In conclusion...

At the end of 2009, I felt that the whole year could be summed up in one concise statement --

"Shit happens."

I realize that 2010 is just beginning but I think I've already got a good idea of what this year's concluding statement will be...

"That which does not kill me only makes me stronger."

ha ha? :) Here's to an exciting 2010 filled with no permanence and dramatic changes!

Wanderlust

I get cabin fever. Sometimes I need to get out. Out of the house, out of the city, out of the state, out of this time zone....

Maybe I just need to get out of my head.

Pacemaking

The other day in anatomy lab we were dissecting the neck. Our cadaver has a really short and thick neck so it's hard to tell where neck ends and chest begins. I guess we went a little too far because before we knew it, we were in the chest. We were cutting away when one of us found a wire... a pacemaker! Obviously I got excited and started trying to uncover it. I just wanted to see if it was a Medtronic device. :)

As I was cutting away, this surreal feeling washed over me. I started thinking, ever since undergrad, I thought I wanted to work on medical devices - blending math, physics, and medicine. I thought I'd be close enough to the medical field to stay interested. Then I started getting a taste of the bioengineering industry. Sure, the devices were interesting... but I just wanted to know how doctors used them. After 5 years of avoiding the issue, it finally sunk in. I wasn't meant to be an engineer. I didn't want to be "close" to the medical field, I wanted to be IN it. 

So I finally got it out of his chest. It was a St. Jude device. And I just stood there for a second, staring at the scalpel in my hand. My two worlds colliding. It reminded me how much my life has changed in the past year - how incredibly blessed I am. And I'm so happy to be on this side of the pacemaker.

Nascent

First post! Finally! I've been meaning to create this blog for a while! It took me forever just to pick the URL. I've probably had multiple blogs throughout high school and college, but I hope to put some real thought into this one. I used my last blogs to just regurgitate any and every thought that came into my head and they were pretty disjointed. Hopefully this one will be more coherent. So why am I starting yet another blog? Well...

1. 6 weeks into medical school and I'm already feeling that I'm not able to keep in touch with friends and family as much as I'd like to. And something tells me I'm only going to get busier. Hence this is reason #1 for a brand-spankin-new blog.
   
2.  I sporadically updated a blog throughout undergrad. Whenever I got the chance to read through my old posts, I got a great sense of how much I've changed over the years. And I LOVED seeing that. So here's hoping I'll have the same type of reaction when I read this in a few years. Creepy. Hi future me. Are you a doctor yet?
3.  Recently I realized how much stress I keep stored inside my head. More like inside my back muscles. Writing helps release all of that crap. So I'm gonna write all of my stress right off of my back and onto this blog. And then I can come back and read it and laugh at how crazy I am. I hope I will be laughing.

I bet there are more reasons... somewhere in the back of my head and/or tip of my tongue but three is a good convenient number. I guess all that's left is to press the "publish" button. Here goes nothing!