work all day, play all night.

Well, we (mostly) survived our first MSTP retreat. Now, going into the retreat, I thought that the second year MS’s were a little crazy. They seem to party harder than anyone I had ever seen over the summer. That, combined with the fact that the second year students (including the MSTPs) had just finished their first exam block, lead me to expect that the second year MSTP students would be partying pretty hard on that Saturday night. Well.. I was wrong. The older MSTPs, especially those who are about halfway through their lab work, were intense! The retreat was mind-blowingly fun. I mean, the float trip was great because it was mostly just the firstyears, and all of the MS’s were involved. But the MSTP crowd, it turns out, is just as fun.

I think I got to bed around 4:30 AM. Others just didn’t sleep at all. After listening to 5ish hours of research presentation, you really gotta let loose.

(it's hard to blog while listening to uncle bob lecture about heart physiology...)

work hard, play hard

So the routine is settling in. Most of us MSTPs are fixtures at the study carrels after lecture and for most of the afternoons during the weekend. The carrels are actually a great place for “social studying” so it keeps the stress kinda low. Don’t fret, however, as we are not really boring due to all of this studying. In fact, two of the MSTPs were just elected to the social chair position, which means people seem to have gotten the idea that MSTPs are actually fun and can organize a good party. Some of the second years even think that the MSTP class this year is a little too crazy.

Oh, and I hope to see some of you readers (there are a few hundred of you now! I am shocked.) at the interviews that are fast approaching. You won’t have much trouble figuring out who I am.

-R

(Dis)oriented!

So suddenly there is a lot more about which I should write, but as a result there is only a small fraction of the time to write. Here’s my lame attempt to catch you up on what it means to be an MSTP:

So starting from L’s definition of rocktastic (a word derived as a description of what it feels like to be at a bar with most of the 1^st years and a $1000 tab that needed to be polished off), the last few weeks have been an absolutely amazing time. The remainder of orientation week went like this: be at the LTC by 8:30 AM or so, be orientated until anywhere from 3 to 5 depending on the day, nap for an hour, go out and party like rockstars until 1:00 (or 3:00, or 6:00 AM, depending on the night and your degree of rocktasticallity) only to wake (assuming you went to bed) and go back in at 8:30 the next morning. The class bonded exceptionally well, and the MSTPs for the most part are an even tighter subsection of the med class. This is not to say that we aren’t completely rooted with the rest of the M1s, but the MSTPs tend to have dinner parties or other functions before the other events because we really enjoy the conversations we have as a group. Pool parties, sports in the park, movies, and pub crawls have been the norm. Classes started and everyone dove right in, taking it very seriously and at the same time making plenty of time for fun. The diversity retreat was awesome (everyone, literally every single person, had a blast. Do it next year.) and we have the float trip coming up next weekend on top of all that.

Honestly, these three weeks (WUMP through present) have been the best I can remember. Plus, anatomy is SO COOL and we MSTPs get to have a free lunch after our Wednesday lab, and the smell of formalin makes you really, really hungry.

Things that suck:

· A lot of food in my fridge went bad because I haven’t had the need to eat more than 3 or 4 meals at home in the last few weeks. This isn’t so bad, because that means we’ve been dined a lot.

· Some of the IT stuff has still been rocky, especially for the MSTPs here this summer. We couldn’t log into the carrel computers for a while, our medportal (the site that has all of the class notes) has been sketchy with access, and the wireless was a bit of a pain to set up since the IT dept. needs to commandeer your laptop for a day or so to do it for you.

That’s about all I can come up with. Sorry about the poor writing here; I am watching a dissection video online while writing so my attention is about 25%.

-R

WUMP week

As mentioned earlier, things are bustling around here. We MSTPs and research-oriented meds have been up to our usual fun and games for the last month or so, but everything rapidly changed pace last Monday with the beginning of WUMP.

WUMP is the Washington University Medical Plunge, a weeklong foray into the world of medicine and serving the underprivileged. St. Louis offers a lot of chances to do this, from Planned Parenthood to shadowing a doctor at a prison, from a sexual abuse clinic to a homeless shelter. Only three MSTPs (that I know of) participated in WUMP this year, but had it not been for our lab rotations more of us would have applied. I really wanted to go see the correctional facility, but alas I had data to collect.

WUMP also gives you a head start on the social scene. The 40ish people participating in WUMP get to do the introduction and name learning a week earlier than the other meds, and any rotating MSTPs still in their labs may quickly find themselves out of the loop. WUMP is long in the daytime hours, but at night everyone goes out in one big group that for the most part has no cliques established yet and live like rockstars. It’s great. Yesterday we got about 40 people together in the 100 °F heat and played ultimate Frisbee for 2-3 hours. With a large group of intelligent people like this, it’d be hard for us to have anything but constant fun in a new city.

However, it seems that the uniform solidarity of the WUMP group lasts about a week, as last night I noticed the first evidence of cliques forming while we belted out our favorite songs at a karaoke bar. (Not that this is a terrible thing, as it’s pretty much guaranteed with a group larger than a dozen). With the MSTP orientation beginning tomorrow morning, a day earlier than the meds, the science geeks will be retiring a little earlier than previous nights. We’ll need the rest, too, for on Tuesday we will meet another 80 or so people that comprise the rest of our med school class. Alright, my phone is beeping with texts every few minutes because I am pulling together a dozen for dinner. Hopefully one of the other writers will be able to specifically write more about WUMP.

I haven't forgotten you

So I have been meaning to write all week… but the week kinda got in the way of that. WUMP! I wasn’t actually in WUMP, but it did mean that about 40 new students showed up. On top of that, we have a few new MSTP arrivals since Friday.

Tomorrow’s high is in the low 100’s, so staying in to give my WUMP week report will be a perfect excuse to stay in and soak up the AC. Well, that and the fact that I arrived home at 1:45 tonight and this was the earliest I have come home all week. Partying like that really takes a lot out of a fella.

If I don’t follow through, post a comment of scorn!

Sicko of Sicko?

So we went to famous Blueberry Hill on Saturday night. I was shocked: the food was satisfying, the prices weren’t too high, the drinks weren’t extravagantly priced, and the music was low enough that I could actually converse with friends. Oh, and they have a dart range. Real darts, not crappy plastic ones. I’ll save you the boring “this is what we did” details; I’d rather just wrap it up by saying that we MSTPs have not been an exclusive group at all. I’ve spent time getting to know undergrads, MD students, grad students, and even a townie or two (e.g. Blueberry Hill night was a diverse group). I got the feeling from other places/MSTPs that it can sometimes get pretty segregated. Hopefully we keep this social scene open.

But on now to the main topic of this post: I went to go see Sicko with a med student and a CS grad student before going to Blueberry Hill. Let me start by saying that it is certainly worth seeing for us, the future doctors. Healthcare is a multi-faceted issue that needs attention; there are no two sides, no 3 sides, no 10 sides to it… and there are no easy answers to fixing our system. Sicko presents solutions taken in other countries (namely France, the UK, Canada, and Cuba) as obvious and easy. Moore relies on almost purely anecdotal evidence, and judging by the responses emitted by my fellow moviegoers, I would say that this was adequate to speak to most of the public. But I am a scientist, dammit! Where are the data, Mike? Where are your sources? How can you say with such confidence that A and B go beyond correlation into the realm of causation? Clearly, I had some issues with the film. For instance, he is quick to make connections such as “France has socialized health care, and the French live longer. Therefore, socialized healthcare is better.” Basically the film is loaded with Moore’s arguments that sound plausible but aren’t presented with a factual foundation. Are they still valid arguments? Some of them are, yes. Should a future doctor see the film? I believe they should. Should a scientist see the film? Yes, and try to accompany somebody who isn’t as used to thinking critically. Should you agree with Michael Moore? I can’t tell you that. But please, don’t just take his word for it.

Two weeks until orientation. I swear, entries will be much more MSTP-related. I swear. Maybe.

Not Good to Drive

I like the idea of a big city. More specifically, I like the idea of public transportation in a big city. I don’t know if I like transit systems that go beyond the hypothetical because I have sparse experience with them. Minneapolis got a light rail right as I left the Twin Cities so I never used it and in Madison you just walked. Everywhere. Nobody (students) used cars for anything other than going to work or to the grocery store. When you went out at night, it was on foot because everything was within reasonable walking distance.

That being said, the biggest thing to which I have had to issues adjusting is how St. Louis pretty much requires driving to get to the rich diversity of nightspots here and there aren’t any other good options. So… if you are going out for drinks, as we MSTPs have been often, this presents a problem. For the first time in my life I am actually concerned with things like DD’s, cab fares, and when the train stops running (the ONLY train, mind you, as StL has yet to make a nice rail system that covers most of the city.) Luckily, our schedules have so far worked out that somebody usually has to go into lab or do something else early the next morning. If that isn’t the case, there are also a few people in the WUSM class that hang out with us MSTP folk who don’t drink much/often for various reasons. They still come out and have fun, which is great, and they can drive us home at the end of it. If not, cabs aren’t too bad. From the Loop area to the Central West End, a cab will cost you about as much as a drink as long as there are 4 of you riding home. Still, I miss the days of roaming the streets in a small pack of jovial, inebriated peers.

I guess there’s just something eerily adult about going home in a car. Maybe it’s time to get used to that.

Really quick: The good, the bad, and the ugly. The StL dining selection, the washU IT department(s), and the heat of the afternoon at 3:30 or so.

Life in St. Louis

So, I've been living in St. Louis for about 2 weeks now, so I thought that it was time for a post.

I decided to buy a condo, and I found a great one-bedroom in the DeBaliviere area, which is just North of Forest Park, right by the metro stop. It was a bit overwhelming and stressful to buy a condo, but I think that a large part of that was that I found a condo and purchased in less than a month. But everything is really coming together, and I am really glad that I did it.

I started my rotation about 2 weeks ago and it has been going very well. I've really enjoyed the people in the lab and my PI, which I think can really make or break a lab. My project is starting to get going, which is also exciting. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some results before the end of my rotation.

I've also been hanging out with a lot of other new MSTPs and some other MS1s, who have been really nice and really fun to hang out with. We've been exploring the CWE and we've found some pretty fun places. We also spent an afternoon in Forest Park, which is just amazing. I keep hearing about other fun stuff that goes on in St. Louis during the summer, like Jazz in the Botanical Gardens and concerts by the arch, and the best part is that most of it is FREE!

I'm really excited for the rest of the summer as well as the beginning of the school year!