I just finished Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like. It was hilarious. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Lander makes fun of white people, particularly the kind living in Portland. He goes ahead and lists out 150 topics and writes about a one page summary of why people like it. Some of Lander’s targets include Farmer’s Markets, hating corporations, gentrification, knowing what’s best for poor people, etc.
Anyways, as I neared the end of the book, I didn’t feel like the book got me that badly, and I was thinking high and mighty of myself. Psh Christian Lander thinks he can nail all young people, he can’t get me, but he did get x, y, and z white people that I know. They are such stereotypes. But not me, I’m totally original. And of course, the second to last topic was “Self-Importance/blogging.”
To paraphrase, he explains how this topic epitomizes white people, and actually provides the explanation behind every other topic in the book. White people like farmers markets and scarves, not because they like vegetables and being warm, but because it makes them feel important and cool. Through blogging, white people have taken the thoughts that they previously recorded in personal diaries, to a public platform, and concurrently taken self-importance to a whole new level.
All that to say, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past ten months. I specialize in concerns about the future, over-analyzing insignificant events, and thinking about myself. And I’m ok with it. I think telling stories, relating with others, and helping lift the weight of others is the point of life. And maybe my story can tell others, “Yeah, it’s ok to think about yourself sometimes, and yeah, it’s ok to think about life sometimes.”
It’s like David Foster Wallace’s famed commencement speech at Kenyon College a few years back. It starts with a story of two young fish swimming through the river, and they see an older fish that greets them, “Howdy boys, how’s the water?” and goes by. Later, one of the young fish says to the other, “What’s water?”
Maybe it’s not necessary for everyone to keep an online running commentary of their thoughts, as here. But I think it’s good for everyone to think about life sometimes, and now I’ll defer to the wisdom of a story-teller far superior to myself:
“Our business is to give our world and ourselves tools to imagine and create and heal. Stories that cherish the quiet moments. Stories of a world that works for everyone. Stories about a world worth saving.”
- Brian Andreas
from ken
Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
I didn’t really have time to finish a post this week. I’ve been too busy following my dream and working on my med school apps, neglecting my alternate dream of sitting in trendy coffee shops and becoming a professional blogger. Instead, here’s a few thoughts I had this week.
In a church plant fantasy draft who would you take first, Donald Miller or the Pope? How do enthusiastic young single people compare with older experienced post-child couples? Where would you rank the Dalai Lama, you know, just in case you could get him to buy in?
Would it be possible to be married with child and still bury other med students at the USMLE’s?
Kevin Durant wears his polo’s all the way buttoned up. Does that ensure his nice guy status? Is that cool now?
If I were to be re-incarnated, what would I come back as? If Toy Story rules were in effect, probably a stuffed animal, but probably not a pillow-pet. I would probably choose something more re-usable and gender neutral.
How can I make my life more like Scrubs?
If you have any answers, please let me know. I may or may not have lost sleep over this.
from ken Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
The following is a draft of my med school personal statement. I hope it will make you think: This person wrote something slightly less boring than the million other personal statements I have read, and it is clear why they want to be a physician. I would like to interview this handsome gentleman for a position in my medical school.
It all started, just another day in the life of Ken Noguchi. Kicking back on the picturesque quad of Kenyon College. Lush green grass, tossing a Frisbee with friends, and passing the hours drinking cheap beers…
Actually, reality was more like: long days holed up in the stuffy science quad, tearing through stack after stack of flash cards, and bonding through suffering with my fellow pre-med friends. One spring day, we took a study break to check our PO boxes. I was hoping for a care package from my mom, some candy to fuel my late night studying.
Instead I found a small postcard. It was a notification to attend Kenyon College Honors Day, the yearly awards ceremony, so I could receive an award.
Fast forward to the day of the ceremony. I was shaking in my seat. The short postcard told me to expect an award, but I couldn’t help thinking it was one big joke. Being a self-proclaimed late-bloomer, this was my first time ever receiving an award without the word “participation.”
In the first half of the ceremony, the dean presented the departmental awards. I received the Robert Bowen Jr. Prize, the top Biology award, and I was zoned out in my own world after receiving such a high honor from my professors in the Biology department. Before I knew it, we were at the last part of the awards ceremony, when the dean began announcing the prestigious collegiate awards, reserved for those taking a leadership role in influencing the actions of the student body. Still a little zoned out, I started hearing these words: “The Humanitarian Award is given to a student who has made a significant contribution to the general welfare of others. Described as being “radically transformed” in the past year, our winner became involved in the community through Justice Week, a week of programming dedicated to service in the global community.
He found himself inspired by the work of Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, an organization dedicated to providing healthcare for the less fortunate in Haiti. With that in mind, he began planning a student service trip to Haiti for Spring Break 2010. In the midst of fundraising for this trip, a massive earthquake hit Haiti. Despite cancelling the trip, he shifted his focus to education and fundraising for Haiti. He quickly organized a well-attended forum focusing on global, political, and economic injustices at work before the earthquake. He continued to connect the entire Kenyon Community to the Haitian plight, raising over $2,000 to send to Partners in Health.
In the past year, he also served as a student leader for the Koinonia Programming Board and brought four panels of the AIDS Quilt to Kenyon for World AIDS Day.
Please join me in congratulating Ken Noguchi, the first winner of the Humanitarian Award.”
I was only half-listening in the beginning, but as I started hearing about Haiti, I realized, “Whoa, they’re talking about me.” I took a breath to recount my radical transformation.
I thought about my past.
I kicked off my first Kenyon semester with a 2.7 GPA. That year was a reality check. Seeing my other pre-med classmates fly past me with honor rolls and distinctions, I realized that if I was serious about medical school, I couldn’t just cruise through on natural intelligence.
I slowly got my act together, studied how to excel at college, and worked hard. From there, my GPA improved every semester until I reached a 4.0 in the fall semester of my senior year, I wrote and published a bench science honors thesis on bacterial physiology, and I became a campus leader for social justice. I attached my identity to becoming an advocate for Haiti, a country decimated by global injustices.
I thought about my future.
I love medicine, and its ability to give people hope.
I remembered a patient I met while shadowing Dr. Simon Robson in a liver clinic. She was a drug addict, hoping to prolong her life and take care of her two kids. She was slowly making positive life changes, but she also had endstage liver disease. Without a new liver, those small steps were all going out the window.
I remembered all the patients I saw with Dr. Catherine Allan in the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. Many of her patients hadn’t even been given a first chance at life. They were victims of mutant genes, born with structural defects in their hearts. Dr. Allan told me that she saw very few happy endings. If her patients survived their stay at the hospital, they would still be in and out of the hospital for the rest of their lives.
I knew that I had been lucky. I never struggled with anything as difficult as drug addiction, nor had I ever been diagnosed with a life-threatening genetic disorder. Sometimes I wondered why I had been fortunate enough to have Biochemistry be my greatest struggle. Dr. Robson’s patient would have to be incredibly lucky to get a rare liver transplant. Dr. Allan’s patients would have to be similarly lucky and show an unexpected improvement from heart surgery.
That moment, sitting in the auditorium, at Kenyon College Honors Day, when I heard the words, “Please join me in congratulating Ken Noguchi…” I was proud of how hard I had worked. But I also knew that the gods of fate must be smiling. I hoped my life could be about helping others feel lucky.
from ken
Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
Why I love my mom: On this rainy Portland mother’s day, I thought I’d write about how I’ve been lucky to have a great mom. I was having this discussion with one of my friends the other day, my parents are divorced, so the odds are definitely against me to turn out into a half decent human being. Thinking back to the conversation, I probably beat the odds because I grew up with the best mom in the world. I think pretty much all of my good qualities, in some way come from my mom.
For starters, growing up, I saw a great example of how I should conduct myself in society. In some way or another my mom has always ended up getting plugged into community and making herself helpful.
My mom lives in an apartment complex right now, and unlike houses or neighborhoods, these sorts of complexes tend to be unsocial places. I don’t know the name of anybody else that lives in my complex, and I pretty much treat it as my solitary retreat to sleep and eat. But my mom has joined the board at her complex, making decisions about the community, holding meetings in her home, and just generally becoming friends with her apartment-mates.
At the Japanese Language School I attended while I was growing up, my mom saw that the school wasn’t getting the funding it needed, so she started a small-scale bake sale. As its popularity caught on, other moms got involved, and it grew into a huge fundraising movement. I graduated from the school about six years ago, but my mom went back to the school recently, and learned that the bake sale still lived on! The ladies there were in awe to meet the legend that had started the Japanese School bake sale.
She spends her free time at work getting plugged in with the multicultural community and leadership. Following the earthquakes that ravaged Northern Japan, she helped organize a fundraising effort, folding countless origami cranes, even being asked to film an instructional video. Since leaving her home, I’ve tried my best to follow her lead and get involved in my community, both at Kenyon and here in Portland. But I love my mom most because she always cares about me. She always understands who I am. She knows I have to throw myself into my life, and that I’ll always be busy. I appreciate that she stays patient with me when I sound stressed out talking to her on the phone, or selfishly can’t scrape together the time to call her for weeks at a time because I’m overloaded in stress. I love that even after weeks of not talking, she can still sound just as happy to talk to me, and support all of my far-reaching ventures. I know I wouldn’t be able to do all that I do without knowing that somewhere out there, someone over on the other side of the coast is thinking about me.
So anyways, that’s why I love my mom.
from ken
PS – I didn’t just write this because I forgot it was mother’s day, and didn’t send a card.
Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
Like much of the country, we’re in a cold spell, but it’s worse in Portland, I swear. Not just because I live here. What? It snowed in Michigan?
Anyways, I’ve spent the last couple months hating Portland’s constant and mind-numbing rain. I bike commute, and it’s been getting real old, real fast. Couple that with getting out of shape over the rainy season, and it’s been a dreary couple of months.
Sidenote: some optimistic people will tell me, “Living in the rain for six months will make you appreciate the sun WAY more!” Whenever I hear that, my first thought is, “Fuck that. I’m moving to San Diego and living on the beach like Jack Johnson. I’ll learn to play the guitar and surf all day.”
This of course, would never happen. My head would explode if I spent more than two weeks doing something “not productive.”
All that to say, today was probably the first real summer-like day we’ve had since we’ve been here, and it was amazing. It felt like I was in a whole different world. A part of it was definitely being cured of the seasonal depression, but I loved the energy of Portlanders as the season turns to summer. The contagious good mood was like herpes on a small secluded college campus. Or wildfire. Let’s stick with wildfire.
Pretty much everything that could have been good about the day was even better. A cancelled AM meeting left me time to take a peaceful morning bike ride through town and read by the sunlight. I rocked my dog shorts and flip-flops all day. I had a great morning at church catching up with some friends. Then, I went for a picnic with some friends, played some ultimate frisbee and bocce ball. It will be unmentioned that I went 0-4 in the games. Er. And now, I get a few hours to myself to soak in the awesome weekend.
Thinking back to my post last week on intentionally taking rest, I guess the most crucial part of the Sabbath is something I neglected to touch on. I had myself convinced that rest is a solitary thing. I needed to remove myself from the world of people, plug in the headphones and hit the 24 hour fitness, then sit and write by myself.
But as they say in the hilarious Hugh Grant flick, About a Boy, no man is an island.
One of the striking qualities of post-college life is definitely the loneliness. Taking out a year lease on a studio was maybe not good for my sanity. It’s definitely taught me important things, and given me plenty of time to think about the crap that goes into this blog, but it’s also been lonely. I think after a year of it, I’m definitely ready to find a house to live in, and add some roommates.
I guess, for whatever reason, relationships have to be a part of rest. Maybe it takes experiencing the sun with some friends to fully appreciate it. Maybe it’s like the final secret of Into the Wild:
“Happiness is only real, when shared.”
from ken
Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
