Fall 2007!

Well next week I begin classes again for the Fall and this time as I mentioned before, I'm going to be smarter in planning out my schedule so I can take the MCAT in Jan 08. I'll have one class, a seminar and my research and volunteer work to keep me busy so I'm really looking forward to it!

In more personal news, I'm still not 100% health wise and was diagnosed with pneumonia last week. Unfortunately, it's yet a another case where I HAD to be persistent about own health after my now former primary care doc told me that I was OK. Yeah right, when these things happen however intermittently in my life, I immediately ask myself what happens to less educated minority patients and would having a black/minority primary doc would mean anything different in terms of our health care. The irony of me having pneumonia again is that when I had it 10 years ago and almost died, I had to beg the ER to admit me after having coughing spells for 3 straight weeks which prevented me from keeping any food down. I must have went to my Doc 7 times during that time but I kept being sent home and the day I was admitted, I ended up needing respiratory support that night. If I had gone back home, then I imagine I probably wouldn't be here telling you this story.

I'm bringing all this up to make the point that sometimes in the quest for whatever goal we're striving for, we often forget to take care of ourselves. There's no doubt that as an asthmatic, I should have used more discretion in the environments I put myself in, and from the moment I smelled mold in my office, I should have walked away to the other, far more promising research project opportunity I had available. And I'm sure none of this was helped by the fact that I was balancing this fulltime research gig, with a demanding medical school class, study for the MCAT and a family life. But I wanted so much to work with patients in the cancer clinic and get on with this med school process, that I ignored what was best for me. Never again is all I can say about that, NEVER again!

Dream Deferred???

It seems like for the past year in a half or so that every time I put what I think is a good plan to get ready for the MCAT, SOMETHING comes up. I'm VERY pleased with my practice scores in verbal and most of the BS section, with the Verbal section consistently in the double digits for the first time ever. But this is my thing. I'm not going to blow my opportunity at a possible 30+ score because I took the exam before I was ready and I accept that most people wouldn't be so adamant about getting a certain score. But the path the med school is an individual thing and in the end people have to do what they are comfortable with. However, when this type of thing keeps coming up, the immediate questions I ask myself is am I too distracted in my current life to make pursing an MD/PhD a realistic goal. Well see, these days I'm taking my career one semester at a time.

My latest MCAT delay is courtesy of my new research project, which has an unchangeable due date of 9/2/07. This the same research project I was supposed to start on in January and because this area is where I'm likely going to focus my career, I can't afford to loose such great current and future contact by delaying it again. As for my old research project, as much as I love working with patients, I know I'll have to let it go soon or else I'll find myself once again in the all too familiar position of having too much on my plate to handle my MCAT business. So in the interest of putting my MCAT on the front burner so to speak, I'll be resigning that position in 2 weeks.

Family life, MCAT prep, a grad course in Pharm, volunteer work in breast cancer, and 1 research project. That sounds like MORE than enough for anyone for a Fall semester!

"You will never be a Scientist or a Doctor"

I made the decision to change the title of my blog because I think my story could possibly give hope to someone else. And it's a story I told to students I used to tutor in classes I flunked and my students in the inner city middle school and high student where I used to teach.

Those fateful words were spoken to me by Dr.M Zerner while I was a premed student at the University of Florida taking Chemistry and they literally haunted me EVERY time I took a science test for YEARS. What he should have said was that "if you don't get you act together, you'll flunk out" or my favorite having tutored students in college, "what do you need to perform better in my class". Ironically, I wasn't the only student, black that is, that he said something similar too, but I didn't have the support needed to overcome this. I also didn't have the study skills or motivation either.

My plan after finishing graduate school near the top of my class was to show up at his office door with a copy of my diploma but by then, he was ill with colon cancer. Terminal colon cancer, so when he died shortly thereafter, I felt absolutely nothing. I just wondered how many other lives he negatively affected during his time here on earth.

Moving on, I've been under the weather lately thanks to a flare up of my asthma. Of course when your office is contaminated with mold and the ozone levels are high outside, it's almost impossible not to have a flare up. Clearly, things in this research gig aren't working out, a fact I've known since I as told to access patient data illegally which I didn't do. Well, it's all good. I was supposed to start my other research gig in my own department (pharmacology) this month anyway and I can't wait to get there! I LOVE doing research, designing experiments, reading journal articles, ect.

So thanks to being under the weather, my MCAT prep is VERY far behind. But since I'm going to be out until I get the asthma under control, I should be able to get caught up. Sometimes I think I don't function unless my back is against the wall, a habit I have to get under control. But I guess some people are adrenaline junkies!

Medical School?

There are very few times in my life where I've questioned my desire to become a physician......until I completed this med biochem class. I have an MS in Chemistry with a specialization in Biochemistry completed in 1999, still this class managed to challenge me in ways that seemed waaayyy over the top. So in a med biochem class, I ask myself what is the medical relevance of knowing which carbons of estrogen have OH groups? I dunno why, but questions like these seem like such bullshit and I guess at 40 years old, I'm not in the mood these days for bullshit. The thing is that a question like this makes a lot more sense to me for a graduate class where things like structure become important. But having taken many hours of various types of biochemistry classes at 6 different universities, I have never ever been asked where the freakin OH groups on estrogen or any other steroid are located!!!!

OK, enough of that, I have to admit to having a moment where I said to myself that a PhD will have to be enough for me. Interestingly, I never considered Pharmacology for a doctoral program but I'm so glad I did. My department while having tedious moments like everything else in life, is a perfect fit for me! The academic support, research opportunities, faculty, are all great!

The one good thing I can say about my med biochem experience is that MCAT studying has become a breeze. I probably mentioned that my exams were structured in USMLE style which apparently means learning how to pick the best answer on a multiple choice test where more than one answer is correct and where there are 5 answers to choose from. The MCAT so far isn't administered like that (thankfully, there seems to only be 1 right answer), but I can certainly see that changing having already seen the MCAT change from an exam of discrete questions only to the mainly passage style exam seen today.

With that, I'd better get back to work!