

Just to share, off the top of my head, here are a few math/science/art items that come to mind.

Poem -- "A Valediction, Forbidden Mourning" by John Donne. I like his clever metaphor to a compass.

Artists -- M.C. Escher is an all time favorite. Victor Vasarely (I just learned about him when I decided to go to his museum in Budapest. He quit medical school to go into art. I wonder if he falls into the folly I described in my last paragraph, but he was interesting and comes to mind now, nonetheless).

Music -- Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern (all I learned today, so I don't have a recommendation or opinions yet)

Picking Pockets

2007-06-06T16:48:00.001-07:00

I met a pickpocket today! I was coming out of a show (black-light theater) in Prague at about 9pm, and I'm walking along the street thinking about getting a snack from one of the street vendors. So I start rummaging in my purse for some change (I don't keep big bills in the outer pocket), and I feel a guy crowding really close to me, as close as if there were a huge crowd of people around us, but being 9pm, there wasn't a crowd. So I keep walking and rummaging for about half a block, and I feel him crowd over my shoulder to look into my purse. He must be trying to pick me, I thought. So what did I do? I stopped, abruptly. So abruptly, in fact, that the guy runs right into me! I look at him, and our eyes met for a second and I saw the startled look on his face. Hello, I said. He grunted, quickly looked away, and walked off.

I continued on un-picked to by my trdlo (isn't it rediculous how many consonants these people like to put together with no vowels in between?). Good thing, because I only had 100 crowns left, 40 of which I was planning to use for the snack. On to Austria tomorrow!

Prague

2007-06-05T16:58:00.001-07:00

I love Prague!! So much to see and do every day that even walking along the street is something of an adventure. Castles and cathedrals, some fancy, some creepy. Concerts and shows in every major building at ridiculously low prices. There's just about everything you can imagine. I am so intrigued by the Prague astronomical clock. It shows the position of the sun, the moon, and other astronomical information in addition to the time because someone patiently patiently put it all together. I want one ...

Budapest

2007-05-30T13:32:00.001-07:00

I have arrived save and sound in Budapest and have spent a lot of time today walking around the castles and browsing the museums. I'd say the city lives up to expectations. Funny what we forget we take for granted though. For one, this keyboard is formatted differently and I am typing at pre-touch-typing rate.. this is what it would look like if I typed normallyÉ I canát find the ÁatÁ sign on this kezboard' aghh

Law of Attraction

2007-05-26T10:17:00.001-07:00

Sometimes we have crazy ideas that we don't seriously think about unless it's 4am one morning and you're half-asleep musing with your roommate about life. A couple years ago, my roommate MJ and I were lying in bed in conversation and I offhandedly commented "Do u think the energy of thoughts makes things happen? Because otherwise, where does all the energy go?"

Funny enough, someone's making a movie on that subject called "The Secret", and it's brought some controversy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b1GKGWJbE8

I really agree with the overall idea that's expressed in their showing, but I am extremely frustrated at all the misinterpretations (hah, who am I to judge interpretations right?) that have arisen. So, I also very much agree with this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KqvSkIomYM

All except for the "There is no secret part." But I do think it is more aptly described as not a physical law but is a dynamic function. That's why, even though everyone in a race wants to get first place, only one person actually wins. It's based on context, and personal factors that led up to that moment, as well as the fact that there can only be one winner. Someone who had focused more in the long term will be in a better situation to win, but also random things could happen (from other people's thoughts?). I can think of times when I expected the worst, but the best happened, and vice versa. In this sense, I think the "secret" is more saying that our thoughts influence the world, rather than they make things happen. They also motivate us and give us strength to achieve. I really believe in the power of thought, don't you?

In the comments under the video, many people bring up religion which surprised me because it doesn't overly refer to any sort of religious context. I wonder if it is wrong to think of religion in such a way. That night/morning at 4am, I also expressed that I think the power of faith and belief in God or a religion is the same type of force as our force of thought. However, Christians that I've presented this idea to in the past don't seem to share this view. They think that it is different. I wish I knew whether it was... because it could be that before they were Christian, they did not think with the power of belief but their religion helps them to find it... what if I do believe in the power of belief, and therefore I can't become religious? It's hard to know whether we are all the same or different.

The Dalai Lama gave a talk at Rice in April on the importance of religious tolerance. He was saying that we are fundamentally the same.. that someone could call him a good Christian or a good Muslim and he would feel happy about it. I wonder if it's easier for those of us without a God to think of everyone as sharing some kind of common force of belief (I know the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, but since there is no almightly God, it is more a way of life than religion). One thing I didn't agree with was that he expressed that it would be wrong to try to convert a group of people that already has a religion, but when there is nothing, then it's ok to share. Is that right? Isn't non-belief a type of belief as well?

Wow, I've just sidetracked way too much. My point was. Power of thought. I think it's one of my strengths :)

Vices

2007-05-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if I am sincere. We all like to think that we are genuine and open, what we do is who we are. Perhaps though, what we do influences the way we think of ourselves and the smiling face causes us to feel that we are genuine, forgetting that we put it on for show. Take for example, I always ask for so many opinions every day, and I nod and smile and think I am a very open-minded and considerate person. Really though, I ask while knowing that I have already made up my mind and that my opinion won't be shaken. I dislike asking the questions that might have answers I don't want to hear. Even with friends, whenever I am upset, I know already who exactly to talk to because I am looking for a particular type of response. I visit lab meetings when I can impress the boss with my findings. I ask questions to gauge his opinion not always because I want to learn, but because I want to get results. I answer questions in class, not because I'm eager to explore my opinions, but when I know the answer.

You hear about people in the business/science/etc world and their vices that they are insincere or selfishly driven. Do you think that might be just because their lives come under more scrutiny? I mean, no one cares if I ask questions to succeed in the world, but someone would care if I used their efforts to my credit. Do we practice self-deception? Of all the great people we meet, should we think any less of them if we hear about their vices?

Names and Faces

2007-05-23T22:25:00.000-07:00

"This is ---, the graduate student from ---. The one who you forgot the name every single time."

Says the latest post on my facebook wall. Unfortunately, he's not the only one whose name I forget all the time. I think I have abnormally low face recognition skills. Even with close friends of mine, I've had lapses in memory when they make a change -- shave their mustache, dye their hair. After the change, I just fail to register him/her.. my eyes just pass over and I don't even stop and wonder whether I might know the "stranger." Sometimes there are people I see around the dorms every day, and maybe several weeks (months?) later, I'll realize that so-and-so's face is actually the same person as such-and-such before he shaved his head/did any other change. As you can see from the above comment, though, this problem doesn't just happen with changes. It's that somehow the original face wasn't imbedded too clearly in my memory to begin with.

You know how some people say they have a hard time with names and other say they have a hard time with faces? Well, if you have a hard time with faces, how can you have an easy time with names? I don't remember a face, and therefore no matter how hard I try, I won't remember the name of a faceless face.

As you can see, this great dilemma might lead to hilarious stories as well as very embarrassing ones. I'll tell one just because I'm in the mood for storytelling:

I met (made-up names) Adam and Bob one day as they are watching TV in the commons. We get to talking and Adam somehow gets around to talking about how he has weird toes.. and I will confirm they were in fact very weird. So after this encounter, I forget both names and faces of both Adam and Bob, and only remember that I met someone with weird toes and his friend watching TV in the commons.

Several weeks (months?) later, a random person (Bob) comes up to me and says "hey I always say hi to you when you pass by, and you always give me this WEIRD look like 'do I know you?'"

"Well, do I know you?"

He replies, "Remember that evening in the commons, I was with my friend..."

"Oh!! Are you the guy with weird toes?"

"No... that was my friend."

"Oh. Sorry. I promise I won't look at you weird next time."

A few days later, Bob says hi... and I make my do-i-know-you face. Damn it. I caught myself in the act. So I say hi and "sorry I forgot! But now I've figured it out." Unfortunately, I think I remembered him only as "the random guy who says hi so i shouldn't make a face" person.

A few weeks after that, I'm hanging out with my friend Stacy, and Bob walks by. Unfortunately, this time for some reason he decides not to say hi right off the bat, therefore not triggering my automatic Bob-response. Stacy says "hey! have you met my friend Bob?"

... I extend my hand. "Hi, I'm Diane."

Bob just looks at me and says "Yes, we've met.. remember that evening in the commons when my friend and i were watching..."

"Oh!! Are you the guy with weird toes??"

I wonder if he wanted to scream yet. I'm sorry Bob.

Reviews

2007-05-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

Internet reviews are great. I've been online shopping for a camera and an lcd monitor. I read reviews for the product, and then reviews of the person selling the product. I've even started getting review crazy about books and shampoo and random everyday items. I take more stock in what the random site visitors say than what critics say, though. Is that strange? I'd think that critics' opinions would be worth more, but it's the fact that user reviews would be context dependent, and more likely to be in the context in which I will be using the product.

I was extremely intrigued by one story in Blink, by Malcom Gillis, where he talks about the "Pepsi Challenge". Pepsi advertised that in blinded taste-tests, a significant percentage of people would choose Pepsi over Coke. Now, Coke was not very happy about this, and held their own trials... and found that it was true! Then they became very concerned that they were going to lose to the competition and revamped their product until it came out on top in blind taste tests. When the new product went on the market though, consumers hated it. Why? Well, no one ever really drinks their soda blind! And no one really takes just a sip! So a good-tasting sip may actually mean a sickeningly sweet whole can, and a visible label about the new ingredients detracts from the established goodness of the well-known coke. From the strong negative reaction of their consumers, Coke changed their product back to the original. They still dominate the softdrink market, irrelevant of the findings of the Pepsi Challenge.

I saw an ad on tv today by pepsi with the slogan that "Diet Pepsi has more Cola flavor." I wonder what coke will do now...

In line with my usual "intensity" or "nerdiness", I also wanted to remark that I am also on the search for a lab for my first research rotation (where we try out a lab for a couple of weeks to see if we want to stay there for the next several years). Unfortunately, user reviews are much harder to come by and I must seek them out myself. But in the end, I will be doing much of the reviewing. It's a scary prospect, one of those things you feel like determines the rest of your life but probably doesn't actually have that much weight. My reviewers are pubmed, former graduate students, and current lab members. Unfortunately, they will not be within exactly the right context as projects change, the lab dynamics change, and since I am one unique "user" in the system. I wish this were easier..

Preamble

2007-05-21T23:41:00.000-07:00

In my on-going quest for less cuteness and more sophistication, I have decided to shed my former yellow, bunny-filled background. So I've kept the sitename sunshinydianmond, but I'm sure you will soon find that it is the content that counts. I plan to start using correct punctuation and capitalization (although I can't always guarantee correct grammar), and perhaps use the lol's and haha's just a tiny bit less.

It is a bit ironic that I am beginning a site to welcome an end-- well, at least a certain current state that is in some ways an end, some ways a continuing journey, but by no means a beginning. In the M.D.-Ph.D. world, they say that the road is so long that if we view our current state as a beginning or means of getting somewhere else, we will be forever in frustration because we will never get there. So instead of seeing the future career as a light in the distance that seems ever far away, we should see that yes, we are already doing science, and hence we are scientists, and we are practicing medicine, therefore we are doctors. Everyone at any stage will constantly be learning and there is no threshold where one suddenly transforms from student to professional. To give those of you a sense of the timeline. 7-8 years will be spent between the library, the laboratory, and the clinical wards. Then we will spend 2-3 years as residents in medicine, followed by one or more 1-2 year postdoctoral fellowships and perhaps more specialization in medicine. Starting out at age 21, by the time I even think about applying for a faculty position, I will be well over 30. So you see how crucial it is that we feel that we are already at our goal.. that being on this track assures us that we will have everything we ever wanted so we can simply live our lives at hand.

What does it mean, starting Harvard Medical School? I've been trying to help others understand as I am trying to understand. Let's dispell the myths that it is for the smartest, for the brilliant, for whatever other stereotypes there are. It means that one certain group of people thinks you have potential, that you are unafraid to take risks, able to put yourself out there, able to take advantage of the opportunities that are present, and maybe just maybe bring something unique to their schools. They key is also "think" and certainly thinking is fallible. Can you really blame them for choosing students recommended by people of promince, the ones from well-recognized universities, or faculty that they know? I thought it was a ruse at first. 6 of the 10 accepted students to Harvard's MSTP (the M.D.-Ph.D. program) had ties to Harvard or MIT and even more to the northeast. What bias! But then, I realized, it is the same around the country. UC San Francisco has an inordinant number from California or Stanford or Berkeley. Same with Washington University and the midwestern colleges. It really is an arbitrarily chosen system.

I am proud, though, of my friends. I have become close to a set of people that have profoundly shaped who I am. I still feel comfortable calling up close friends since middle school, high school (two schools), and now college. I don't get close to too many people at each place, but the ones I do.. Somehow they've prevented me from being too nerdy, let me fit in just a little bit, taken me out when I really need it. And years later, still think I'm interesting enough to invite over on occassion. I've been cleaning out my room these past few days, and I'm finding locker notes, sentimental cards, games we played, love letters fake and real, and all other sorts of amusement. It's funny how I remember everything so clearly despite my general absent-minded state. Success really is about the people we meet, and how we affect each other. In a way, Harvard is judging me for the friends I've made and how they've influenced me. I think they did a pretty good job.