125 Days Until Hell

After staring at a hideous, orange piece of paper for enough weeks you finally take it upon yourself to do something about that hideous, orange piece of paper. What's my hideous, orange piece of paper all about you ask? Scheduling my exam date for Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). That hideous, orange piece of paper has been sitting on or near my desk for about 4 weeks now. The idea was: if I ignored that piece of paper long enough, maybe I could devise an ingenous plan... the culmination of that plan being a way out of taking Step 1. As it turns out, Step 1 is sort of an important requirement. Something about ensuring all future medical professionals know the difference between a Bartholin cyst and a Nabothian cyst blahblahblahblah. Whatever. It's done and now I have 125 days until the test that will ultimately determine whether I get a residency I want. The more subtle (and much more dire) part of that equation is that i have about 90 days until I have to be serious in my preparation for Step 1. Enough medical talk. Or maybe we should have some more medical talk...

I was fortunate enough to attend an interesting meeting today with several members of my school's administration and our IT people. I've always been interested in education methods whether they were my own, my colleagues, my siblings', or simply educational theory in general. Today's meeting covered bringing our medical school curriculum into the 21st century with the aid of podcasting, wireless PDAs, and tablet PCs. My greatest gripe: Apple had several prime seats at this alleged roundtable. Now I don't have anything particuarly against the Apple Corporation. In fact, my fiancee has a 12" iBook that I 'borrow' rather regularly. But I have a problem when Apple tries to interject themselves into an open discussion on the use of technology in (and out) of the classroom, especially when it comes to the topic of audio/visual learning modalities. I have a hard time believing anyone who has their fist thrust deeply into the proprietary filetype honeypot (as Apple does with their AAC audio format and the ironic Windows-like domination of iTunes over the digital music world) could truly have the greater good of education at the forefront of their mind. But I digress (mostly I rant, but I'll label this as a digression).

We began with discussing the recent shift from streaming-only to 'podcasting' of the Anatomy Saturday reviews. Last year the 4 hour long (and often longer) reviews were recorded and then posted on to the Blackboard site so that students could review it at their leisure. Due to all sorts of logistical nightmares they couldn't support podcasting of these reviews... until recently. Several M1s were present who told of a mythical land where one could download these files and then watch them on their video iPods during their daily bus or L commute. For a moment I thought I was attending a private school. It was that exciting. After a debate on whether this should be approached across the curriculum it was decided to start with 'content reviews' and then slowly move toward systematic recording and podcasting of every lecture. The main obstacle to all of this is lecturer concern over presenting copyrighted photographs during their lectures. The obvious way around this would be to allow access to the podcasts through a university ID & password protected site (say... like... maybe... Blackboard?!??!?!!!?). Then the professors were concerned that their no-good students might decide to share these files with the world. Fortunately one of our deans pointed out that maybe our main concern shouldn't be whether or not the students were going to distribute these files worldwide (I can't tell you the number of times each day I get a request from Norway for one of our Pharmacology lecture mp3s) but whether providing the students with this service would a) improve their ability to learn the information presented, b) foster a better relationship between the administration and the student body, and c) challenge the faculty to present the highest quality lectures (since it may be available to a scrutinizing world wide audience).

It seems like anything that's offered up for podcasting is going to be available through iTunes U which is Apple's new education and university specific portal they've been working on with Duke, Standford, and Michigan. And they're not going to be utilizing and DRMs and everything should be available in formats that are non-proprietary. I can live with all of that. Steve Jobs you have my blessing (like you needed it).

Two of the best ideas that I heard today involved the clinical curriculum. The course director of our Essentials of Clinical Procedures and Professionalism wants to podcast video demonstrations of all the core procedures that M3s and M4s need to perform. Again this was presented as quick review before you have to perform it on a patient, not as first-time learning. These files could then be played back on a video iPod or capable PDA. That's pretty exciting in my mind. I always felt I would be much better at doing a one-off blood draw if I could quickly review the procedure before I had to do it. He's also looking to do something similar for his OB/GYN interns and the rarer procedures they're called on to perform. Another course director is talking about podcasting an entire fourth year elective course in medical safety, almost in the same vein as many of the Continuing Medical Education courses currently be offered. The best part is that they're being designed in an interactive fashion: after several minutes of video a question is asked and based on the student's response you're taken down one path or another. It's the Choose Your Own Adventure of medical education. Maybe I'm just geeking out here as someone who is both a student and a teacher, but I know that anytime you can make learning more interactive, you have a much stronger guarantee of the student retaining that knowledge.

I think that's about everything. The head IT person for the college of medicine and I had a nice chat about requiring laptops (instead of either a desktop OR a laptop). I think it would be the smart direction to move things especially considering that almost the entire college supports wireless and the amount of versatility that a tablet PC gives you. Unfortunately, the administration doesn't see it that way and they also want to mandate that if you want full school support for your laptop (if it was to be required) that you'd have to purchase one of three brands (Apple, Dell, Toshiba, etc). I don't think that's too horrible of a proposition. First of all, we can get any computer purchase covered by financial aid loans as an academic expense (when you're looking at $160,000 in debt what's $2Gs more?). Secondly, the vast majority of my class uses a laptop anyway. I imagine that percentage only growing as the years wear on. They could even hold several sessions during the fall M1 semester with the goal to show students how to get the most out of their 'academic expenses'. Oh well, it's a public school and change happens slowly. I'm almost willing to put money on that mandate being in place by 2010. Almost.

Of Arena Football and Swahili Phrasebooks

Sometimes you actively have to try to make your weekends happen... and other times things just fall into your lap. Last night was one of the latter. The Chicago Rush game was a pretty good time. Arena football reminds me of watching a high school football game: lots of guys who seem to be playing somewhat out of their position based on body type and athletic ability. Anyway, there were several highlights of the evening both on and off the football field. We get to the Allstate Arena and take our seats behind a rather rowdy local high school football team who's coach apparently plays for the New York Dragons. It's always fun watching a game with people who for one inexplicable reason or another are emotionally invested in the outcome. Jenny got rather agitated about something at one point and tossed some of her beer on me followed by Kathryn making a comment that caused Jenny to spew the rest of her posse with the EtOH in her mouth. I'll take fresh beer on the clothes over backwash on the head anyday. King High School's marching band was in the house and they did a pretty nice rendition of "Don't Phunk With My Heart" and followed that with one of the numbers from Drumline. I found out that Jenny has seen Drumline about 10 times; and I thought my love for the movie was excessive. The Rush ended up losing the game on the last play: they were down 4 and driving from about the 3 yard line with 9 seconds left. The play looked like a bust, but somehow the QB managed to wrangle his way around a few NY defenders and scored as time ran out. But then the flags game out and the refs called a 'block to the back' penalty on one of the Rush's offensive lineman. Game Over. More excitement than any NFL game I've ever attended. Still not touching a Duke-Carolina game in Cameron.

Afterwards we headed to the car and here I have to give some love to the Rosemont PD. Best traffic management I've ever seen with 15,000 people all trying to leave the same place at once. We didn't wait in a line at all. Good on them. After we got back home we headed to Arturo's for some much needed margaritas and mexican. Some friends of Kathryn's were throwing an early birthday party for her so Reuben and I tracked that down (Alex begged off because of a wondrous work obligation early the next morning). I wish I could tell the whole, sordid story of what happened at that party, but let's just say in a two hour time span it managed to run the gamut of "Let's steal some liqour and blow this pop stand" to "We can't leave yet, I've put in too much time to leave empty handed." That's all I'll say. I'm not gonna blow up anyone's spot on a blog. But I will say it was by far the best house party I've been to since finishing undergrad. The Unintentional Comedy Scale topped over 100 several times.

The agenda for tonight is getting some more Pathology done, grabbing a burger (Alex is experiencing a red meat craze or she's iron deficient... fielder's choice), and heading over to Sam's to partake in their 6 pack sale.

Even if you don't like reggae I've got to say DJ Eleven's mix (see the Lemon-Red link in the Feb 2 post) might change your mind. I don't think it's possible to listen to good reggae and not imagine yourself inna JA during the balmy yet beautiful summer. Which is a far better mental picture than the dreariness of Chicago in February.

Day 2 on the Alien Planet

Some interesting things from around the horn:

One of the posters over at OkayPlayer came up with this hilarious concept for a Snakes on a Plane comic strip. If you're not familiar with SoaP... then you need to spend more time on the internet. Seriously? Snakes on a Plane? It can only be described as the greatest movie of next year. All you really need to know is that it involves Samuel L Jackson, snakes, and a plane. How can this movie not make money?

Pandora vs. Last.fm Picked up on this via Waxy. I did a bit of my own testing but it's still in the preliminary stages. I will say that I like Pandora's business model better than Last's. And by business model I mean that I don't have to download any software from Pandora like you do with Last. That's a big plus in my book. It's also a plus with my over-the-hill laptop (4+ years old). The biggest thing that Last has going for it is that you're almost assured to find someone who is familiar with an artist you're looking for. When I typed in 'Breakage' on Last.fm I got a nice list of drum n bass producers who have a similar sound. Makes sense because dnb is a rather small scene so if someone listens to Breakage they're also bound to listen to Fracture + Neptune, Paradox, Pieter K, Seba, etc. However, when I tried Pandora... well they just gave me the gas face. Or at least the search engine equivalent of the gas face. Pandora's one limit right now is the amount of music it can realistically license and categorize. I was pleasantly surprised when I added Diplo, RJD2, and DJ Shadow to my 'favorite artists' and ended up with tracks ranging from Plaid to Squarepusher to Cex to Funki Porcini and about a dozen artists I had never heard of. And that's the whole point of these two websites: to help you find more music. Now whether that's just blissful altruism for those of us who can't get enough music or a good business model (Here's a new artist and here's a link to their album on Amazon. No the RIAA had nothing to do with this. Look here's a Prefuse 73 song to keep you happy.) is the topic of another post. In any case, I'm going to keep testing out Pandora so expect some further updates.

On the movie front, I'm really intersted to see Bubble. It's gotten some relatively favorable reviews from well known critics (not that it should mean anything... but it does) and it's Steven Soderbergh. He always manages to bring something interesting to the table. Not something I'd rush out and buy though since there's going to be at least 5 more volumes in this experiment, all in the same vein: shot on HDV on locations around the US with amateur casts. I like the six volume idea if only for the fact that it leaves room for improvement each time around. On the bright side that should ensure at least two more Ocean films. Hey the man's gotta make a living somehow.

And to music. Now if I had the ability (I have no idea where these audiobloggers find these digital dubplates), money (for webspace), and time (blahblahmedicalschoolblahblah) I'd love to be the one lacing the internet with the newest newness that's out there. But I'm not. So for now I'll resort to yousendit, rapidshare, and megaupload and 'borrowing' songs from other bloggers. Not without full credit of course.

This one shouldn't be such a surprise to me: Diplo remixing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs new single. Who would have thought Diplo likes toying around with New Yorkers and their guitars? If you said everyone who had ever heard one of his Hollertronix mixes you would be absolutely correct. But it's not the pairing here that's news. It's the quality of the final product. I've been a big Diplo fan for a year now and I'm always suprised at his ear for layering musical styles together that have as much in common as pork tenderloin does to olive loaf. But there was no mash-up here, just a straightforward remix. And the man absolutely smashes it. I think it's his best work to date, but don't take my word for it (c) Lamar Burton.

Chris over at Lemon-Red continues his amazing monthly mix series, this time with the Rub boys. And not just one but three mixes: reggae from Eleven (nothing better to help you forget it's the middle of winter), old school jams from Ayres, and Cosmo Baker's remix-a-thon. It's like Christmas but in February. And with mp3s instead of real, tangible presents. I'd say more but everything you need to know is over at Lemon-Red.


Think that's it for this evening. Tomorrow I've got a focused physical exam workshop to look forward to and an arena football game with the oddest mish mash of people to ever pay money for a sporting event: the fiancee, the roommate, the Spainard, the 28 year old M1 with her MPH, her friend, and some other assorted M1s. Basically you have a truckload of med students (some of whom don't even like football) and some crazy people who agreed to go to said game with med students. Clearly I no longer value my sanity.

First times the charm

Well I took a leap. Not a huge leap for myself or man kind or the space program. More like a leap for me to have yet another way of wasting time while I pursue this medical degree. Because I need more of those (ways to waste time, not medical degrees... you only need one MD... I hope). This can't hurt right? It's not like I'm two organ systems behind in studying or anything. Oh wait... yeah I am.

Before I forget, don't fall for my "woe is me, I'm a poor medical student" bullsh*t. In fact, don't ever let any med student bitch to you about how much work they have to do. We all like to complain about how hard it is. And yes there is a fair amount of learning and studying involved, but we wouldn't be doing it if we didn't want to. At the end of the day though, most of us will be getting paid a pretty large sum of money to go to work at a job we love. Where we get to help people and maybe even save some lives and improve someone's quality of life. Sounds like the kind of job everyone would like to have.

In all honesty, I'm probably happier studying medicine than I would be in any other career... except maybe music or film. And I don't have much natural talent in those areas. I have a lot of opinions on both, but no real skill with either medium. I'm like an untalented version of Kevin Federline *shudder*

So for anyone who's managed to stumble upon this work in progress, drop a bookmark and check in on the daily. I spend a large amount of my free time online just mucking about(when I'm not planning a wedding or spending time with my fiancee). If we're all lucky I'll remember to drag some of that muck back this way. You can expect a decent amount of talk on music (with links to some of the better stuff that I can help you get your hands on), films, and other pop culture madness. But wait there's more. In my inestimable generosity, I'll also be waxing philosophical on science/medicine/technology and anything else out there that I think people should give a damn about. I'll try to stay away from politics and religion in order to keep this thing dinner-table friendly. Hopefully it'll reach some level of entertainment. Oh and there'll probably be some sports talk as well. Don't look at me like that. I have a Y chromosome, it's a gift and a curse. Learn to love it.