Observation.

I have two big tests coming up this week, one in Microbiology and the other in Quantitative Analysis. So I will be studying a lot for those in these next few days. Today a group of us went to a pre-med conference to get a little head's up on what's going on.

We received a lot of advice on the admission's process, the MCAT, and on financing a medical education. The panel really helped clear lots of misconceptions and questions I always had about the surgical profession. I especially liked that the panelists addressed how rapidly the field is changing, and how machines will play that role. I guess a lot of the other students attending were freshmen.

I started to nod off during the financing part. I'm pretty much set there.

It's been really cold out here. To be honest, I'm happy to be going back to Southern California for the holidays. Fair-weather fan… i guess that’s what I am… I guess I’m ok with it. I only play golf when the sun is shining… I love Palo Alto, but I love the sun more.

Anyway, I've been meeting a lot of new people here. And human observation has become an addiction. Over here, it seems most kids have nothing meaningful to do except go to college. They’re raised in a very artificial setting, where parents hold very lax standards on life skills (like cooking, cleaning up, folding laundry) yet very harsh standards regarding the college application machine crank. For example, my roommate's sister had a 4.0 GPA throughout h.s, but now is having trouble at Berkeley because she doesn’t know how to operate a microwave. While she is certainly an outlier, I’m not sure how I feel about having to worry that the top echelon of America’s youth don’t know how to use a microwave.

My roommate last year used to spend all of his time reading entreprenuer books to build up Karma points for the eventual startup he was going to pitch (although he hasn’t learned the program just yet). A lot of my friends who are interested in startups have joined “startup consulting clubs” or by joining a fraternity. How is joining a fraternity or trolling a forum going to help you in something that doesn’t involve drinking or reigniting the chicken-egg problem?

There's no Godfather, and there's no Will Ferrell.

As a Stanford student, I’ve come to the humble understanding that probably everyone here is more intelligent and talented than I am. And of course, they all apply their incredible talents to do different things. A kid I met yesterday has been memorizing drink recipes and practicing card tricks so that he can become a bartender. Another spends her free time volunteering for the ER and at the Liver Center so she can understand surgery stuff and become a doctor. There’s a kid who’s working part time to build his own video game and a guy that reads OChem textbooks for fun to be a synthetic biologist.
I have all kinds of respect for the aforementioned people because they seem to realize that school by itself isn’t enough to get you to where you want to be. Everyone on that list has a plan, and they know that to get to that plan they’ll have to free ball it and do a little bit outside and extra rather than keep following the herd.
See, when I'm not studying or in class...that is what I'm doing. Studying people. And now obviously, blogging about it. Horrible isn't it? I have a lot of trouble finding useful things to do with my low-energy time. If I’m tired, I’m not going to want to call people to chat or get out. I’m not able to concentrate enough to get any serious work done. On the flip side of this theory, I believe that any time I’m spending where I’m not bored isn’t wasted time. I consider all interactions with people I like well-spent time and all time sleeping well spent time. I even consider the occasional time that I spend being depressed or angry well-spent time. I’d like to think that any time I spend doing something is time I’ve spent becoming a more complete person in some measurable way. Sure, not everything I spend time doing helps me become that person in the same measurable quantity, but I’m not ruthless enough to optimize my time by cutting out parts of my life that I really enjoy.
WOW. Does anyone understand this?

Well, I'm out. I hope your head isn't spinning.


-Carl