The Rest of the Summer

 

Another summer has come and gone, and this one has been a really great one.

I spent July taking Inorganic Chemistry II and Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory II. After really feeling the learning curve of being back in school after a couple of years out during my first term of chemistry, I found this second class less overwhelming yet still very challenging. One of the units of the class was quantum mechanics and its applications to atoms and molecules, and I found the material riveting. I especially enjoyed reading the entire chapter of our textbook devoted to the scientific phenomena and experiments that led to the development of the quantum theory of nanoscopic particles and matter. We studied Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Werner Heiseberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Planck, and other fascinating European figures whose insights into the behavior of particles in the natural world led to the revolutionary realization that our everyday, Newtonian understanding of the physical world cannot also describe the world on the scale of atoms, electrons, and photons. All of this is to say that I found my second term of chemistry very engaging and, though I was happy to have a summer break for a few weeks, I am fired up and ready to begin again in a few short days because of the interesting things I get to learn.

The morning after my final exam, August 3, 2013, I was privileged to get to meet Dr. Janice Henderson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist obstetrician, in the Johns Hopkins Hopsital. After I observed her on rounds with her residents and then met with her over coffee, she agreed to let me be her student mentee this year in a clinical practicum tutorial. I was so elated to have been given the chance to shadow and work with this fascinating physician who does everything from emergency deliveries to a clinic on pregnancy and nutrition for her obese patients. With the help of my mother, I searched for and found some research articles that Dr. Henderson has authored with other OBGYNs about fetal development, the hormonal intrauterine environment, and the factors that influence the decision of how to deliver a child. I am so excited to get to work with this woman during the upcoming year, and you can rest assured that I will write about my experiences once I begin having them. I will shadow her for the first time a week from yesterday and will give a full report.

Josh and I toast with our Qdoba drinks, which allow you
to create a large number of combinations of mix-ins and
sodas!

Just a few hours after meeting with Dr. Henderson, I was sitting in the Baltimore Washington International Airport waiting to fly home to my beloved family. It was so wonderful to see the people that I love the most for three fun weeks in August. I was able to do so many things that I love while in Wyoming. My brother Josh and I spent a lot of time together talking about medicine since he is interested in becoming a doctor and is pretty sure that he'll choose neurosurgery as his speciality. We watched an episode or two of Gray's Anatomy, watched online surgeries (a C-section, an appendectomy, and a heart dissection in a cadaver lab), and had a great time fantasizing about the day that I'm an OBGYN and he's a neurosurgeon. :) He also spent his hard-earned money to buy me a meal at Qdoba, a favorite restaurant of both of ours. It has been so neat to see how much he has grown up and to see how brilliant he is. He also has a heart of gold--when his Sunday school teacher taught him some homophobic stuff in a church lesson about the Mormon Church's "Proclamation to the Family," he came home, talked to my wonderful parents about what he was taught, and ended up writing out his frustrations in a journal. Fortunately, he has my parents, who are open-minded and phenomenal, to teach him that being gay is okay and that it's part of God's plan for me. Anyway, Josh is an amazing kid!

I was also privileged to spend a lot of quality time with Amy. She had her wisdom teeth removed while I was home, so we spent one entire day watching nothing but chick flicks, which I got a lot more out of than poor Amy who was still suffering from the numbing effects of the anesthesia and the delirium of percocet. She begins her first year of university at Brigham Young University on September 3, 2013, and has declared elementary education as her major. She is going to be a complete rockstar. Though I won't divulge her standardized test scores on the ACT and AP tests, they are the highest I have ever heard of in my entire life, and I have some pretty brilliant friends all around the USA. Amy and I also had fun talking about boys and debating whether or not Niall or Zayn is the hotter of the One Direction guys. (It's quite clearly Zayn, in case any of you were wondering.) Amy, Josh, and I also made a point to laugh our butts off at multiple episodes of Scrubs just about every night while we were in Laramie.

From left to right: James, Laura, Paul (the Pensive), and
Carmella.

Since Laura and Paul live in Cheyenne, I was able to see both of them, as well. Laura planned a really fun get-together up in Vedauwoo so that Paul, Carmella (Paul's partner), and I could all meet her boyfriend, James. We all made a campfire in beautiful Vedauwoo, ate delicious s'mores (with a variation on the normal theme by using Reese's cups instead of a chocolate bar!), and had great talks in nature's beauty. It was great to meet Laura's boyfriend and to hear about Laura's adventures as the right-hand man (or woman :) ) for Congressman (and not Congresswoman) Cynthia Lummis.

Paul and Carmella pose with our Italian meal of calzones
and a nice chianti for my first viewing of The Godfather

Paul, Carmella, and I decided that it was finally time for me to watch The Godfather movies since they are favorites of both Paul and Carmella but completely uncharted territory for me. We made some of the most delicious calzones I have ever eaten and watched the first Godfather movie, and I can honestly say that I loved it despite my original hesitance and prejudice. My expectation was that it would be an old, black-and-white, shoot-'em-up style film, but I was so impressed with the acting, the plot, and the cinematography. It was a fabulous film, and I look forward to watching the rest of the series.

From left to right: me, Laura, Amy, Carmella, and Paul
in front of the dry wheat farm of our great grandparents in
Rockland, Idaho.

Maria and Clark brought their family out to the Utah/Idaho border to join the rest of the Weatherford clan for some fun at Bear Lake, one of our family's favorite spots. My dad spent the last year researching and writing the biographies of both of his parents, both of whom are buried a couple of hours away from Bear Lake in a small town in Idaho called Rockland. My own parents own burial plots in a small town named St. Charles right along Bear Lake, so the place is very important to my family and our ancestors. My dad sent us all copies of the biographies of his parents that he wrote, and we had the chance to ask questions and discuss their lives during two different nights in Bear Lake, which was really beautiful. By day, we went out and had tons of fun on the lake. There were many rounds of jet-skiing, knee-boarding, boating, and inner-tubing. There were also lots of burgers, french fries, and raspberry shakes. It was a few days of heaven!

 

From left around the table clockwise: Josh, Amy, Mom, me,
Paul, Carmella, Maria (holding Adalyn), Clark, Will, and Dad.

 



Paul, Carmella, and Mom in Super Mable, the inner tube.
Will and Rosie look after them, and in the distance, the
wave runner enjoys the boat's wake.

I also had the chance to go with my mom, dad, Amy, and Josh up to Jackson Hole for a couple of days of hiking and exploring as my dad had various meetings with the faculty and students in his MBA program at the University of Wyoming. My mom, Amy, Josh, and I went on some stunning hikes and were privileged to see the following landscapes:

Bradley Lake in Grand Teton National Park

I think this is also Bradley Lake, but it might be Taggart Lake,
another beautiful lake on the same hike.

A small cascade near Taggart Lake

We are lucky to live in such a beautiful world, and Wyomingites in particular are so privileged to have such natural pulchritude in their state. On the last day there, my dad was able to join us for one more hike, and we even got to see a female moose, much to my dad's delight.

After three incredible weeks with my family in the West, my mom dropped me off at Denver International Airport for me to return to Baltimore for some more school. Even though it is always really hard to say good-bye to my family, I am so excited for my classes this year and to keep working towards the long goal of becoming a physician. Here's to a great school year, made possible by a wonderful summer with my family!

Chemistry at Johns Hopkins, Chemistry with Baltimore and My Colleagues

I am writing you all during the free weekend between Inorganic Chemistry 1 and 2, and it has been a glorious weekend. It has also been a time of reflection and gratitude, and I would like to share with you all what the past 5 weeks of my new life in Baltimore have been like.

To begin, I must say that Baltimore as a city is much better than I imagined it to be. When I told people in Portland that I was moving to Baltimore, the universal response was one of concern. "Oh," people would tell me with a sort of disheartened tone to their syllable. I knew it was crime-ridden, impoverished, and the ugly stepsister of DC, but I knew little else. The reality, therefore, has been so pleasantly surprising for me. For one, I got very lucky in the location of my housing. Living just north of the Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus, I fortuitously and unwittingly chose to live in a neighborhood that is extremely wealthy. The streets are quiet and safe, and the houses are stunningly beautiful. I have seen some of the largest mansions of my life that I just find gorgeous in their stateliness.

This Tudor-style house always makes my mouth water.
Though the picture doesn't do it justice, it is enormous!

 

Many houses in Baltimore look like this--made of
brick, with beautiful exterior shutters on their many
windows and white trim to top it all off.

 

Baltimore as a city is also much cooler and quirkier than I imagined. Two days ago, for example, I participated in "Biker Party," which is a city-wide event in which hundreds of Baltimoreans ride their bike all around the city on a designated path with a theme for each time that the party occurs. The theme is last Friday was the 80's, so you can imagine the Madonna and David Bowie look-alikes. It was a hilarious event and a total blast. I've also participated in Honfest, Baltimore's yearly street festival. The word "hon" is apparently special to Baltimore because of how much the locals use it when addressing other people. (It's already happened to me, and it is quite endearing, if I do say so myself!) Honfest was a big street event with lots of local vendors, live music, costume-wearing, and fraternizing. I went with some people in my program and thoroughly enjoyed the people-watching and the sampling of the food.

Crabcakes are a special here given Baltimore's proximity
to the Chesapeake Bay.

The people in my program are truly incredible, and even after 5 weeks, I already know that I have made friends that will stay a part of my life for as long as I'm given to live on this earth. We all share so much in common, yet we are all so different. Our commonalities are that we all studied something unrelated to medicine, yet we have all decided that becoming a physician is what we want to do with our lives. None of us were certain that this was the path for us when we were 16, yet all of us now desire this dream deeply and can articulate our attraction to the medical field in neat, diverse ways. Some of my closest friends in the program so far include Tim, a hilarious guy with a background in art that reminds me a lot of my best friend in high school Shelby; Dave, the most organized, spreadsheet-making, and ambitious person I've met since Dad; Chris, a former English major from Harvard with a wicked wit and a panoply of interests; Joey, a New Yorker interested in environmental conservation; and Anna, a woman with a masters in French literature. These people are driven, mature, and fun-as-all-get-out. It's been one heck of a ride with them all. Perhaps because of how intense our program is and how much it demands of us, we've all bonded very quickly and very well, relying on each other for morale, support, and friendship. I have few pictures of these folks yet, but I will begin to post more as I collect them.

Lastly, I want to tell you all about the program itself. All that I can say is that Johns Hopkins students don't get to tack that pretty name to their resume for nothin'. The academic coursework here is unlike anything I have experienced elsewhere, including Professor Kearl's economics course at BYU and Dr. Hind's intense upper-level Spanish literature classes. Part of what was so difficult about the semester was that it was condensed and that we took it concurrently with chemistry lab. The material itself was rarely exceedingly difficult, but what was so hard was trying to find enough time to do the hours of effective studying necessary to get the concepts to sink into your brain between all of the pre- and post-lab quizzes and write-ups, the homework for the lecture class, and the weekly tests (the average rate of tests, given that we had 2 lab tests and 3 lecture tests over the course of 5 weeks). The pace was dizzying, and it became impossible at points to do everything. It was very stressful at moments, and it was super humbling. Nevertheless, I survived, and I know a lot more chemistry on this end than I did coming in. I learned some fascinating things about the chemical make-up of our world. I learned about the special properties of the intermolecular attractive force called "hydrogen bonding" that makes solid water (a more dense phase of the compound) lighter than liquid water and that permits life to exist. I learned what entropy and enthalpy are and how to calculate them in myriad situations. I learned how to diagram molecules with Lewis dot structures and how to predict their molecular geometries using the Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion theory. It was kind of amazing, even if massively stressful. The best thing about those stressful weeks was knowing that all of this material really matters and will become relevant as my medical education continues. This class was not just a hoop to jump through or a grade to earn. It was about absorbing material that will inform the rest of my education and enhance my ability to care for my patients one day, and that was a powerful feeling.

I'm off to go enjoy the rest of my Sunday before summer term 2 begins tomorrow! Wish me luck, and know that I think of all of you all the time.

Au revoir, Portland!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my time in Portland has already come to a close! It was a fast 10 months, and if it weren’t for some incredibly exciting opportunities ahead, I would be very reluctant to leave the beautiful West Coast. Nevertheless, I think the only thing better than living in a progressive, gorgeous city on one coast is being a premedical student on the other coast, so I’m calling it a net gain and putting these roots down in Baltimore, Maryland for the next chapter of my life.



It was a perfect, sunny day in Seattle.

My final couple of months in Portland brought with them many pleasures. For one, Susannah and I were able to go up to Seattle for our fourth visit in order to celebrate her uncle’s birthday. Every time I go to Seattle, I am blown away by its beauty, and if I have my druthers, I will settle there one day. The weather was absolutely perfect, meaning the snow-capped Cascades that surround the city were lucidly visible, the green foliage looked sun-kissed and resplendent, and the denizens of the city came out in hordes to sunbathe in the local parks. We enjoyed the company of Susannah’s family and ate delicious food (an Italian salad, a mushroom and asparagus salad, shrimp in shallot sauce on small pieces of toasted bread (sorry, Dad!), pasta Bolognese, and then strawberry shortcake with homemade whipped cream for dessert). It was such a feast both gastronomically and socially. Susannah and I always stay at another one of her uncle’s houses when we’re in Seattle, and this time, since I woke up earlier than either Susannah or her uncle Topher, I started reading a book called Work as a Spiritual Practice: A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction on the Job. Topher ended up letting me keep the book, and I really loved it. It helped me to feel calmer, ironically, by learning to accept my anxiety, among other things. It was a great read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in being thoughtful about how they make a living and how to integrate work into your larger life.

The elegant tables at IRCO's Asian Pacific Islander
fundraising dinner

I was also able to spend a good amount of time with some of my friends and acquaintances in Portland before I left. Margaret, Susannah and I went to a fancy fundraising dinner for Margaret’s non-profit organization, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization. We dressed to the nines and hobnobbed with some of Portland’s bigwigs, which was a blast. I went to another such fundraising event for a non-governmental organization that my clinic, Outside In, partners with called Project Access NOW. Project Access NOW is an organization of specialist doctors who donate their services to the sick and uninsured. Since my clinic is a primary care clinic only, you can imagine how invaluable it is for us to be able to refer our sicker and more complex patients to medical specialists when necessary. The event was another large gala event with fine dining and a few touching stories of patients with debilitating illnesses that were cured thanks to the generous doctors who donated their time and skills, such as a sweet Hispanic father who became unable to use his legs and was therefore unable to work because of spinal stenosis who was then given a donated surgery and rehabilitated back to his productive family life. It was very inspirational to attend both events.

From left to right, Susannah, me, and Margaret enjoy
a day at the Oregon coast.

From left to right, me, Gabe, Bridget, and Emily,
Outside In's referrals coordinators

My final days at Outside In were also really nice. As I trained my replacement, a sharp, wonderful girl named Jamie, I came to see a lot of areas where I could have been more thorough and more hard-working at my job, and that was somewhat disappointing. I always gave my job all that I had, but I realized that I didn’t always have the best systems in place for my work and that, like all humans, I have a tendency to delay or put off the less pleasant parts of my job. It was neat to get to train someone who will undoubtedly do better than I did at my job but at the same time to recognize the small impact that I had at that clinic. One of my patients wrote me a thank-you card for the work I did to help get her a free mammogram and breast ultrasound to rule-out breast cancer. Another one of my patients, a severe alcoholic who we sent to the emergency room because he was vomiting blood due to bleeding esophageal ascites, has been sober for a month and thanked Outside In for “saving his life.” The clinic has a much improved system of tracking Pap smears among its female population as a part of preventive services thanks to the autonomy they gave me to build and implement such a system. All in all, I think I left Outside In a little bit better of a place then it was when I entered, though as the cliché goes, I received so much more from them than I gave. I learned a million and a half medical terms and abbreviations. I made friends with fascinating, bright folks in the healthcare world. I got to use my Spanish daily in a medical context. I got to meet doctors doing great, interesting work and hear their advice for me on my own path. All in all, my job at Outside In was a total godsend. I was in the right place at the right time to have an epiphany about wanting to be a doctor and then to apply and get a job working in a medical clinic doing work that I really believe in and admire. I couldn’t have been more blessed.

A beautiful pond in a park in Ashland, Oregon

Other fun things that I did included seeing two more Shakespeare plays, The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear, in Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with Susannah. She and I will always love the Bard and the way that he so wittily writes about the complexities of human life. My coworkers all threw me a good-bye party at my supervisor Bryan’s house, and we had so much fun. The party was very Portland—almost everyone brought a kale salad that they had made with vegetables growing in their own yard. The first half of the night consisted of conversations, hugs, and reminiscing. The second half of the night was dancing in Bryan’s small living room to a playlist that I had designed with other coworkers that included everything from Whitney Houston’s "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" to Swedish House Mafia’s "Don’t You Worry, Child." When the night was over, I hugged my friends good-bye in the pouring rain and thanked them for inspiring and challenging me. It was a very cinematic moment, with the rain and the heartfelt embraces, and it was a perfect send-off before I left for Baltimore.

Laura, one of my amazing older sisters, also spent her money and vacation time to fly out to Portland to come visit me, and together we explored so many of the city's little treasure troves. We ate weird flavors of ice cream at Salt and Straw (I got an olive oil flavored scoop), had curry-batted fish on the 31st floor of a downtown skyscraper with Mom and Dad's friends Peter and Paula Johnson, watched The Great Gatsby in 3-D, walked around a neighborhood of beautiful houses in the light, drizzling rain, ate Mexican food at the most beautiful of Oregon's beaches (Cannon Beach), danced to a few pop songs at a downtown club, and perhaps most importantly enjoyed hours of conversation about our lives during the gaps in between and all throughout the activities that kept us busy. Spending three days with Laura completely rejuvenated me and recharged my batteries to get me ready for my move. I'm lucky to have such a wonderful sister.

Now I’m here in this new city, a Westerner on the East Coast, a humanities major studying to become a doctor. I couldn’t be happier. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the fact that I get to go back to school to study something so fascinating and practical. My loving, supportive, stable family and best friends are my foundation, and I can only hope to be successful and become a loving, bright physician to make them proud and thank them for their consistent efforts to helping me out. Wish me luck as I go back to school for the first time in a couple of years!