Happy New Year

Chuc mung nam moi! To all that may not know, today marks the beginning of the year of the pig. I hope Shaefer and Davis are having a good time celebrating the new year in the homeland, it should be a blast. There is really not much to do out here in North Carolina for Vietnamese/Chinese new year (They should just lump it together as Asian New Year), so I decided that I would go to the Duke vs. GTech game instead. Obviously since my prior prediction of the Husky's game was erroneus, I decided that I would just keep my mouth shut in deciding beforehand who might win this game. It was somewhat of an interesting game to attend. It was one of the few games in the last 11 years that the Bluedevils weren't ranked in the top 25. The other game was earlier on this week against Boston College. Go figure...I arrive at Duke and they lose four games in a row to get dropped out of the top 25. More importantly though, was that it was Coach K's 700th win. He has been at Duke for 27 years! Longer than I have been alive. Most people didn't realize it until the end of the game, amidst the mad rush to get out, the announcer halted everyone for an important message, to present coach K with the game ball for his 700th win.

The game itself was a great experience to have. I went with McCarthy since Uhlman and Devo were too busy studying for their test on Monday. We crowded into the grad student section about 8 rows back from the basket. The entire game consisted of nonstop cheers. A few consisting of, or ending with, "eat shit," but most of those were directed at North Carolina...even though we weren't playing them?!?! Who knows...probably for the same reason that most of our cheers involve a "fuck wazzu." The atmosphere was great to be a part of. Cameron indoor isn't that big, and when all the ticket holders are seated, they let in all the standby fans in for free to completely fill the house.

Game time

I am going to call it now before the game starts: UW 76 - Pitt 72. The loss to Washington St. still pisses me off, I think we could have won the game if it wasn't for Dentmon. We should be able to pull this one off if Dentmon and Appleby can play with out sucking. Anyways, I'm headed to watch the game with Uhlman and McCarthy at a friend's house, so I thought I would just throw out the wild prediction.

The education that we receive

Today I got a chance to talk with Victor, a radiology resident from Madrid, Spain. He is spending the last three months of his medical education over here in the states learning radiology from the physicians at Duke. We had some down time today so I talked to him about several things, including trying to get some advice for my Europe trip after graduation. I figured that because he's from Spain, he has probably traveled to Italy, Switzerland and Germany....the places I plan on going. Unfortunately, it appears he mainly stays within the confines of Spain. Strangely enough, when I asked Gauthier about Europe, for someone that grew up in Madrid, he said the exact same thing. You would think living that close to each other you would spend time exploring...but maybe that's just an American thing. Luckily when I mentioned the possibility of going to Ibiza (with little Shader) his eyes lit up, and he insisted that he get a chance to write up some great clubs and beaches to go to while I am there. Of course I couldn't refuse. I tried throwing around Schaefer's name too, since it's a household European name by now, but Victor doesn't pay much attention to poker, so it was useless.

After I tried to get some traveling tips and ideas from him, I decided to ask about the medical education process in Spain. It is very different from how things are set up here. In Spain, right after highschool, you take a standardized test to get into medical school, this counts for 50% of your acceptance criteria, the other 50% coming from your grades. The medical schools as well as law schools all function like this, with no intervening "undergraduate" requirements inbetween. These grad level courses are also public institutions, with the tuition being roughly about $500 a credit, which is basically nothing in comparison to what we pay in the US. After 6 years of medical school, you take another standardized test, this time it counts for 75% of your acceptence criteria to get into a residency program, the other 25% again from your grades. With these results, they rank you in order (all the medical students in the country) and you take turns choosing what specialty and where you want to go. Once the specialty or residency position fills up, you are out of luck.

I wonder if that system is any better than the one we have in the US. We also take standardized tests, and our grades are utilized, to get us into college, but this is just to get into an undergraduate college. Again you take more tests, the MCATs or the LSATs, count the grades, and throw in the interview and essay, and you have the graduate level entrance. Is that really necessary. It seems like in other countries, people know what they want at an earlier age. They decide their careers by the time they are done with highschool. In the US, we have 5th year seniors in college still "undecided" of their majors. Why is this so different? Is it the quality? India is very similar in having highschool graduates take exams and go straight into medical school. They have some of the best physicians and engineers in the world.

Is it then our culture? I say all the time, that I wouldn't give up college and that it is where I have grown up the most. It also wasn't until college that I decided on what I wanted to do. But would that change, if there were greater pressure to decide earlier?

In these other countries they are often into the working world helping, treating, serving before they are 30. Here in the US we seem to place an added emphasis on more and more education. At first all you needed was a highschool diploma, then you needed a college degree and then a masters. Even with orthopedic surgery, you need to specialize now in order to differentiate yourself from the rest. Why have we placed such an emphasis on spending so much time to receive what people consider "a better education?"

It's official!

Today my future became clearer, at least for the next 5 years. Today was the osteopathic match for intern/residency programs. I opened my e-mail today to this:


"To: JIMMY B. DANG -
This message provides you with your Match result for the AOA Intern/Resident Registration Program for positions beginning in 2007.
Congratulations!
You have been matched to:
Institution: OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY MED CTR
Program: CMB:T/ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY""

So it looks like I'll be staying out in the midwest for 5 more years, but you can count on me coming back to the NW as soon as I'm finished. Now it's on to house/condo searching...anyone have $125,000 to loan me?!?

North Carolina

So I lied about blogging about NY last week. I was lazy. I will do it sometime soon, but I just started my rotation today at Duke. I am doing a month in Musculoskeletal Radiology to hone my skills of reading plain films and MRIs. So far it has been really good, there is lots to see and many good lectures to take part in. I lucked out and arrived the same week they have a week long lecture series on Musculoskeletal MRI put on as continuning medical education (CME) credits for local physicians. Being a student, I pay nothing for the lectures, I just get to sit and absorb. I am very impressed so far; Duke has an amazing medical centerwith over 800 beds.
It is definitely nice to be out here with some familiar faces. I'm staying with Devo at his place this month. Last night when I got in, we went to Uhlman and McCarthy's place to watch the superbowl. It was great to see them, and I'm sure I'll be spending much more time with them soon. Not too many plans so far but to attend as many bball games as possible and explore North Carolina. I've got one game lined up, since Devo managed to round up two tickets to the Duke/Wake game. We have other plans to go to Raleigh and see a NCState game and maybe a UNC game in Chapel Hill. Just the kind of things I need to do to prepare for March Madness. We might even throw in a trip to D.C. one of these weekends and maybe even the Kritsonis can come down from his lair in Virginia Beach. That's all for now, another update soon. I promise...really....I do.