Post-post-baccalaureate

My brief, intense year at Johns Hopkins has come to an end. Can you believe it? As of a little over a week ago, I am an official applicant to medical schools for the entering class of 2015, meaning I have taken all of my prerequisite courses and the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). Pretty exciting, huh?

Even though I was too busy to write about many of the memorable experiences that I had this spring, I did keep a little list of anecdotes that I wanted to share on my blog to help me jog my memory when the time came for me to sit down and write about them. Here are a few of the interesting experiences I had in the past few months.

Dr. Janice Henderson, the perinatologist with whom I did my clinical tutorial, invited me to accompany her to a book reading taking place on the Hopkins campus. Dr. Henderson spent some of her free time in the past few years completing a Masters degree in writing, so she is well connected with the literary community here at Hopkins. Together we went and saw Dave Andrews read from his new novel, My Father's Day Gift. It was a poignant moment to hear this author talk about the autobiographical parts of his book and his relationship with his dad. It was also really fun to spend some time with Dr. Henderson in a non-obstetrical capacity. She is a very talented woman with many interests, and it is enjoyable to see her in other areas where she shines.

Susannah and I pose with our strange, white masks.
We were told not to take pictures right afterwards. :)

I spent just over 24 hours in New York City on the first day of the pre-final exams reading period in order to see Susannah. I caught a bus up to the Big Apple and spent a really nice day up there with her. We had organized the trip awhile back since she and I had both long wanted to see a play called Sleep No More, which was supposed to be a pastiche of Shakespeare's Macbeth (a favorite of both Susasannah's and mine). Sleep No More refers to itself as an "immersive" theater experience, and by that they mean that the acting company rented an old hotel, made the entire thing into something akin to a haunted house (though with less meretricious decoration and more truly scary things, like an entire floor set up like a disturbing psychiatric hospital from the early 1800s and whole rooms dedicated to freaky taxidermy), and then had the actors, none of whom spoke, perform all throughout the hotel. If it sounds bizarre to you, I am describing it correctly. It was strange. All of the actors were dancers, so there were lots of lithe, coordinated movements in scenes only very loosely related to Macbeth being acted out. All of the spectators or "audience' members wore white masks with bill-like protrusions coming off the nose, which obviously added to the queer feeling of the place. You were free to wander around at will, which was both fun and slightly frustrating since you always felt like another, maybe more interesting scene was being acted on a different floor or in a different room that you were missing. My favorite scene from the "play" was a slow-motion scene that was perfectly choreographed. A panel of maybe ten actors sat up high at an elevated banquet table, all facing the open part of the room where we spectators stood. The lights were flickering constantly and loud, scary music was playing. The actors all slowly raised their glasses in a toast to each other, but then their actions became much more uncontrolled and grotesque. A bloody ghost (probably of Duncan or another person murdered by Macbeth) slowly crept behind the table. People at the table reached towards each other, made eye contact, kissed, threatened, or colluded in other ways, all in a beautifully timed slow motion scene. It was so well done. The entire immersive theater experience, however, was probably too weird for my taste. Shakespeare's power rests in his manipulation of and unprecedented knack for words, so to strip all of them away didn't work for me that well. But I am still very glad that I went, and getting to see Susannah was such a treat, too. As we normally do, we walked around, ate some good food, and enjoyed each other's company. We also spent the afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was stunning.

A lamassu, a winged diety in a few
Mesopotamian cultures. Breathtaking!

The student group that I am a part of, the Conversations in Medicine Symposium, co-hosted one of our spring events with the Women's Pre-Health Leadership Society. Because that group's focus is obviously on women in medicine, the event that we hosted was an all-afternoon get-together in which prominent female doctors from the Baltimore and DC region came and spoke. Most of the afternoon consisted of rotating "break out" sessions in which the doctors stayed put and we participants were able to walk around and speak with the ones that interested us for periods of 20 minutes. The doctors that I met were so incredible! It was one of the most inspirational conferences I have ever attended. All of the women were so fascinating and bright, and the advice that they gave was great. I was taking notes at a mile a minute as I met a beautiful urological surgeon ("take one fabulous vacation a year to avoid burn-out"), an extremely sharp and warm pathologist ("ask your patients what they are looking for in a doctor and then go be that doctor"), a hilarious, not-what-you'd-expect plastic and reconstructive surgeon ("plastic surgeons are psychiatrists with a scalpel," "there is always more work or studying to do, so learn how to stop when enough is enough"), and other amazing people. It was a wonderful afternoon.

Unfortunately, I witnessed a small but upsetting homophobic interaction between two people walking ahead of me on the central quad of campus one day on my way to take an organic chemistry quiz. (Talk about a rough morning, right? No one should have to deal with homophobia AND organic chemistry all in the same morning. :) ) Incensed at myself for not catching up to the perpetrators and saying something in the moment, I vowed to do my part to rectify the injustice in some way. That afternoon, I quickly wrote a somewhat lengthy (not surprising, since it is me, after all) letter to the editor of the Hopkins weekly newspaper. The entire piece was accepted for publication that very next week, and you can read it here if you are interested. The best part about me being vocal and publishing my opinions is that multiple people reached out to me, some of them students that recognized me from classes, and one of them a staff member at Hopkins who has been with his husband for 21 years and who works here on campus. He sent me a heartfelt e-mail telling me that in the College of Engineering, where he works, colleagues talk about his marriage just like any heterosexual marriage and are just as enthusiastic about an upcoming gay wedding as they are for a straight wedding this summer. It was so heartening to hear his story and to have so many people reach out in support. I'm really glad that I stood up for myself, albeit a little late, and that I was received with love by so many people.

The First Aid merit badge

In order to prepare for all of the various components of the medical school application, we did lots of free-writing prompts and then multiple drafts of our personal statement, which is essentially an open-ended essay explaining ourselves, our life story, and our interest in medicine to prospective medical schools. Getting to spend time thinking really critically about these core questions and doing lots of writing about them was one of the biggest gifts of this past semester. I remembered interesting details from my past in the course of writing these responses, like how I saved my money to purchase a microscopy kit when I was a young boy (and then prepared a slide with my own blood on it after a knee scrape--ha ha) or how much I enjoyed earning my First Aid merit badge at Camp New Fork, my first Boy Scouts summer camp. I can never say that I always knew I wanted to be a doctor since I've wanted to be so many things from a young age through to early adulthood (e.g. Egyptologist, veterinarian, literature professor, and so on), but it was neat to see the early origin of some of my interests in medicine and to reconnect with them. It was also beautiful to get to reflect on all of the experiences I've had in my life and all of the amazing people who have been by my side to teach me, inspire me, or just make life fun and worth living. It ended up being a very spiritual and empowering experience to see my life from a distance, to realize how lucky I have been, and to see how much power I have to control the type of man and professional that I will become.

That is all for now. In my next post, I want to recount the stories of when my family came to visit me in Baltimore last weekend, which was so much fun. But that deserves its own post, so I will close this one with a "good night" and the happy news that I will definitely be writing again in less than 3 months now that I have my life back. :)

Brief Spring Update

It has been a few months since I last posted, and I am afraid that I don't have much time to do an exhaustive, lengthy post. Nevertheless, I figured that posting something was better than nothing, so below are a few photos and stories of some events that have happened in the last few months of my life.

Susannah and I stand in front of the small
house where Edgar Allan Poe lived while a
resident of Baltimore

For my birthday, Susannah came down from New York City to help me celebrate my quarter century of life on this planet. We had a great couple of days that included walking all around Baltimore ("urban hiking," as Susannah and I call it) and eating some delicious food at my favorite restaurant in Baltimore, a delicious Afghani place called The Helmand. We spent one entire day visiting two museums, one an old house where Edgar Allan Poe used to live in Baltimore that has now been converted into a museum in his honor, and the other a museum of African American history. Because Edgar Allan Poe and I share a birthday (and a birth state, in addition to some other uncanny similarities), it felt appropriate to pay homage to him by visiting both his living quarters and grave on his and my birthday. The Reginald Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture was something that appealed to both Susannah and me because of how motivational we find the Civil Rights Movement to be and how much we are both interested in addressing some of the disparities and concerns that still afflict black Americans to a greater extent than their white counterparts. Susannah and I were both so impressed with the museum--the exhibits were beautiful and comprehensive, the building itself was open, spacious, and naturally-lit, and the entire experience was inspirational. Two of my favorite exhibits included one featuring the contributions of black Americans to the fields of medicine and healthcare (no surprise there!) and one in which high school students from Baltimore schools painted pictures inspired by the museum. The one that won the award took my breath away and made me tear up. It shows three prominent figures in black American history and then, on the right as though in a successive chain with his predecessors, a self-portrait of the artist himself. How beautiful. I love that he believes in himself and his people enough that he sees how he is their descendant and how he, too, is destined for great things. Isn't that incredible? How different would the world be if we all saw ourselves as inheritors of great privilege and great responsibility from the amazing people who came before us?



I wish I could meet the young man who painted this and tell
him how much it moved me.

Keeping this blog has taught me how obsessed with architecture I am since I so often feel compelled to photograph and then show others random buildings that I see that I find beautiful. Discovering this passion of mine has been exciting, and I'm hoping one day that I can take a course or two in the art of architecture to begin to put words and concepts to the styles that I find beautiful. Until then, I will just show you things that stuck out to me. Below are photos of my three favorite churches (architecturally speaking) in Baltimore. I got the chance to bike past all three of them (within a block or so) over the month of January as I volunteered in the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

Baltimore truly has some gems, doesn't it?

Much else has happened in my life, but a lot of it is simply schoolwork and my relationships with my classmates. School has been interesting and busy, as always. In physics, we have dedicated most of the semester to learning about electromagnetism. Organic chemistry has mostly concerned itself with the chemical reactions of benzene rings and carbonyl-containing compounds so far, though we begin our study of biochemistry (polypeptides, carbohydrates, and enzymes) next week. Biology has covered everything from phylogenetics to plant physiology. And all of my lab classes have been good, especially biology lab, which has been mostly dissections, and organic chemistry lab, which is probably my favorite class. (We did a two-step synthesis of acetylsalicylic acid, commonly known as aspirin, in our first two labs. We've done a transesterification reaction starting with benzaldehyde, the molecule responsible for the pleasant smell of almond extract, an extraction of caffeine from crude tea leaves, a synthesis of banana-smelling oil last week, and many other fascinating experiments using cool laboratory techniques and equipment!) All in all, I have already learned a bunch this semester. And my relationships with my classmates, particularly my closest friends, have grown. Tim and I have grown even closer, for example. We've had some deep talks and a whole lot of even deeper belly laughter in between. We've also spent a lot of time together covering the dry-erase walls of the library's study rooms in reaction mechanisms and synthetic pathways for organic chemistry, as Tim is shown doing below. I don't know what I'd do without him and Anna in this program.

Tim stands proudly beneath a wall showing you just about
everything you can do to a ketone, aldehyde, ester,
carboxylic acid, acyl chloride, and other organic molecules!

That's all for now, folks. It's bed time for me. I think about you all often and hope you all are enjoying your journeys along the pathway of life!

The End of Fall Semester and Christmas Break in Wyoming

As I unfortunately predicted at the end of my last post, I wasn't able to add another installment to my blog until after the semester wrapped up. I apologize that months have gone by without a word. Let me catch you up on my life happenings.

A differential wave equation and experiments that
elucidated the wave-particle duality of electrons
led to our current understanding of atomic structure
and molecular bonding.

The semester stayed busy and difficult until the very end, and it ended with something of a bang! Hopkins gives its students 4 days before final examinations begin as part of a "reading period." (Though it sounds so generous and humane, Saturday and Sunday counted as two of the four days of that reading period, and finals were scheduled over the following weekend, like my physics final on Saturday morning. So much for that!) Reading period was an almost sacred stretch of guarded, coveted time where we were allowed to do what we so often craved doing during the semester but frequently couldn't due to other demands on our time--study for long, uninterrupted periods. During the few days before my finals, things coalesced and solidified in my brain like never before in my studies. While studying physics, for example, I finally achieved a firm grasp of the mathematics of waves and wave functions, and I had a nerdy epiphany where I realized that everything is a wave. From electromagnetic waves that we experience as heat, light, microwaves, and radio waves; to sound waves that allow us to speak, listen, create music, and function as social creatures; to the wave-particle dual-nature of elemental particles like the electron that are the fundamental building blocks of all matter in the universe, everything is a wave! I had multiple moments where my brain became receptive to knowledge and allowed me to glimpse at the unity of all existence, one of the deepest pleasures of being a student of all of the basic sciences at the same time. It was a powerful time full of hard work in which I saw how much I had learned and tested my mettle on the battlefield of exams.

The Johns Hopkins Post-baccalaureate Premedical Program treated us well during the hectic time period at the end of the semester. One night they hosted a relaxed pizza party for us. During finals week, a delicious, catered breakfast was served for all of us, and we ate granola, eggs, hash browns, sausage, and fruit with relief in our eyes for exams already taken and anticipation for those to come. Applicants to the program for next year have begun to submit their applications and get interviews here, and as part of their visit to Baltimore, the directors of our program like to let the prospective students meet with current students for another perspective on the program. To facilitate this, they ask current students to give prospective students tours of campus, and in exchange we are given money to take ourselves and the prospective students out to lunch at the Hopkins food court. Being a gastronomically-inclined socialite, I have already given 4 tours. It has been enjoyable to showcase Hopkins to aspiring students while also warning them about the rigor and stress of the program, all over free lunch. It has been fun.

Baltimore was particularly beautiful during the late fall. The Hopkins campus was full of these unbelievably fuchsia-red trees that amazed me every time I saw them.

You can imagine how stunning fall is on the mid-Atlantic
seaboard.

Random bike excursions have also shown me other beautiful parts of Baltimore. One street in particular, a street that runs through the historic Mt. Vernon neighborhood, always takes my breath (literally, because it is on an uphill slope, but mostly figuratively because of its beauty). Look at the architecture of these houses--it is unlike anything I grew up with in Wyoming.

 

 

I'm in the center-back with Joker-style scars on my cheeks.
To the left of me is Tim, covering his face to my right is
Tim's roommate Noah, and in front of me is Anna,
the dance instructor herself.

Despite the demands of our program, we post-baccs are a festive bunch with irresistible urges to be creative and enjoy each other's company beyond just being study buddies and flashcard flippers for each other. One of my best friends in the program, Anna, decided to host a dance session in which she taught all interested parties how to dance Michael Jackson's "Thriller" dance. This had long been on an unwritten bucket list in my head, and it was such a blast to learn the dance under the auspices of a real dancer and in a dance studio at Johns Hopkins University, of all bizarre places. To heighten the fun and realism of the evening, Anna's roommate Stevie-Jay brought makeup and helped everyone become zombies, many of whom show how they died by their festering makeup wounds (be they a large bite out of Joey the hotdog or the suppurating, infectious pustules of Tim). Suffice it to say, we had a blast trying to dance a mere fraction as well as the King of Pop himself.

From left to right: Joey, Danika, me, Anna, Tim, and
Ashley in Central Park, not one block from the Mt. Sinai
medical school campus. Can you imagine how great of
a life that would be?

As post-bacc students, we have a unique opportunity to pursue a "linkage" to a medical school, a system somewhat akin to early decision for undergraduate admissions. You apply only to one medical school, but you apply this year and begin medical school next year, without having to wait an entire annual cycle to undergo the normal admissions process. In order to "link" to a school, it is mandatory that you attend a special visit day for potential linkers hosted by the medical school. I went up to New York City for an extremely fun, fast weekend in order to look into a couple of the medical schools up there, of which there are many phenomenal ones. I focused my attention on Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. I won't go into details here, but I was so impressed by both schools and so exhilarated about medical school during my entire trips and thereafter. While in New York, I also availed myself of the opportunity to see one of my best friends, Susannah, who is teaching at an incredible charter school system called Uncommon Schools that has actually been able to close the achievement gap between impoverished kids (often of color) and those of higher socioeconomic background. She and I saw a stunning version of Romeo and Juliet on Broadway starring Orlando Bloom as Romeo and set in such a way that all of the Capulets were black and all of the Montagues white, making the age-old family feud one of race. It was theater like I have rarely seen it and such a treat.

Susannah and I on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge.
There really is no other place quite like the Big Apple.

A view from atop a housing building at Columbia's
medical school campus. My tie is flying and my eyes
are closed, but the view of downtown Manhattan is stunning!

 For Thanksgiving break, I was able to go see part of my family up at my sister Carolyn's new home in Morgantown, West Virginia. She and her husband Kip graciously hosted me, my parents, and my siblings Amy and Josh in their beautiful new home in Morgantown, a pretty town similar in some ways to Laramie, Wyoming with its friendly people and its natural pulchritude. It was such a treat to eat home-cooked meals and chill out with my family for a few days. We saw both Frozen and Catching Fire in a local movie theater in Morgantown, both of which movies were fantastic! And getting to see my four beautiful nieces was such a treat, especially given the lengths to which they had gone to make me feel welcome with cards and decorations. (Poor Nora, however, was afraid of me because of my long hair and my unkempt beard and mustache grown for Movember!) It was a much-needed break to refuel before the end of the semester.

Beautiful, white Wyoming, the place I call home

When the semester finished, I got to go home to Wyoming, my home sweet home on the range. I had one of the best Christmas vacations that I can remember and relaxed more deeply and felt more peace than I have felt in awhile. For one, I count the blessing of having all of my family happy and healthy more than I ever have now that I see some of the debilitating disease and death that can bring hardship to a family. Secondly, I was so relieved to have successfully finished a difficult semester at Hopkins with my love of science and interest in medicine stronger than ever before. It was such a relief to realize that I just have one more semester of this program and that I am capable of completing it successfully and strongly. Spending time with my family was priceless. Amy, Josh, and I watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, danced to Just Dance (and loved the new 2014 edition!), worked out at the recreation center, and just laughed a ton. Mom and I were brave enough to go on a run together. Dad showed me his old organic chemistry textbooks that he studied as an undergraduate. With Maria's family, Laura, and Paul, we all went to see a Colorado Avalanche hockey game, always a good time. Every moment I spent with my family meant so much to me. I felt more relaxed and happy than I believed was possible. It was such a gift from my family to me. It was really hard to say good-bye and leave their humor and their warmth.

From left to right: Laura, Paul, and Maria look jovial,
and Addy rests on Maria's shoulder.

Happy holidays to one and all! I am back in Baltimore and will post again soon since I am still not officially in classes but am instead participating in the Hopkins intersession, which is much more laid back. And a week from today, I turn 25 years old! Woo hoo! I love you all.