Reflecting (more like stressing)

Junior year.  It's been tough and crazy.  It's amazing how much of your life seems to depend on these years of high school.  I can't believe that just next school year...really just about another 5 months...college apps will need to be filled and everything I've done in high school will be evaluated.  How am I supposed to compete with super geniuses?  How am I supposed to compete with people who have achieved so much more than me?  How could I be better compared to everyone else?  Some people say that your life does not depends entirely on getting into an amazing college, but how can it not?  Why would a CEO hire you if someone else has gone to a better ranked college?  Even if you have a natural talent or are more suited for the job, a better ranking is simply a better ranking.  I remember my father telling me that when he was going through job applications, he would simply skip over anyone who went to San Jose State.  Why should he hire them when he had someone from a UC applying?  "Even if you don't get into the college you wanted to get into now, you can go to community college and apply later".  But that just means you're in college for a longer period of time.  You have set back your life by at least another two years.  So much can happen in two years...
I don't feel ready to go to college.  I don't feel prepared to head out into the real world.  I don't feel excited that I could leave home.  I just feel anxious and worried.  Because by the time college is over, I'm supposed to be an adult.  I've never thought of myself as weak, not mentally nor physically, but how am I supposed to take up the responsibilities of an adult?  Is it because I'm still young, or is this a sign that the medical field is really not for me?
What even happened to junior year?  I feel like it passed so quickly.  I honestly still  feel like I'm flailing to survive my physics class; how did I never grasp it?  Sure some of the days in the weeks seemed to pass by slowly, but overall...what happened to the year?  Was I not just picking out notebooks to use for each class?  Now I'm here with the covers of my notebooks falling off and pages full of concepts that I hardly remember. 
I don't want to be a senior.  I don't want to have a year left to figure out what I'm doing - wait, I don't even have that.  I may be excited for summer, but I don't want high school to end.  I don't want high school and all its comforts and familiarity to be gone.  I got high school.  I understood how to get by (sort of).  I suppose I have another year to prepare myself for something that I don't know how to prepare for though.

Differences Between Strains, Sprains, Fractures, and Breaks

Recently I fractured my wrist, I didn't even realize that I had been hurt that badly.  I went to the doctor about a week later (after much persuasion by others) just to get it checked out.  I was then sent to an orthopedic where they had said that while the fracture was healing fine, I had torn the ligament between the main bone and smaller one.  So I ended up wearing a giant cast (a Munster cast...where your palm faces upward and the cast extends up to your elbow...part of it is cut so you can bend your elbow but nothing else can move except your fingers so you're pretty much stuck and it's horrible) for the past five weeks (which came off Friday...two days ago...yay!) all over a silly, avoidable wrist injury.  I still have to wear a brace though for another week and a half...Anyway. 
I decided to write this post about the differences between strains, sprains, fractures, and breaks.  In the case of sprains, a ligament (tissue that connects bones to joints) has been partially torn or overstretched.  On the other hand, a strain is where the tendon (tissues that connect muscle to bone) has been stretched or torn.  Bruising is often an effect of sprains, while swelling occurs with both.  Strains may incur muscle spasms.  Both may lead to surgery if severe enough.  Apparently you can get put in a cast for a severe enough sprain, which really just is horrible and irritating.  And once you get the cast off you really don't feel any better because everything is sore and stiff and still hurts from not being able to move anything for weeks and weeks.
A fracture and break are the same thing.  The bone has snapped/cracked; it's as simple (and painful) as that.  Broken is fractured, and fractured means broken. 
This seemed more like a rant than anything else.

The MCAT

The Medical College Admission Test is a necessary evil to becoming a doctor.  Months and months (not hours) of endless studying.  Four and a half hours of pure joy.  You get to pay (a base fee) of $230 to enjoy it.  It is composed of four sections - Physical Sciences (cry of despair), Verbal Reasoning, Biological Sciences, and a Voluntary Trial section (they decided to replace the Writing section this year).  Each section is graded on a 15-point scale.  Breaking it down even further goes like this:

1.  Physical Sciences
   • 70 minutes
   • 52 multiple choice questions
   • All about your math skills and how well you know physics and general chemistry
2.   Verbal Reasoning:
   
   • 60 minutes 
   • 40 multiple choice questions 
   • They're similar to the critical reading questions on the SAT/ACT
3.  Biological Sciences
   • 70 minutes
   • 52 multiple choice questions
   • All about basic biology and organic chemistry
4.  Voluntary Trial
   
   • 45 minutes
   • 32 questions
   • You apparently get rewarded with a $30 Amazon gift card (whoop-de-doo $30 to fry your brains out even more) for taking this section because it's voluntary.  It's to help the people who make the test see the worth of future questions, so it won't be scored (but you get feedback)

Because it's graded on a 15 point scale if you score a 40-43 on a section it may be changed to 11 or a 44-46 may be changed to a 12.  They do not take penalties off for wrong answers (thank goodness).  Any overall score that is 30 is pretty good and 35 is pretty amazing, but medical schools do look at what you scored on each section (so if you absolutely bombed one section they might reconsider).  On top of your score you should have gotten at least a 3.0 in college (a 3.5 is a pretty good, solid GPA), but your MCAT score is the first thing the medical schools look at when you send out your application.  Not only do medical schools look at MCAT scores and your GPA, but they look at your extracurricular activities as well - the ones you have done in college (high school counts for pretty much nothing once you get to college).  So while you're studying and dying from schoolwork, make sure to get in some community service hours and join some clubs.  All this work and testing...what absolute fun!

Inspiration

With the career presentations that just came up, I had decided to focus my attention on a specific kind of doctor and I had chosen cardiology.  When analyzing rhetoric, I found a quote from a doctor that really struck me.  It was a quote from a cardiology medical director, Douglas Pearce, "I wanted to make a difference in someone's life.  Although I like everything about medicine and it was difficult to decide, I knew I wanted to do something in critical care medicine...I didn't want to just do procedures and not see the patient again.  I wanted to be able to sit on the edge of the bed and hold a patient's hand and make a difference in their life".  Connecting with the patients and truly understanding them in order to help them is what I want.  It's exactly as he said, sitting with the patients and being the doctor that they trust; not the doctor that they are grudging to see.  To be able to be the doctor that they see more of as a friend rather than a doctor.  Even though becoming a doctor - especially a doctor who specializes in a certain field - is very rigorous, the knowledge that you have affected someone so greatly has to be absolutely fulfilling.  I still have to choose a field to specialize in...but now I think I have narrowed it to one where interaction with the patients is a major part of it.  There are so many options in life; I just hope I choose the correct ones.

The Other Colors of Green Tea

Recently I have been going through a tea phase...I have been obsessed with drinking tea, specifically green tea.  As I was drinking tea the other day, I developed a huge worry about whether or not green tea would stain my teeth.  A dentist is a type of doctor so this would not be too far off my interest in the medical field (justifying my desire to learn what exactly green tea's effects are); plus there will be the other effects that green tea has on the body, so onward~
Green tea has many great benefits that come with drinking it.  It has a lot of antioxidants (perfect during this time of the year so you don't get sick; plus it's a hot drink!), and there are even studies going on to see if green tea has an effect on cancer.  Some studies have found that drinking green tea inhibits cancer growth and reduces the risk of cancer development.  Plus green tea makes blood vessels less vulnerable to getting clogged; although of course healthy diet and exercise will always be the main help for that.  Many of these studies were taken over a long period of time though, where green tea became a regular drink in the peoples' lives.
This does not mean to go out and drink 50 cups of green tea a day.  There are still some negative effects of drinking too much of this delicious drink.  While green tea is much healthier than coffee, it surprisingly may still contain a lot of caffeine (depending on the brand).  An 8 ounce coffee cup can have 95 milligrams of caffeine, and an 8 ounce green tea cup may contain as much as 50 milligrams (drinking green tea out of a teabag has more caffeine than the leaves)!  And going back to my main concern: tea stains.
All types of tea stain your teeth; although they do not stain as much as other drinks or acidic things like lemons do, tea will still stain your teeth.  The color of the tea actually has a role on how much damage it will do - black tea is the most "acidic" of teas while green tea bends toward the more basic or alkaline side of teas.  Sweetened teas will cause much more damage than unsweetened as all the sugar drowning your teeth will cause your teeth to erode and encourage cavities.  While green tea can erode your teeth, it takes a much longer time than sweetened teas or juices.  To prevent staining, you could try rinsing your mouth with water after drinking tea or brushing your teeth at least an hour after you drink tea (to allow your natural saliva to counter its effects on your enamel).
Overall, moderation is key - as it is in many cases in life.  I love green tea but I also love my teeth so I guess I must limit myself to...a cup a day.

Rant and Types of Doctors

I'm still very upset over the fact that AP Chem was not offered as a class this year.  Ever since I decided to be a doctor, I planned out the courses I needed to take to have a head start on my medical education.  Of course, AP Chem was on that list.  After taking regular Chemistry (they didn't offer Chemistry Honors in my year...which makes me even more annoyed) and doing well in it, I wanted to take AP Chem the continuous year (this year).  But no, the school stops offering it and ruins my plans.  Instead I had to talk to the counselors and switch over the non-existent AP Chem class to an AP Physics class.  And I'm not particularly enjoying that physics class..  I suppose I should stop whining over it and move on.
I have said I want to be a doctor but I suppose it's time that I actually figure out what kind of doctor.
There are so many different types of doctors...pathologists (deals with the body), pediatricians (deals with children), optometrists (deals with eyes), neurologists (deals with the brain), dermatologists (deals with skin), and many more.  And then within those there are the surgeons, specialists, general doctors, emergency, the list can go on.  And the scary thing is that it is a necessary list.  There is not one person who can specialize in all the fields, or even two of them.  The knowledge needed for each is just too extensive.  The whole process takes so long, four years of graduate school, four years of medical, about another two years of residency, and then going into specialization.  Although nursing would take less time, I suppose it's a matter of pride for me - my family has many close family friends who are doctors and anything less than being a doctor is just not as appealing.  My pride is strange (of course my desire to become a doctor is not simply from pride).
I enjoy working with children, so being a pediatrician called to me.  I also really find it interesting to be in a research lab and discovering things in there.  But I have this preconceived notion that people in research labs usually keep to themselves, and I like talking to others and conversing.  I feel that becoming a surgeon would hold too much pressure - that's someone's life that is in your hands.  I suppose I should intern at places and shadow doctors before I seriously consider which path to take (or I might end up taking one and finding it not to my liking).  Actually being in the room and watching how things happen rather than imagining, is a much better indicator for me.
I can never seem to make up my mind.

Time and Tact

I remember walking down the hallways of the hospital and seeing so many people just sitting in their hospital beds with maybe one or two people by their bed.  How are there so many sick people in the world?  It was rather humorous that when I arrived at my dad's room, he would always have at least two or three people by his bed visiting.  When he was in UCLA, you would have to call in in order to go to his room because he was in ICU and all the nurses not only knew my dad's case in and out but also knew the fact that he had so many visitors and people who cared for him. The head doctors would check up on my dad every so often and I remember when the head surgeon was telling him that he would try to fit my dad's surgery into his schedule - right in between a transplant and an emergency case.  To me it seems as though doctors either have a lot of time for themselves or no time at all.  Many of my parents' close friends are doctors yet they still are able to spend a lot of time with us.  It is possibly because they have already been in their fields for quite some time but I'm not sure.  I know I want to help people get better, but I also know that I do not want to be swamped with an incredible amount of work. 
Another thing that I worry about is bedside manners.  Recently, I was talking with one of my father's friends and he was telling me about how his brother had to have his pancreas removed.  The doctors had pulled him (the friend) and his mother out of the room during the surgery to tell them that the brother would not make it - although he has been alive now for over twenty years.  How are you supposed to have any tact in saying something like that?  When my dad was going through all that was happening to him, one of the doctors had absolutely no tact with his bedside manners.  As they were carting my dad off to one of his procedures, one of the first things the doctor bluntly told us was: "He may die".  Sure we want to know all the possible side effects but to say it that bluntly and without any sympathy was just horrible.  Needless to say we were all in tears and stressed out of our minds.  How do you prevent that?  Being a doctor you affect so many peoples' lives, not just the patients but also their families and friends.