Last night I was at dinner with a couple of friends. A good friend of mine from class was sitting across from me, and at one point, the topic of generosity came up. The discussion helped elucidate a concept that I’ve always believed, but never really put onto paper, so I guess now is a good enough time than ever.

I have always been really big on kindness. I like kind and courteous people. A lot.

So I'm happy to say that I passed my Brain and Behaviour midterm - barely, with a 70.96 (a 70 is a clear pass).  It was a pretty difficult midterm, with a bell ringer for neuroanatomy in the morning and then a written exam in the afternoon.

It's funny how easily I went from not only wanting and getting 80's and 90's in undergrad to hoping I get a 70 in medical school.  For the most part, I don't think the material is any harder, and often times it's actually easier.  As I've stressed before, there's just a lot more material.

I was talking to one of my best friend's tonight (who is also in first year of medical school, but at McMaster).  I was telling him about how I couldn't remember details on the multiple choice exams here, and he said he was surprised because he remembered me knowing all these random details during undergrad and doing well on multiple choice exams.

Luck, variance, randomness - whatever you want to call it, it has an undeniable influence on the course of events.

Taking a simple case, you get lucky when your medical school interview is conducted by a physician who turns out to be life long buddies with one of your referees, or perhaps you get unlucky when you realize your interviewer and you are complete opposites.

...to get a referral.

I got the referral, but also left with a splint on my pinky finger and a form to get an X-ray done tomorrow morning.

I have a bump on the distal interphalangeal joint and the tip of the pinky remains bent downward.

I'm all about giving credit where credit is due, and I have to say that UofCalgary's medical school made the best interview weekend video I've ever seen this year.

Check it out:

I was reading about the courses in Harvard's Masters of Science in Health Care Management program and it just screamed awesome to me.

If you read my where do I see myself in 10 years reflection, you'd remember that solving problems in our health care system outside my own future clinical practice is something that I'm interested in.

The schedule is pretty sick too.  A few weeks each summer, several 4-day weekends per year, and then bam, you've learned a ton of cool, relevant stuff and are a Harvard alumni too!

I don't know who said it first, and to me it sadly seems like to suggest a rather negative intention when spoken, but the phrase "those who can't do, teach" is quite common and as someone who genuinely enjoys teaching and sharing what I know, see it as a phrase that can actually lead to some valuable insight.

I think the original intention of the phrase was to suggest that teachers are those incapable of doing - for who in their right mind would rather coach, say, Sydney Crosby instead of being Sydney Crosby?  The phrase is also often believed to imply the opposite - that those who can do would not want to teach.

Doing is Generally More Lucrative than Teaching

I can't write Day 1 because I already failed and didn't blog yesterday.  Guess this is harder than I thought (actually that's not true, I expected it to be hard).

I have to say that so far I'm enjoying Brain and Behaviour (B&B) more than the other topics we have covered in medical school so far.  I'm not particularly surprised, considering that neurology is one of the few reasons I went into medical school in the first place.

They did a nice job of easing us into this part of the program.  Yesterday we started with a standard one hour introduction to the course lecture, followed by two hours of five short presentations to get us interested in B&B by showing us clinical applications, and then just two real lectures in the afternoon.

Yesterday there was a reunion for Toronto MacShad 2005 alumni, with about six of us in total.  I don't think I had seen many of them in a super long time, despite many of us not being too far away from each other, and quite a few of us relatively close, in fact.  They are all fantastic people, and I had an awesome time, and wish I had reconnected a lot sooner.   Shad has introduced me to so many great people and opened a lot of doors for me, I really can't be grateful enough, and am disappointed I haven't kept up as much as I should.  Hopefully we can keep this type of stuff going - there were talks of a big 5 year anniversary reunion happening this summer, and I hope that goes down.

I had such an awesome time that it made me wonder how much more I'm missing out by not reconnecting with a ton of great people I've met.  I've actually been disappointed for a while that I've lost touch with so many good people I've met over the years.

So anyways, I'll throw this out there: If we've met before, had some good memories / ton of fun but have since lost touch, and you are in the downtown Toronto area, email/Facebook/whatever me and let's meet up for a drink/coffee/whatever.

Unproductive

While I had previously written a brief post on admissions consulting and why there was nothing inherently wrong with it, I feel a need to write a more complete article on it and examine the issue on a deeper level.

Before I begin, let my begin by saying that I have essentially done consulting for scholarship, awards, undergraduate admissions, and medical school admissions for numerous individuals, both friends and even complete strangers.  I have never asked for a single penny from any of these individuals.  I currently don't charge for advice/help, although that's not to say I haven't considered it (as a side job) and it's something that could happen for me sometime in the future - who knows? 

(As a side note, some of you may have noticed the Consulting Services link on the left hand menu.  This is not a consulting service provided by MedChatter - it is simply a link exchange we are doing to help promote MedChatter to medhopefuls).

Because of that, it may surprise some of you that I don't have any problem with those who do charge for consulting advice.  Understand that whether I personally choose to charge or not for the help I provide is completely irrelevant.  I still believe there is nothing inherently wrong with charging for admissions consulting.  There are problems that can stem from admissions consulting (which we will soon discuss), but the existence of some related problems alone is not enough to say admissions consulting is "wrong" or "should not exist".

Why am I writing this?