Halloween costume ideas

Don’t be stealing them, beyotch.

I want to wear an awesome pop culture reference costume this year. So far I have:
- green-drapery lederhosen from Sound of Music
- Rick-Moranis glasses and nerd-vest (and little Audrey II) from Little Shop of Horrors
- breeches, garters, suspenders, and bow tie with no shirt and powdered body from Cabaret

Sorry, other great musicals (including Moulin Rouge!). You just don’t have any distinctive costumes for men.

I could also do a cosplay costume and totally be ready for all the anime conventions MONTHS in advance. Maybe something from Naruto, or Fullmetal Alchemist.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

The Liberal vs. Conservative Mind?

Neurophilosophy reports on a new study in Nature Neuroscience, showing that differences in performance on a Go/No-Go task, and in anterior cingulate activity during the task, were correlated with political views.

This kind of annoys me because:

1) Like many neuroscience studies, this experiment is a simple task whose relevance to real life situations has been grossly overstated. Some news sources are claiming that this shows political orientation is innate (no it’s not, sorry), or that there are liberal and conservative “cognitive styles” (What does that even mean? Just two??).

2) I proposed a similar experiment when I took Psych 1 as a freshman, and my TA made me change it! Now it’s in Nature Neuroscience. Thanks a lot, Michael Osofsky.

(Although he did give me an “A” on my revised proposal.)

A fantastic dream I had

I have to write this down before I forget. I just had a great dream about going out with some friends, and they were watching an episode of Friends that I had never seen before.

It was apparently a crossover arc between Friends and Arrested Development, where Phoebe starts dating GOB. For those of you who have seen both shows, you will recognize this as a great idea.

It also involves a dry-goods store and a Catholic nursery school that had accidentally been registered with each other’s names. And neither of them had the money or the time to change them back. So the store was called something like “A1 [something something] School for Children,” with a handmade sign underneath that said, “NO CHILDREN.”

And the nursery school was called “Nutz R Back.” I swear I am not making this up. Well, I was, but not right now as I’m writing it.

“NO TIME! There’s never any time!”

(Quick! Where’s that from?? )

This past week has been EXHAUSTING. First year was tough, but this year it seems like I have even less time than ever!

On Tuesday we had class from 9 AM until 3:30 PM, and then they wanted us all to get TB skin tests at that point (I went home and got my chest X-ray results for them). I had to make sure things were okay for the tutorial that evening. And I had to stop in to the lab where I worked this summer, to help run a subject. And it took us from 4:30 until well past 8. I went home, ate, and went to bed.

Yesterday we had class from 9 to 5. The afternoon was a weird small group discussion on pathology that seemed to be another lecture, except less organized. And from 6 to 7:30 I had a dinner meeting with the other coordinator for eQuality (the LGBTI group at the med school) to plan events. And when I got home I spent the rest of my evening working on my presentation for the tutorial tonight.

Today class started at 8:00. Thankfully we were done at noon, but I still have to get ready for tonight’s tutorial, from 5-8, and take care of some errands before then.

At least tomorrow is our retreat in Palm Springs. But I am tempted to bring study materials since I haven’t touched my textbooks yet, and I’m falling behind.

At least I still have my music:

Ok, gotta run!

Ready, set ….

[Note: This post was written yesterday but the power went out at home and I lost my internet So here it is, a day late.]

This is Labor Day weekend and I’m sitting at “home home” trying to occupy myself. I’m also trying not to go overboard with the snacking! This is why I buy so few snacks for my apartment.

Tomorrow will be the first day of our second year classes in medical school. I’m trying to get ready, looking at some of the textbooks for this coming year. It’s exciting, but also nerve-wracking, and I can’t wait for it to start already so that all this waiting can be over.

From the bit of tutoring that I’ve done for the first-years this summer (they started class a month ago), I am realizing that I barely remember anything at all from first year. And there are, what, only 8 months until Boards?? Yikes.

I’m also a tutoring coordinator, and one of the people leading eQuality (the LGBTI med student group) this year. So there’s a lot on my plate.

But overall I’m eager to start: Microbiology, Pathology, Pharmacology, and Clinical Foundations (the one where we get to make fools of ourselves in front of interview standardized patients).