Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A new blog, a new philosophy

To read my previous blog, visit my old site.

One of the chief reasons for the paucity of my blog updates is my whole perspective of this blog and blogs in general. Rather than viewing it as a simple conduit for communicating everyday--perhaps even mundane--observations, events or musings, I have taken it to be something higher, something greater. I insist upon having some kind of news (or some great peer pressure) before updating. I'd like to change this, though. I'd like to toss aside that old paradigm and start anew. However, before I can do this, I first need to catch up with the many things that have happened since my last update, some of which are exciting and some of which are pretty bland.

May has long since come and gone, and with it went 90% of my friends from Miami. By this, I mean that nearly everyone I know graduated, leaving me to largely fend for myself come time for the fall semester. I'm sure it will prove to be a very different experience from past semesters, providing a feeling utterly unique to my college career. My hope is that I can turn it into a positive: with far fewer friends to spend time with, I may feel more available to finally reclaim my habit of lifting and running. Irrespective of the future, my present has found me keeping in close touch with my graduated friends this summer, and I'm sure this will continue as the months and years go on, despite what may happen to our schedules. I visited many of my Ohio friends in May when I drove out to Maine and back (~3,000 miles) for my friend Danielle's wedding. The wedding was beautiful, and the drive, although solo, was a lot of fun. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I stayed two nights, was beautiful. As the only people I knew who would be at the wedding were in the wedding party, I went out on the town by myself the night before the wedding. At a piano bar, I met an older couple from California who were open to conversation. The man, who was obviously intoxicated, repeatedly noted his deceased physician father's credo: "The patient is a person, not a commodity." I actually made use of this in my personal statement for my primary med school application.

In continuing with what has become the summer of love, my older brother, Nathan, proposed to his girlfriend, Sarah, in May. I only met her for the first time when I returned to Missouri after finals week (unrelated: a 4.0 for the semester), but she immediately revealed herself as quite likeable. She seems to have Nathan figured out, and is providing him with a little more discipline than perhaps he previously had. I think both contribute something important to each other's life, which is obviously important for anyone planning to marry. The two are planning a May 2007 wedding, which should work well for everyone. Only about a week ago, they moved together to Pasadena, California, where Nathan landed a new job. It's quite the change from Missouri, to be sure, but I think they will handle it well. Already, I'm planning to drive their wedding gifts out to Pasadena for them, which will be an awesome time. You can be sure that I volunteered for that job.

This past weekend, I was in Ohio for the marriage of my Miami friends Adam and Christine. It was a beautiful wedding...very well done, I thought. The best part of all for me was simply getting to see so many of my friends in one place, which is always kind of rare for me, as I'm the lone Missourian in the group. (To be fair, I finally convinced Dan and Naynay to come visit my humble abode in Missouri. It was nice having them down and showing them around.) I will be back in Ohio for another wedding this coming weekend--this time for Sara and JJ, two more friends of mine. As I said, it has become quite the summer of love.

As for me, the summer has consisted largely of working at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Missouri here in Columbia. I'm with Dr. Bal for the third summer now, and it's been a really good experience again. He always has quite the variety of jobs for me, and this summer it has been mostly medical illustrations, consulting on research database issues (the biggie), and producing patient information literature for the website. Of course, I've had a healthy dose of clinical and operating room observation mixed in there. Aside from working, I've spent a good portion of my time working on medical school applications. Yes, the time is finally upon me, four years in the making. I've compiled quite a list of schools; I won't divulge that whole list here, but suffice it to say, I'm making very good and timely progress on the applications and am happy with the schools to which I'm applying.

I've worked very hard to keep this post from rambling into oblivion, because it certainly could stretch on forever if I were to include all the details that actually make life interesting. However, I really just wanted to catch up on the big, basic events, and as I stated above, the hope is that I can now start anew. No more waiting for newsworthy updates necessarily; I am now giving myself the latitude to use this more for directionless musing and reflection. For now, take 'er easy.

Currently listening to: "Roscoe" by Midlake
Previous activity: Writing and submitting Stanford's secondary application
Next thing on the agenda: Reading some more from The Idiot

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