Today has been such a busy day: I've already taken 2 naps!  So far it's been something like this:

1:30am-2:45am --watching lecture on Conventional and Alternative Medicine (CAM), 2 out of 5 stars
2:45am-4:30am--boredom, can't sleep
4:30am-7am--sleep
7:00am-7:30am--first breakfast
7:45am-8:45am--nap
9:30am-11:45am--Special Olympics at UCLA, 4 out of 5 stars
11:45am-1:15pm--email, busy work, laughing because it took my instructor less than a day to write my recommendation and send it off
1:15pm-1:45pm--wondering if my instructor wrote a good  recommendation
1:45pm-2:15pm--nap
2:30pm-4:30pm--swimming/semi-drowning for 1st time since last summer, 5 out of 5 stars!
4:45pm-4:50pm--raiding fridge

The rest of my day will likely include another nap, dinner, perhaps some catching up on work, perhaps going out...

Plans for tomorrow:  eat, gym, eat, med school stuff, nap, med school stuff, nap, dinner, call it a day

Anatomy is killing me right now.  Ironically, no one in my class loves anatomy more than I.  It actually pains some classmates I know when they see how much I enjoy anatomy.  I just can't take the way it is taught anymore.  I abhor doing anatomy in "stations."  I'm not alone in this thought.  One anatomy professor "completely understands my concerns," but is yielding to another professor who enjoys "stations."  To me, the whole system is flawed.  At one station, everything is removed except arteries.  At another, everything is removed to see the muscles.  At another station, only the nerves can be seen.  Then there are other stations where we simply waste time.  It should be no surprise, that my classmates often have problems relating structures to each other.  I am doing better than most, but that is due to a large effort on my part.  I go back to anatomy lab when there is no class going on and work on one or two cadavers with most of the anatomical structures still there.  It's kinda ridiculous that there are cadavers that no student (outside of me) will use at all this block.  These cadavers haven't been dissected completely, but enough for me to find what I'm looking for.   These extra long hours are what I enjoy in anatomy....a huge contrast from just earlier today...

I am back from my hiatus.  That, of course, must mean at this particular moment life has slowed down.....definitely not true.  I am beginning work on a new project at the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology (CASIT).  In some ways, it is a continuation of my work on a DARPA-funded project back at Stanford.  There, we were looking at peripheral tissue heating due to high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU).  Now at CASIT, we are going to again look at the thermal dosing problem.  This is going to be taken a step further, in that we are using a controls engineering perspective to image a target and provide auto-feedback for adjusting the focus of the HIFU.  In essence, we would like to HIFU a target.  If that target moves (e.g. movement due to inspiration/expiration), we would like for the HIFU system to self-adjust to lock-in on its target and stay there.  Ideally, our project will be a success.  The FDA will then approve the use of HIFU for tissue ablation of tumors.  And in the process, a couple papers will be published and some grants will be attained.  As of now, all of those seem far away.  I must trek through papers and help design our methods....good stuff.

The other day I decided to go ahead and choose a specialty.  I narrowed it down to orthopedic surgery and cardiology.  Not only do these two areas seem so different, they are the extremes in terms of residency programs.  Orthopedic surgey is typically reserved for medical students that score in the 99th percentile on Step 1 of the Boards.  On the other hand, cardiology begins with internal medicine which is one of the least competitive programs.  Others take me as the equivalent of an undecided freshman in undergraduate school when I tell them these two areas.  It's hard for some to see a connection.  The connection comes in that I am an engineer and problems that occur in cardiology and orthopedics are engineering problems.  This is not true for dermatology, opthamology, emergency medicine, or pathology.

In any case, those plans are again up in the air after my two meetings today.  

12:15 pm. My first meeting was with a administrator from the Drew program who was checking in on how students were doing in medical school.  Surprisingly, she gave me high praised and practically called me a genius among medical students.  Her only concern was that I might become lazy.  She said I could become lazy and still pass medical school, but would hate to see that happen.  She then went on to praise my critical thinking and noted that I would be a great researcher that could change the way research is done.  I tell her thanks and walk out.

1:30 pm. I go meet with my PBL (Problem Based Learning) instructor to discuss my performance so far in PBL.  I express that my weakness in class comes from my lack of in-depth knowledge of techniques we encounter in journal articles.  I fully understood the mechanism of the techniques but knew not their shortcomings and how to criticize them.  This is especially true when researchers have designed a completely new experimental method.  He responded by saying that this was because of my wanting to learn everything in great detail, which was not needed for our class.  He then went on to say that I had immense potential as a researcher.  He commented that he knew not my career goals but that I would be a great researcher.  He then opened his office for whenever I might want to talk about my future goals.

Needless to say, I was not expecting so much praise today.  In addition, the research cloud has again been thrust upon me.  I am the student who did research for two and half years as an undergraduate.  I am the student who turned down Boston University which has the oldest MD/PhD program in the United States.  My graduate work would have been in Biomedical Engineering where Boston University is ranked in the top 3 or so.  Boston has the highest concentration of intellectuals in America as well as the highest concentration of biotech firms in the world.  After I thoughtfully turned down Boston University, I only had slight feelings that I might regret not doing a PhD.  I admit that I think like a researcher.  Not all medical students, even those that do research, think like a researcher.  Months earlier, I did dispel the notion that just because I was good at doing research that I had to do research.  After today, it seems like others seem to think not just that I could do research, but that I belong in research.  Considering that the option of doing a PhD here at UCLA is just a matter of if I decide to or not, I now have to again deal with the research issue.