The "other" guys

Oh, and I have started watching the traffic stats for this blog and, to my dismay, we are actually being read! Hopefully that means some of you folks are/will be finding this helpful. Don’t forget we link to other MSTP blogs on the side panel on the right. You can ‘em check out if you want to know more about how each school does it differently, etc. Some more MSTP focused while others are more like personal journals for people who happen to be MSTP students. Either way, kill some time and read them. After you read ours, of course. Ours is probably the best*.

*not really

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.

(Ro)tatertot

Flashback to my interview at WashU: Andrew Richards (who is no longer an MSTP guy but a PhD guy) was telling us interviewees about the possibility of a summer rotation in a lab or two and that about half of the MSTPers take it their first year. Back then, there was NO chance that I was going to do any such thing. Why the hell would anyone want to sacrifice their last summer before 7-9ish years of schooling began in order to sit another 2 months at a lab bench? No thank you. I’d rather work my relaxing undergraduate jobs, go out every night with my friends, etc. I wanted to milk my last summer for all its worth.

Well, I write this from my new apartment in StL. My rotation starts on Monday. Why the change of heart? Well, over the months between my interview and my graduation things were changing:

-I wasn’t enjoying my old apartment as much. Tensions between the 3 girls I lived with were rising constantly and it made living alone in StL much more attractive

-My undergraduate research project had been dragging on and on for months. It was supposed to be published over a year before I graduated, but it wasn’t yet. This was a real morale killer at the lab.

-Honestly, I was beginning to become partied out. I lived it up quite a bit my final semester and my wallet/liver were feeling it. They didn’t need to spend an extra 2 months doing the same.

-I realized how stressful it might be to learn a new city while learning about a billion other new things in my first semester as a med student.

-Early stipend = money to buy books and stuff.

So, here I am. Excited? You bet. Regret leaving my home early? Not at all. Plus, my apartment turned out to be pretty sweet. That certainly didn’t hurt the situation at all.

-R

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!

Greetings from Kansas!

As a fellow member of this year's MSTP entering class at WashU, I thought I would share a little bit about myself.

I'm also 22 years old, and I just graduated from Rice University in Houston, TX. I just arrived back in Overland Park, KS* today after a two day drive from Houston, and I am definitely glad to be out of the car! I was born and raised in the Kansas City metro area, but I actually spent a fair amount of time in St. Louis growing up because my mom is from there, and we have family that still lives there. I have three older siblings (2 brothers and a sister) and a dog that I might bring with me to St. Louis.

It was kind of bittersweet leaving Houston because I really enjoyed my time there, but I'm really excited about moving to St. Louis in a few weeks!

*For those that care, Overland Park is a suburb of Kansas City. I live in Kansas, but I actually live closer to Kansas City, MO than to Kansas City, KS (and yes there are two). And just because I know you might be wondering: I don't live on a farm, I don't know Dorothy or Toto, I do have indoor plumbing, and the closest I have ever been in a tornado was actually in Houston. =)

First entry!

So this marks the obligatory first blog post where you often read things like "just testing out the new blog" or "about me: ..."

I am starting this to see if we as an entering MSTP class can provide future MSTP/med school hopefuls with some info on WashU, MSTP life, medical school, St. Louis, etc. This is not affiliated with the school or any program therein, just me and (hopefully) a few more students of the incoming MSTP 2007 class. Who knows, maybe we will keep writing over the entire 8-ish years of our MSTP careers. I doubt it… I hear we will be pretty busy with all that learnin. But you can’t blame a guy for trying.

So yes, I am just testing out the new blog. How about a little about me? I’m 22 and just about to finish the last 3 finals of my tedious undergraduate career at UW-Madison. I was born and raised in the “Midwest”, but we mostly just call it the North where I come from. I grew up in what started in a smallish town and became a largish suburb before moving to Madison, WI for 4 years.

We’ll see who else I can coerce into writing here.
-R