first MSTP speaker

Dr. Radu was the first MSTP speaker for our mandatory research series.  The afternoon was well spent drinking boba tea while reading his papers, allowing for active participation during the talk.  The talk itself not only dealt with new unpublished data following the published materials, but also focused on the path that Dr. Radu took in getting to the current stage of being part of a translational lab.  It was part scientific and part career development.  If all of the talks are going to be like this, I am happy to give up most of my Monday evenings.

Hollywood Bowl: Fantasia

Thanks to Auntie for getting me out of med school bubble today.  While I was initially worried about going and nearly changed my mind since it was an intense week of embryology, by the time we got to the Fantasia concert, I was so excited to be doing non-MD stuff.

Doctoring I

Today, I was the very first student in our Doctoring (how to make patients comfortable while getting information) class to interview a standarized patient.

My patient was a 20 year old male with complaints of sore throat and mild fever.  The interview started out with him giving one word answers and leaning back in a disengaged manner.  It was a process which ended with covering most of the medical history and also history of present illness with some hopping around to fill in the blanks (need more practice!).  I was most proud of how we were actually have a conversation at the end, with a little bit of laughter and chatting.  I was happy to see that he was sitting forward, volunteering information, and making his visit easier for the both of us.  Patient review mentioned that he felt comfortable and that I was very invested in his care (super proud!).

Picking a speciality

So, there is this Careers in Medicine website that we are suppose to find useful.  It was.  First of all, I learned that Geriatric Medicine falls under Family Practice.  Uh...so no research, so no.

Then, I did all these personality/skills/values/etc tests.  It turns out that maybe I won't go into Neurology after all...

Food for one, food for all

In addition to an exciting first week of med school, this week proved to me how little tolerance I have for eating out continuously at cafeterias, fast food joints, and food trucks.  It is not that the food was particularly bad, but neither were they particularly good.  My GI tract was unhappy with the lack of homemade or gourmet foods. 

So I attempted to remedy this problem with dessert on Thursday at Mousse Fantasy/Beard Papa's on Sawtelle. While the red bean mousse turned out to complement the green tea mousse well, it was too sweet. The custard pudding tasted just like Purin (プリン), it, much like the green tea mousse, was unnecessarily sweetened by a layer of cream on top. I ended up leaving more of the cream layer and the whipped cream.  In conclusion, for the price, these desserts did not meet my requirements.  The store also did not have mochi ice cream at this particular branch, which was super disappointing.

Japanese desserts.

Medical School Week 0

Introductory week is over.  The results are:

1) Problem Based Learning is a beautiful thing.
2) More than a thousand dollars poorer.
3) Can now carry around fancy medical equipment.

Diagnostic, blood pressure, and neurology...what's missing?

4) Can now not know how to use said fancy medical equipment.