It was a normal Wednesday morning, lab meeting scheduled for 9. I was getting a couple experiments going at work beforehand, and at 8:50 my labmate Ken and I left the insulated confines of the lab to make some tea. And it hit us like a wall of bricks. Buzzing and chattering was exploding through the outer hallway. We looked around for the source, and downstairs was about a hundred new med students who were here for orientation week.
You may have friends that are med students. You may aspire to be a med student. You may even be a med student. Perhaps you know a thing or two about med students. Being a 22 year old that hasn’t been to med school, I know all about med students. Let me give you my two cents.
1) Med students always good-looking
Inevitably, if you walk into a crowd of med students they will be the best looking group you see that day. Their hair will be just right, clothes will be clean cut but hip, and their faces will be beautifully symmetric.
I’ve heard that law students are nerdy, while business students are bro-y. In the middle lie med students, a weird mix of nerdy and bro-y. I would guess this yields tremendously good-looking students because you have the clean cut and serious look from the nerdy side blended with the style and the awareness of trying to look good from the bro-y side. And of course this inevitably leads to med student power couples.
Which leads me to my next observation:
2) Percentage of med students who will be divorced: 80%
I think the average divorce rate is something around 50%. I would think doctors have a higher rate because they stressful jobs with long hours. Doctoring is also a job that has high social standing, which leads to lots of money and abusable power, and those are never good for anyone. Money and power are probably the two things that can get to someone's head faster than anything else in the world, and med students can expect plenty of both.
Of course, that 80% divorce rate isn’t helped by the inevitable third observation:
3) Percentage of med students that are douchy: 110%
The other day, I was at my friend’s twentieth anniversary party where they showed a beautiful power point presentation of the adventures they had shared. Everyone loved seeing the pictures and hearing all about their trips.
Later, I learned why the presentation had worked out so well. My friends were panicking because they couldn’t get the computer set up, until an unassuming guest offered to help. The man wasn’t family or even a close friend, he was the husband of a casual friend, and I thought to myself, that is a man of character. The crucial underrated guy that actually did all the work but didn’t get any of the credit for it.
You may chance upon a man of character in circles of med students, but more likely you’ll find someone interested in themselves. Med school admissions is so competitive and cut-throat that it breaks the heart out of nice people.
The admissions process gets you to help people, but only in ways that make you stand out. You can’t spend your free afternoons helping your neighbors move, or baking cookies for your friend’s birthday party because you’ll be left in the dust by all the young punks that are padding their resumes with research internships at Harvard.
It’s not the fault of med students that 110% of them are douchy, they’re just forced into a broken system. When I hear healthcare debates about single-payer health care, or drug companies giving up valuable patents to increase the range of healthcare, all I can think about is how you just need to start by building better men and women of character.
You need people who are smart, but there is more. You need people who will sacrifice their time to care for patients when they won’t get any credit. You need people who will stay after their shift without getting paid to mentor a young resident. You need people who can form strong relationships and families to have a life outside of the hospital. Really, you just need people who aren’t douchy.
from ken
Please comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.
Maybe you’ve heard The Fray song, “You Found Me.” I always saw this song as a beautiful story:
Isaac, the lead singer, is wandering the dimly lit streets of Denver by himself. He is clearly weary, to the point where he’s questioning the existence of a God he’s not even sure he believes in. Out of desperation he cries out, “Where you been?”
God replies back: Ask anything.
Isaac: Where were you, when my marriage was falling apart?
Where were you when there were starving kids in Africa?
Where were you single mothers lost their jobs because of irresponsible bosses?
I kept calling you!
God: What? Where were you? Why do you think I sent you?
…
If I have been gifted with anything throughout my lifetime, it is an acute ability to feel other people’s suffering. When I hear about a family’s messy divorce, or a friend’s struggle with depression, I feel their pain, sharply. Suffering is how I understand the world, and at the same time it’s what draws me into the world. I want people to feel just a little bit less pain.
Going day to day, sometimes I can become obsessed, and all I see is suffering. Some days it drive me crazy.
Other days I see different things. Some days I see the good people I’ve met during my life. People I love. People I sometimes care about, in a weird way, more than myself. On some days, those people keep me from giving up on life.
Two of my friends recently got engaged. Maybe you know them: Kaleb Keyserling and Lauren Metzger. They are absolutely lovely human beings. If I grow into half the human being the two of them are, I would count my life as a success.
Hearing they got engaged, it warmed my heart in a way that nothing else has in a long time. In such an ugly world, it made me feel like good things still happen in the world. Two beautiful human beings, can still come together and live in happiness. It made me feel, for a short moment that everything was right in the world. And that the world could still be how it was meant to be.
And this intersection is what keeps me going.
On one hand, I see suffering.
On the other, I see people I love.
And it pains me to live in a world where those two things have to intersect.
This is why I choose to live. If I could have anything, I would want people to be happy. I think, maybe if I become a little smarter, a little more patient, or more humble, maybe I can leave the world a better place.
When I die, and God asks me, “Where were you, when everything was falling apart?” I can say that I was there. I can say that I cared about people, and I tried.
from ken
Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life, what will you do with it?
In the beginning...
That’s the question that awakened the writer within me last summer. In that first post, I raised the idea that you should stay in the moment and love your life now. It’s too easy for people to think: my life would be so much better if I had a job or my life will be exactly what I want as soon as I find a great woman.
Of course, this is not a novel idea, people have been talking about it, probably for about as long as people have been talking. I recently read the classic novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the take home message is that you can easily ruin your life by mindlessly pursuing goals. Clearly, people are aware of the dangers of obsessing about the future and not doing things you love in the day to day.
Knowing it is one thing, but living that life is a completely different plane.
My perspective has come a long way since that first post. I don’t know if it’s much different, but it’s certainly come a long way. I’ve written about 80 posts, read about 40 or 50 books, and spent countless nights sitting in the dark thinking about life. Sidenote – this was my favorite post Thank you running, and my favorite book was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Both are my favorites for the same reason – they bleed emotion, and that’s what good writing should do, it should be infectious with soul.
This is why I love artists. I don’t particularly love art. I can’t remember the last time I went to an art museum, and I probably couldn’t tell you the difference between Mozart and Van Go. That said, to pursue something off the beaten track, it takes a whole lot of resolve to say, no I’m not going to follow the track set out for me by society. Instead, I’m going to carve out my own path, and work way harder than other people have to, so that I can live my dream out, every day.
I spent the other day filming a Justice Conference promo with two inspiring artists, Nate and Jarod. I’ve never filmed anything, so it was a novel experience to work with them, and to see into the eyes of film-makers. They had day jobs, but they also spent their weekends making films, trying to launch a career in film making. I would consider myself to be a hard working person, but if I work a ten hour day, I’m probably complaining about it all night. Here were these guys, waking up at 6 AM on a Saturday, shooting all day, wracking their minds to figure out how to reach people through their art, scavenging the Mt. Hood trails to find that perfect one second shot of me running between some trees.
As I saw into their day and heard their stories a little bit, I saw more. I remembered, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life, what will you do with it?” Seeing Nate and Jarod that day, I saw two guys who were really alive, and on fire for their dreams. More, they weren’t preparing to live their dreams, they were living their dreams, that day. They spent the day creating their artistic vision into reality, so they could communicate a small message of hope to the world.
As for myself, I feel like I need re-evaluate my life a little bit. When I spent the day with Nate and Jarod, I left inspired, knowing that someone out there was living the dream, but where did that leave my own life? If someone spent a Saturday with me, would they leave inspired, knowing that someone out there was living the dream?
So, today is the first day of the rest of your life. What will you do with it?
from ken
Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.
I wrote this piece to introduce the groomsmen at my wedding. I think the friends you have are a good representative of your values. I think it’s good to have friends because otherwise you are just by yourself, and being lonely is not as fun. I have been lucky to have some good friends, and here are some of them in alphabetical order:
Amulya Iyer – Everyone loves Mooks. I think he is uncontestably the most likeable person I will ever know. But I think I love him a little bit more than everyone else. What I love about him more than everyone else is how comfortable our relationship is. I feel like I can be myself with him: tell stupid jokes, talk about how awesome we are, and discuss our most serious dreams. I hope one day he finds someone that feels the same way I feel about him.
Eric Morris – Probably my biggest influence in high school. I was blown away by his leadership and attitude towards running, but what I love most about Eric is his intentionality in our relationship. Despite being friends solely through running, our relationship blossomed after I stopped running with him. He has always been intentional about calling, visiting me at Kenyon, and we’ve both succesfully put a lot of work into supporting each other through some tough years.
Geoff Anderson – My first friend in college. I lived with Geoff my sophomore and senior year of college, but I probably saw him a total of six times in those two years. I think we’ve talked maybe once or twice in the past year, but what I love about Geoff is that even when we never see each other, we can pick up our relationship from any point and be in perfect stride. I know Geoff and I will be friends forever whether he lives in Texas or Italy.
Heath Newton – My first friend in Portland. What I admire most about Heath is, simply, what a caring friend he is. He has always been thoughtful towards our relationship and has been willing to go out of his way to develop our relationship. Heath and I lead a hiking group at our church, and it has been an inspiration for me to see how much he values relationships. I hope to continue to be inspired by him.
Kaleb Keyserling – Keyser and I became friends in college because we were both cross country teammates and biology majors. We spent many nights in the biology reading room bonding over studying for orgo, and then leaving to put in a good hard 15 mile long run. I feel like Keyser and I have been through a lot, and he’s put up with me through a lot. In my dreams I would go to med school with Keyser.
Tom Herer – More than any friend I’ve ever had, I always associate Tom with love. He is a thoughtful man, and one that I have seen transform more than anyone else over these past few years. My favorite thing about Tom is that I feel like I could count on him to love me regardless of what I do or who I am, and there isn’t much more to life than having friends like that.
Will Kessenich – Will was my cross country teammate and senior year roommate. We put in a lot of hard hard miles together, but the thing I will always remember about Will were our late night chats over beers and giant bags of Kettle chips. We talked late into the night about classes, girls, just generally about how silly life is, all the while consuming 1000 calories per night. Plus I was the first person Will ever met at Kenyon, so that counts for something.
from ken
Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.
