Making time for fun

Medical school takes a lot of time for the typical person (including me). Sometimes when I'm goofing off doing something fun with the family I wonder if I'm taking too much time away from my studies. Yes, balance is important but if you get behind in keeping up with the material it can be hard to catch up and that creates stress ... thus there is an incentive to work hard all along, at least for me. Yesterday we had a class picnic and I never thought about studying -- probably because there was a lot going on in terms of physical activity. Because of the parking situation I hauled a 40 lb bar-b-que gill about half mile or so and go a pretty good workout even before the picnic really started for me. We ran a lot, played frisbee, volleyball and the like. Usually when I work out, I'm back studying after about an hour. This was a multi-hour deal and that was probably key to unwinding. I was always under the impression that is better to spend time throughout the week to work out or goof off. That usually means its going to be fairly short. The picnic showed me that sometimes you need several hours to completely get your mind off things and refreshed.

Wasting time with marginal software

In a nutshell: The Nero 7.0 Essentials is a timewaster that may or may not work (probably does, but be prepared to spend a long time working with it, especially if you have a lot of data (e.g., 6 GB+) that you want to offload onto DVD).

There are plenty of ways to waste time, and one that I'll cover here in this brief note is dealing with software / computer issues. I bought a new DVD burner because my tablet computer did not have a DVD drive and I needed to install some software. I wanted to also take advantage of the burner to offload some files. The burner comes with the piece-of-junk Nero 7.0 essentials software. I don't normally develop negative feelings toward software, but Nero is an exception, as I have wasted countless hours either attempting to get this software to do its job or to install some "feature" that was breaking the rest of the system in the not too distant past. My memory of this software is a combination of lockups and application crashes. Don't get me wrong ... the software often worked, but it wasn't reliable.

Today was no exception. I went to install the software and it took forever for some reason. It isn't just possible to install a simple burner. It installs all this junk that I don't want but it is what it is. Then it attempts to associate itself with every imaginable media file type -- NO, THANKS. However, the installation was basically a smooth process. It did require a reboot, but that wasn't too bad. After that, I wanted to burn my data to DVD. By default, the software chose a CD-ROM drive insead of the DVD burner ... not a huge issue until I tried to cancel to switch to the correct drive. The program of course locked up and had to be forced to end. After that it wasn't possible to start the Nero software again. I had to reboot my system to start the Nero software once again.

The second time around I was much more careful about setting the drive to use because I knew I would not get a second chance to correct this. I added the directory I wanted to burn and it went fairly smoothly. Then there is a message about "Please wait..." without any explanation of what the software is doing. Who knows if I will ever get that directory burned. With this software it's difficult to tell if its locked up or doing something. Keeping the user informed is apparently an occasional task that Nero may or may not perform. When it does give a message, be prepared for indications such as no progress with no improvement (are we locked up?) or 100% complete but "please wait" (so what exactly does 100% complete mean?). Well, I need to get back to studying. I'll let this software keep try to do its thing in the background.

Pace picking up / It was fun listening to Feigin today

Well, I'm past the mid-point of the first year and things are picking up. We move through material quickly and the expectations of what we are supposed to remember increase in terms of level of detail. All the while, my lectures are mostly empty now (few students go). Most students just watch the lectures on recorded video, which is not a bad idea, actually. I still go to lecture, mostly because I enjoy it. I can tell my memory is getting better with all this practice I'm getting remembering tons of important medical facts.

Today I attended a lecture by Dr. Ralph Feigin. He strongly promoted pediatrics and challenged us to excel in our education. He was very energetic as you would expect of someone with his reputation.

Half way through 1st year

Well, I'm half way through my first year and I'm having a good time. We just finished our Block 4 exams and it feels great. The immunology test was certainly the most challenging one, but that was no surprise. Classes keep me busy because there is a lot to learn. I spend time on research and my family. I'm surprised it all works out.

I know that at some point I'll be in the clinics and I'll see my family less, but right now I'm enjoying the flexibility of a first year medical student schedule at Baylor CM. I have found a few research projects that I'm keeping up with. They are only a few hours a week, but I enjoy them, and I'm surprised how often I'll know the answer to a test question because I studied that topic in my research.

The need for technical innovation in medicine

It should go without saying that for me medicine is not a path of least resistance … it’s a calling, and I consider myself very fortunate to have the opportunity to combine my engineering with medicine. There are some issues in medicine that are perhaps mostly a matter of physician head count (rural medicine, HIV/AIDS corps in Africa). At the same time, I’m convinced that if we want to maintain or improve on the average medical care we provide in the U.S., we need physicians who are interested in innovative applications of technology to medical care and can do so with cost in mind. We don’t just need more widgets in medicine (although they are cool).

I’m convinced that engineers have provided society and even medicine with sophisticated, relatively inexpensive engineered products such as new computers that do more and cost the same or less than the year before as well as increasing availability and improving capabilities of laptop-sized sonogram equipment. With the demographic shift toward and older population and concerns about the cost of medical care in the U.S. in the future, medicine seems to be facing very challenging problems that impact many people. These appear to be issues where someone with my background of engineering, business, and technology might be able to help with some innovative improvements.

As I get into medicine, I will be looking for opportunities to perhaps innovate in the use of technology to improve safety for patients and maybe push the envelope on what we can do for patients though proper use of technology. Maybe computerized systems can do more to help catch and prevent medication and surgical issues that lead to complications. Maybe in the future robotic surgery equipment can remove tumors that would be inoperable today. Perhaps a patient’s genetic information can play a very helpful role in anticipating disease or selecting treatments. I can see the potential for innovation like this already and look forward to being a part of innovative patient care in the future.

Visit to the outside world

Med school and family stuff have been keeping me fairly busy. It feels great to be done with the first "block" of material and well into the second. Studying is becoming more routine, although I certainly could always study more. My family has adjusted to my new workload as well. I'm picking up some additional research work that I can work into my schedule. I think it's important to do research to be exposed to cutting edge work and perhaps even contribute to the advancement of science and medicine. I like the people in med school (students, profs, etc.) more than I though I would ... they're smart and fun to hang out with. Well, I need to get back to my many tasks.

As an aside: Internet service: We depend on it these days (especially med students). I tried AT&T Uverse and thought it would be pretty nice. Sadly, it has been totally unreliable for me. Every month (for about 4 months or so) there way some kind of major failure, usually requiring a replacement of the residential gateway. I'm finally switching back to AT&T DSL because the situation has become intolerable. I'm going with DSL instead of Comcast Cable (which I actually also have as a backup) because it turns out that Comcast throttles their download speeds. If you download a large file (document from school), Comcast will intentionally make the download speed slow to keep their system running well; that's not nice. DSL is much faster as a result.

Two weeks done

I'm two weeks into medical school, and I'm glad that I had a chance to consider what it would be like. Because I knew what to expect (a lot of material, much detail, and a lot of talented fellow students) the long hours pass much more quickly. It's a lot of reading (our school uses textbooks and many other resources, including lectures, of course). Just keeping up with the material and memorization is timeconsuming. On the plus side, I believe I'm learning as much as possible and thus far, I'm finding the experience energizing. Some of the students have had much of this material and are having a great time. Others, like me, that aren't recent graduates with a Biology or Biochemistry degree are finding ourselves memorizing a lot of anatomy and other material.