say shhhh

Hey. Welcome to curious onlookers from Jon's blog. He's a pip, even if he does eff up my (admittedly pretty lackadaisical) campaign in the general direction of anonymity. Still, it's not an uncommon first name, and anyway I've always figured that a med school admissions person who was sufficiently curious (not to mention motivated, tenacious and obviously very intelligent) would find this place. Truth be told, I actually sort of like the idea of letting the stuff I came up with during my regular ol' life speak for me, during the high-stakes period when I'm being evaluated for entry to my career. Naturally, the context is totally different; this is both more and less than some "additional information" page or appendix to my application. And maybe I'm naive or just a gambler, but I gotta believe the people in charge would know and appreciate the difference.

Anyway, if you're new -- what I do here is try to track my progression from the rakish and charming liberal-arts guy I used to be to the steely-eyed, unflappable medical professional I'm turning into. It's a weird process to watch your friends go through, and it's even more bizarre to be in the middle of it. There are plenty of "med-blogs" out there -- I intend to link to more than I already do -- and I like to think that eventually, this will be... one of them.

So, hey, now that my whole post-bacc year is over, I can probably tell some stories. But first, the obligatory statement about how I do this.

I make sure I'm respecting confidentiality in a few different ways at once, because I'm more than a little anal about it. Not only do I alter identifying details when I talk about situations, I also wait until it's no longer possible to figure out who was who by looking at the order or the timing of the events. Maybe that's too much caution, but in the age of Internet vs. HIPAA, I'm not sure there is such a thing.

Right now, I need to take a nap. For like three days. It was an intense year. But I'll write soon enough about the "you should stop smoking" speech and other Urgent Care gems; the time we called 911 from a party at our house; the time I stopped at an accident scene; and various other really nerdy stuff that comes from a Minneapolis kid going to school in small-town Vermont.