Summer Research

Since High School (3 years ago) I have been working at one of the top 5 hospitals in the country. I've had various jobs, all requiring extreme grunt work. Each summer I have gone back for the money, but because I am now a pre-med student, I am really going to benefit from this.

I started out in the Frozen Section lab within the Pathology department. This was the coolest job ever, and I was only 16. The Frozen lab is where surgical specimens are sent right after they are dissected from the patient. The specimen is cut, frozen in liquid nitrogen, and then made into a microscope slide. Finally, someone stains the slide so the cells have distinct colors, easily differentiated by a Pathologist. The Pathologist then looks at the slide, gives a diagnosis, and calls it into the operating room. The Surgeon needs this diagnosis to decide his next step in the surgery. Coolest job ever!

After getting to know some people around the hospital, I was asked by a Pathologist to work in his Prostate lab. Great resume builder, but raised my boredom index so high. I was not doing any real lab work. Mostly I would be managing databases. This is why I did not go into college as a pre-med student. If this was medicine, I wanted no part.

After shadowing a few doctors, my view of medicine changed. It is a really great field if one chooses something exciting - not Pathology (just my opinion). Now, another summer in the lab is proving just as boring, but I can do it knowing that it will help me get to where I want to go. I mean, I have not taken a pre-med class yet and I already have three publications. Awesome! And I get paid 11$ an hour. Not so bad.

Make your summers useful.

Summer before the storm

Here it is early August and I am already thinking about my upcoming semester. It will be my first as a pre-med student. My adviser said I should start slow, so my only pre-med class is Introduction to Biology. The class meets Tuesday and Thursday from 12:00 to 1:20 PM. On top of that, there is a lab that runs every Tuesday from 4:30 to 7:30 PM. And even more, there is also a discussion every Monday at 4:00 PM. That is just Biology.

Beside that one hellish class, I am also taking a Philosophy class on the great Heidegger. It is a two semester course that is focused on Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time. I'm really looking forward to it because it is a class with 4 other people and we meet in a lounge. Should be fun.

Biblical Studies, Peace or War, and Italian are the other classes I am taking. That's 5 classes for 17 credits.

My last posts may seem of topic because they deal with random things that I felt were worth writing about. That is because I hadn't found a suitable blog topic, but I knew I wanted to blog.

And so my journey into pre-med hell begins.