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.

So, I was reading the paper the other day and I was surprised to see that the next iPhone had accidentally been leaked by an Apple software engineer, especially because Apple is so secretive with these things. I feel really bad for the engineer who leaked it...

For more information, see:
http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

...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.

The American College of Physicians is in town this weekend for the Internal Medicine 2010. They have a few programs for medical students including "Mastering the Match" and "Interacting with Pharmaceutical Industry Representatives".
For more information, see http://www.acponline.org/meetings/internal_medicine/2010/.

.... is writing a book????

Recently, an idea occurred to me that I thought was worth sharing. Many premeds out there are very unsure of what it takes to make it into medicine.  Although resources regarding medical admission are widely available, most of such resources provide scattered pieces of information that require significant amount of time to piece together. Even when you've acquired a thorough sense of how one can gain acceptance and work accordingly, it’s still difficult to gauge your own competitiveness when so many factors come into play.

So I thought to myself - wouldn’t it be great to have a collection of detailed profiles of students who’ve either made it to medical school, made it to the interview stage, or gotten rejected? Not only would the profiles include GPA/MCAT stats, volunteering history, research experience, courses taken, schools applied to, etc…. it would also include each applicant’s personal description of self-perceived strengths and weaknesses of his/her own application.

This way, premeds can get a much better idea of what makes a competitive applicant. Then I asked myself - what would be the ideal medium to deliver such material? Of course the ideal way is to provide it for free over MedChatter.com. However, this is not feasible since no one would want to contribute to such a project. No one would want to disclose their own personal information online in such a manner, at least for no personal gains. So I thought maybe I should write a book. Basically, I would recruit medical students from all across Canada to contribute to such a project. It would be a collaborative effort. The book would then be sold over MedChatter and other distribution media at a low price. All profits would go to charity. This way, contributors get authorship, and we all get the satisfaction in knowing that all of our efforts benefit everyone.

This idea is fairly new and I’m still working on the details, but I’d be glad to hear all of your thoughts/opinions.

Hey Guys,

So during one of my many rounds of procrastination leading up to our 2nd Foundations of Medical Practice exam, I was reading the Toronto Star website and came across an article about our National Anthem.  Featured in the article was a link to a video of a couple of the worst renditions of O Canada.

The first person really should have considered going through the lyrics before singing in front a crowd of people. She even tried to fake it too for a bit. Oy big mistake. And the 2nd person, his melody was not half bad, besides the fact that it was wrong. Fortunately he remembered more or less the words and finished okay. He sang it "loud and proud" as my former band teacher would say!

Well don't just take my word for it, check it out! 

So it’s 2:20 AM right now, and I’ve just spent the last 14 hours studying. I think I’ll call it a day. But before I head to bed, I just wanted to share this interesting success story that I’ve recently come across. This is the story of Kevin Ham, a graduate of UBC medicine who took a career detour in 1999 and built a $300 million empire. Business magazine calls him “the man who owns the internet” and “the most powerful dotcom mogul you’ve never heard of”. So who is Kevin Ham really?

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!