Although I'm usually not a fan of her, I really appreciated Peggy Noonan's column celebrating Paul Wellstone.

Today is already pretty weird. I arrived at work almost two hours before most of my coworkers. (This is not normal for me, to say the least.) It's actually quite pleasant.

"Champagne High" by Sister Hazel...first verse...can't get it out of my head.

I wasn't looking for a lifetime with you
And I never thought it would hurt just to hear
'I do' and 'I do'
And I do a number on myself
And all that I thought to be
And you'll be the one
That just left me undone
By my own hesitation.


Posting song lyrics seems pretty cliche. But, what the hell, this is my blog. I'll post whatever I want to.

Medical school application essay #142017:"Please write two pages on any topic other than medicine."

This must be some sort of trick.

Maybe I should write something like, "My Thoughts on Why Applying to Medical School is a Terrible Way to Spend Two Years."

Or "Undergraduate GPA and 20/20 Hindsight."
"Law is Also a Nice Profession."
"The Small Envelope: 27 Ways to Hear 'You're Not Good Enought for Us.'"
"Bankruptcy by Application."
etc...

Please, please, please go see "Bowling For Columbine." It's Michael Moore's new movie. I'm pretty much brain dead right after writing essays for hours, but I went to the movie tonight with one of my roommates and really....enjoyed (?) it. It's not a fun, cheerful movie -- no surprise considering the title -- but it certainly makes you think about the Second Amendment, the NRA (boooooo!), and America's obsession with firearms. If I weren't obsessed with becoming a physician, I would seriously considering working on public health issues relating to gun violence, perhaps at an organization like the Violence Policy Center.

Shame on the NRA.

And thank goodness for the hard work of the Montgomery County Police Department -- the sniper nightmare is over.

One more thing -- as my energy drops, desperation slowly emerges from the dark corners of my mind. I believe that I can still get into medical school...most of the time. Occasionally, I start thinking of my backup plans. It's a good thing to consider, I know, but it's a little scary.

Mile 20 of 26. Or that's what I feel like. When I ran the Big Sur Marathon during my sophomore year at Stanford, my conscious mind began to fade quickly after mile 20. But I kept running for another 6.2 miles -- almost another full hour. I feel much the same way now. I've been writing essays for medical school for nearly six months now, and I'm still going. Nonetheless, my mental energy is slowly fading as I approach the finish line. Just a few more essays...

It's election time!

As we approach the upcoming elections, I spend more and more time looking at data from The Gallup Organization and Zogby International. For those of us who love politics, polling data has a unique charm.

No weekend.

So I'm working this entire weekend at Stanford's Reunion Homecoming. It will be a great chance to get away from my applications for a couple days, and the overtime pay will certainly help me pay off my credit card bills. The downside, though, is that I won't have a real weekend. Here's my schedule:
Thursday: Regular work 9-10, then Reunion stuff 10am-11pm
Friday: 8am - 5pm, break for 2 hours, then work 7pm-1am
Saturday: This is technically the day for my "Recent Grad Reunion." Relax a little. Work 10-11, 5-7. Inevitably get asked to work more.
Sunday: 8am - 4:30pm.
Monday: Back to work, regular schedule.

Hmmmm. I didn't see "Weekend" in there at all. This could be trouble.

My joy was short-lived. I worked on my applications for 20 hours this weekend. When will this all be over?

Today was a good day. I made a lot of progress on my med school applications, my roommate had a good interview at a med school, I feel healthy for the first time in a month, and it's a Friday!

Useful software.

Do you run Bearshare or Limewire or any other program that probably include a bunch of junk freeware that runs without your knowledge and burns system resources? Try "AdAware" here. It is a "free multi spyware removal utility that scans your memory, registry and hard drives for known spyware and scumware components and lets you remove them safely."

I hear things...

I often find that the first song I hear in the morning -- usually from the radio on my alarm clock -- has a pretty high chance of being stuck in my head the rest of the day. Today, though, I'm a little confused. Why is the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah" stuck on "repeat" in my brain? I don't listen to a classical radio station.

I'm losing it -- talking to myself, waking up in a cold sweat with worries about applications, checking my email every 2 minutes for updates from admissions committees.

"Must go faster." -- Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park.

Not a whole lot of clarity this week. I feel like I'm writing med school applications 24 hours a day. I outline essays while I'm eating, on the phone, in the shower, in meetings, and even in the blurry moments in the morning as the alarm clock starts to ring.

At a time management workshop earlier this week, a speaker asked us what we would do with 2 additional hours of personal time every day. (sigh) I knew there was no way I would do anything other than applications. This is ridiculous.

It's a busy Friday so I can't write much now, but this headline made my day:

Philip Morris Ordered to Pay $28 Billion.

Sweet.

"At this time, we have decided to pursue other candidates for this employment opportunity."

Weird. And frustrating. Other than the job title, I didn't even know what "this employment opportunity" was.

About a month ago, I received a voice mail from a large corporation focusing on health care management & research -- my sort of thing. The voicemail referred to a position for which I was being considered, and that I should call a Human Resources officer at a certain number and schedule an interview. So I did. But the HR person did not answer. "No big deal," I thought. I left a message, including the hours when I could be reached at the phone number I provided, as well as my email address (both had already been provided on my resume).

No reply. I called again. And again. One or twice a day, for a week and a half. No answer, just the same voicemail message indicating the Ms. Human Resources Officer was unavailable. I called a different number that had been provided on the original voice mail and left a message. One message a day for seven days. Time passes. Both HR people break their promises to "return my call as soon as possible."

Two weeks pass. My phone calls are never returned. No emails are sent. Does it seem reasonable to believe they would reply to one of my messages?

Anyway, I heard nothing from the contact until today, when I received the "No Thanks" email. (sigh) I give up.

I love distributed computing. (I say this with a bit of caution since my tech-vocabulary isn't always correct.) Distributed computing essentially breaks down large computational problems into small chunks and distributes them among a computer network. For example, the SETI@Home program I used to have on my computer would download a small piece of data from the SETI Program, analyze the data using the extra processing capacity my computer (or anyone's computer) has, and send the results back to the SETI@Home database. Even though the amount of data processed is very small, the collective processing power of many, many computers adds up. In April 2001, a distributing computing collaboration between Intel, Microsoft, Oxford University, and others began work on finding a cure for cancer. When the anthrax attacks were announced in October 2001, the project also focused on finding a cure for anthrax. Personally, I suggest they stick with cancer.

Anyway, I found yet another distributed computing project today. Based at Stanford, the Folding@Home (sound familiar?) project focuses on the calculation-intensive goal of understanding protein folding and aggregation. For you non-biologists out there, proteins fold into specific shapes that are critically important for their function. Researchers suspect that many diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Mad Cow, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig's disease) are caused by proteins that fold incorrectly and clump together.

I'm looking for some statistics on how powerful such distributed computing programs can be. On Pcworld.com, I found a quote from Pat Gelsinger, vice president and chief technical officer of the Intel Architecture Group. He says that a 6 million-user distributed computing network "will have collective processing power equivalent to a 50-terraflop supercomputer running day and night. That's ten times bigger than the world's largest existing supercomputer assembled for less than one percent of the cost." Keep in mind that SETI@Home is the largest distributed computing progject and it has 2.3 million users. That's still an incredible amount of processing power.

"Networking." It's important. And my roommates seem to think I'm good at it. I emailed the director of a health policy research group last week inquiring about an unpaid internship, but apparently Stanford isn't allowed to offer unpaid internships. She said I should send a cover letter, though, and that perhaps a real research job is available. I don't think that qualifies as networking per se, but I'm excited about the idea of a new job!

Enron's former CFO surrendered to the FBI today and was charged with "securities fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and conspiracy." It's about time!

One more thing -- if you know anyone on a medical school admissions committee, can you please email me?

Med school applications are ridiculous. I've spent the last 16 months of my life working on them.

The waiting must be the worst part. You write a bunch of essays, write *another* check for $12491847 to cover the "processing fee," then mail in the application and wait. Wait. Wait again. Say you're sick of waiting. Then wait more. Check your status online. It says "Keep Waiting." Ugh.

It also seems like the more prestigious schools don't ask for anything besides the processing fee and maybe a photo. Duke is an exception -- they have 6 short answer questions, 2 essays, and more. I have their secondary application waiting for me, but it's not very tempting.

It's 3:23 am. How does it always get so late? Oh, yes, applications. That's what Amp and Sobe Adrenaline Rush are for. I think it's especially funny that both sites aim their marketing towards the alternative-punk-motorcross-i'm-such-a-rebel crowd. Do they really drink this stuff? I don't think so.

Time to sleep.

Thoughts. Wow...where to begin? I finally decided to take a friend's advice and set up a blog. I don't think I'll tell him anytime soon -- his blog is really impressive. Check it out -- it's not as simple as you think.