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| beers |
2) Get in med school – check
3) Fall in love again - check
PDX goals - dominated
After this good omen I put my top 3 Charleston goals on paper:
#3) Make good friends in Charleston, then drink beers and talk shit about life.
Token goal for my life. I have a theory that my wheelhouse of relationship-building is “camaraderie through suffering.” This describes med school/residency to a T. I’m still planning on being super intentional, just in case. Plus, I need to make Sidenote famous.
#2) Move on to a big pond/match at Boston Children’s Hospital.
At the end of med school there’s a process called The Match where each med school graduate gets matched with a hospital to undergo clinical training. The brief explanation: each graduate ranks their favorite hospitals, each hospital ranks their favorite graduates, and a complex computer program matches everyone up. It’s kind of like the NBA draft, needlessly complicated and surely fixed.
Sidenote – If cancer is cured in my lifetime, I desperately want to be there. I’m convinced it will happen where brilliance and passion are fused, but I’m not sure where that is.. I assume it’s a big pond. All I know is I haven’t seen it. So I’m hoping to catapult myself from Charleston to a top pediatric hospital.
Four years ago, I spent spring break shadowing an intensive care specialist at a pantheon pediatric hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital. I rounded with the smartest residents in the country, we reviewed mysterious cases nobody else could solve, I watched a peds cardiac surgeon nonchalantly cut open a four day old infant’s chest. It was awesome.
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| a hot pond |
The attending was a Kenyon alum. It’s a sign, I swear.
I want it.
#1) Be a good husband.
I know the gunner side of me will come out in med school. A part of me really wants to crush med school. I want to violently shove it down the throats of all those top ten schools that rejected me.
At the same time, I’ve watched enough Scrubs (every episode at least three times) and read enough meaning-of-life books to know happiness does not come from matching at a top hospital. Sidenote – my top 3 meaning-of-life books + conclusions:
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| some great meaning-of-life reads |
3) Walk on Water by Michael Ruhlman – Life is about pushing yourself for other people
2) Home Game by Michael Lewis – Life doesn’t make sense and you just have to accept that you can’t win
1) The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons – the secret of basketball, is that it’s not about basketball. It’s about avoiding the temptation to believe it’s all about your own stats. Sidenote – I really need to write another post about this book.
Anyways, I do better in life with a goal-oriented outlook, so I hope the prospect of The Match will keep me entertained during med school. At the same time, I hope to remember that life isn’t about matching at hospitals, it’s about investing in relationships, especially with Katie - since she just drove across the country to hang out with me while I write blog posts.
See you on the other side,
from ken
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