Archive | January, 2010

Lunch with Alex

On Monday I had lunch with Alex Shipillo, a good friend of mine who is very smart, driven, and talented, and whom I always have good discussions with and learn a lot from. The funny thing about my friendship with Alex is that I had talked with him and formed a friendship before we had even met in person (no, it wasn’t E-harmony).

Alex and I both attended Shad Valley the same summer, but at different programs, but one of his best friends attended Shad Valley at McMaster with me. We found each other on Facebook, discovered we had a lot of common interests, and began chatting and sharing ideas.

Since the start of this year, Alex has been the President of Impact – Canada’s largest student-run entrepreneurship group. The funny thing is that it was I, a few years ago, who got Alex in contact with Kunal Gupta, the founder of Impact, after not really even knowing Kunal (I had just met him briefly the week before). But it seemed like a good person for Alex to contact. Funny how things turn out. (Or just my way of reminding Alex that he is in debt to my for life. Just kidding though, as Alex is talented enough to have gotten to where he is on his own, I’m sure).

At lunch, we started off by catching up with how each other was doing. I shared with him my progress with a project I was working on (and one you will all soon learn about).

But the biggest thing we talked about was basically about turning my life around and being more productive. I think I don’t come off that way, but I am super, super lazy and am very unproductive. Really, I am. I was very busy in high school and kept myself occupied with many cool things, but since undergrad, I have gotten very lazy. I think it’s partially due to my interests changing (and not finding things that really stimulate me) and partially due to my being way to lazy/burned out to take initiative. I also think it’s because I like instant satisfaction, and in the real world, you really got to put in the work and effort before you reap the rewards, and I struggle with that.

One key thing Alex talked to me about was developing better habits. He told me that if I could pick up a habit and perform it 21 days in a row, it would likely stick. So my plan is to pick up a new habit every 7 days, and hopefully after 21 days of performing each habit, it’ll stick. And I’ll slowly pile on new and improved habits that will become a part of my everyday life.

So the first habit I’ve decided to pick up is getting at least 7.5 hours of sleep every night. To be fair, I already broke this habit last night (in my defense, I was studying for my Determinants of Community Health Exam today). Hopefully I won’t break it again for a long time. Some future habits I’m thinking about picking up include a small bit of daily studying, daily workouts, regular productivity with my blogging, etc.

I feel really unproductive a lot of the time, and hopefully this will help.

Oh yeah, big changes coming – like I’ve been mentioning for a long time, but things are finally ready. MedHopeful is moving onto bigger and better things. More to come in my next post.

What’s up with premed altruism and nobility?

As I have mentioned many times before, I feel like our education system was developed with altruism and nobility at its core. I have seen it all the way from elementary school to undergraduate university (though obviously much less so at higher levels at education). While I think it’s nice that we’re taught to do “good” things, I think it is very problematic when this obsession with an ideal world clouds our ability to think rationally and critically. One of the most common examples I remember is being taught over and over again that “desiring money makes you a bad person”, etc. I don’t want to talk about money today because that’s a big topic I want to save for another day, but suffice to say, I think making simplistic statements like “desiring money makes you a bad person” is pretty ridiculous and dangerous, especially at a time when we should be helping young people to think instead of shoving ridiculous statements with no context down their throats. I’ll just stop here with the whole money thing and say that if you’re going to judge someone, judge them based on not just how they use money, but also realize that there is diversity in personal preference regarding luxury and even diversity in how that relates to our moral obligations to share with others.

I am not saying altruism is a bad thing. Being unselfish and serving others is something I highly respect and value, and is an important quality we all need to have at one point or another, particularly in the medical profession. It does become problematic, however, when you start taking it to the extreme and believing that only altruism is good and selfishness is bad in everything.

We all need to be selfish at some point, and anyone who denies ever being selfish needs a reality check. If you’re reading my blog right now (and I’m assuming because you want to and find enjoyment/value in it), I dare you to ask yourself whether this isn’t a selfish act considering that you could be out volunteering or cleaning up the park or something more altruistic. If you agree with me that we can’t be altruistic all the time (or that even if we could, it’s unhealthy), then let’s keep going forward. Clearly, there are times when altruism isn’t in our best interests and it has nothing to do with being a good or bad person – sometimes it’s just a choice.

Altruism can be good and all, but how altruistic we are and when we are is going to be situation dependent. Even doctors need to be selfish and take care of themselves – they need to go home, see their families, rest, etc. A stressed out, tired, unhappy doctor is not going to be good for his or her patients. Balance is important.

Premed Altruism

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