Charlie goes to Medical School

I have two or three posts written, but haven’t had time to clean them up. Will try to sit down and clean them up before the weekend is through.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

So, I’m actually making a little bit of money on the blog.  I feel like I should disclose this fact even though I’m not even close to breaking even with hosting costs…especially given the fact that Google puts your money in hock until you break the “payment threshold”.

Or to put it another way: “We aren’t paying you until it is worth the stamp.”

The reason that this has come to light is because Google has decided that it needs my tax information for the amount of money that I have earned (which doesn’t even cover the .com domain).  Sadly it is not because I am reaching my threshold…it is very far away.  I think they are just checking because of the end of the year.

In light of all this, I have set a resolution for next year.  If I hit the threshold and that glorious check shows up, I’ll actually get close to breaking even on the site.  So, for 2010, I’m going to try to get my money from Google.

So tell your friends, Charliemedschool.com.

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Hey, I just spammed a bunch of people about my facebook page which links to this site, so I wanted to welcome anyone that showed up.

This is my blog.  The post on FaceBook says it all, really.  I’m writing this blog to document my process of going to medical school.  I originally started doing it to keep focus while applying to schools, but it has become a way to let people know what I’m up to and hopefully reach out to any premed students who would be interested in the process.

I am posting here anonymously, so if you do know me please don’t give me any full name shout-outs.  Otherwise, leave a comment (they get moderated, so there is a delay) to say hey or subscribe to my RSS feed or whatever.  I’ll also be announcing some other social media integration later, once I work out the kinks.

Again welcome to Charlie goes to Medical School and thanks for stopping by.  Don’t for get to fan the FaceBook page if you don’t mind.

So I got a comment on my about page which I am deleting.  The only reason that I am deleting it because I thought I had turned off the discussion on my pages to begin with, but I do not want to dodge the question.

why so much anonymity, you are not doing any crime by pasting the matter on this blog and on twitter. You should be bold and social with your real identity. So who are you? what is your name and where is your snapshot? What can you contribute by this blog to the world? -dishant

I did put some of this in the About and Blog Policy pages, but looking back at those pages I’m not sure that I did a good job of explaining the decision.

To start out with, I just wanted to publish and maintain the blog anonymously.  I’ve seen a ton of bloggers doing this and then get stressed and quit once their identity was outed by others.  If I were to write as a career, I would feel differently.  However, the name that I am hoping to make for myself is in medicine, not in talking about satchels for my ten-speed.

This blog is supposed to be about my personal experiences.  I will hopefully feel a little more honest about discussing my personal process of going to medical school if I am posting anonymously.  I don’t think it would hurt my future career to discuss any issues that I have during the process, but I do want to feel completely free to share them.

I also want to make sure that I do not represent anyone else with the blog.  In the past, I have worked for companies that have insisted that employee’s blogs not include anything which could be misconstrued as representing the company instead of the blogger.

Through the process of becoming a doctor, I will be putting myself into the hands of several institutions.  I will not be posting anything in this blog that would bring any harm or discredit to the institutions that I will be working with or for.  However, the easiest way to provide assurance is to also maintain the blog anonymously.  Sometimes, just posting as yourself is enough to link you to the places that you work, and the views expressed here are meant to be mine alone.

Additionally, down the road I also will be dealing with patients for whom privacy is mandated by law.  I will not be discussing patients on the blog at all, but maintaining my own anonymity provides another layer of protection for the people that I will interact with in my career.

I’m going to go ahead and say that one again: I am not going to be discussing patients at all.

I know that posting anonymously on the internet can have negative connotations, but for right now I think it is the best thing to do.  Especially since privacy is not something that is easily gotten back once you no longer have it.  I am not going to be going to any great lengths to protect my privacy.  I will not be posting anything on here that would cause anyone to want to track me down and if anyone does try to out me I will simply deny it.  I am telling people that I know about the blog and asking them to pass it on to prospective medical students or people in the field, but I am also asking them to respect my privacy.

I do think that it would be very interesting to start out my new career being able to say to my classmates that I am publishing a blog, but that is just not the approach I am taking with this.  Maybe someday I will go ahead and tell people who I am, but really the blog is more about the process than about me.  For now, I’m just going to be “Charlie” to all my readers out there.

If you run a blog or read them, chances are you’ve considered using or at least heard of WordPress.  This week on Revision 3’s Tekzilla, Veronica Belmont interviewed Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of the WordPress.  If you are curious at all about WordPress, this interview is worth a look.

If you don’t know what WordPress is, then you’ve obviously not made it down to the footer on this website.

Well, I’m about to start sending this blog out to people, so if you are one of our newcomers then welcome to the blog.  So far, I’ve only sent this out to a handful of people to ask for advice and opinions.

This is an anonymous blog that I am writing about going to medical school.  I have two real goals with this blog.  The first is to keep friends who are interested updated on what I am working on in med school and how things are going.  The second is to produce a blog detailing the process of getting into and going to medical school that a prospective medical student would find valuable.

Medical school will be starting for me later this summer, with orientation and the move occurring a bit earlier.  Until then I will be updating the blog daily.  Once school starts, I’ll be documenting less frequently, but I would like to make a habit of a Monday, Wednesday, Friday update with an extra on the weekend.  However, we’ll have to see how that works out.  I don’t know where exactly the blog is going or how long I will be able to keep it up.  I’d like to at least try to update through my third and fourth year.

I’ve put up a number of posts already to give people an idea of what the blog is about.  So far I’ve written some about some medical diseases and resources for learning about medicine, the process of going to school, some of the work that I was doing for my undergrad classes, and some general medicine-related stuff.  I haven’t really discussed the application process, but I will be looking back at that.

There are some pages that talk about me and the blog.  They also explain why I’m trying to keep this anonymous, so please don’t disclose personal details in the comments.  However, I’m sure everyone understands the important of privacy on the internet.  As far as any random person who reads this, my name is “Charlie”.

So swing back through the back catalog of posts, add the RSS feed, keep checking the site for updates, discuss things in comments (or just say hey).  If you happen to know someone thinking about medical school or interested in the field, let them know about the blog.

I was thinking about dropping the blog tomorrow, but I won’t be around to respond to comments and such.  Now I’m thinking monday.  I want to get a good post about why I want to be a doctor and a story so far post.  I’ll also want to get a couple of good informational posts (I may post my paper on the TB article we had to read in Microbio…or an excerpt).

Yeah.  That sounds like a plan.  I’ll write a bunch this weekend and launch Monday.

Tomorrow I have a tour of a local research facility with my Microbio class and later in the evening Wife and I are doing couple stuff.  Good times.

There may be a day or two lag before I get the posts up for the launch.  But yeah.  Monday.

O hai.

O...Hai!

We had our first spam today.  Unfortunately the author of Spam Karma has decided to take a pass on development and has opened development to the community at large.  However, we here at the charlie med school blog have started using Akismet which is the standard WP spam tool (comes preloaded).  Akismet caught the spam with no problem and popped it up on the dashboard.

Good job, akismet.  Now then, I’m going to go lick myself.

Well, that settles that.  I’ve got updates to links coming, but that is pretty minor….

Then I have to put ads on this…you guys are responsible for my diet coke money.

Welcome to the reboot of Charlie goes to Medical School. If you are a returning user, this is a complete wordpress reinstall, so you will need to setup your comment account again (or however that works).

If you are a new user, please disregard this.  The point of the reboot and reinstall is to keep this thing anonymous.  I’m not really afraid of being discovered or anything, and don’t really care too much about how people think about me.  The purpose of the anonymity is that discussion of the medical field is sensitive by its very nature.  Staying anonymous will not allow me to discuss patients openly or for that matter the institutions that I will be learning/working at.  Instead it will be another layer of protection for those entities.  The old blog was also anonymous, but the reboot is helping me distance a little bit.  To sum up: even if you know me, you don’t know me.

What’s up with the blog? Last winter, I was getting a little lost in the forest while looking at all the trees.  The idea came to me that a blog detailing the process of getting into medical school would be fascinating for peope interested in what I am doing as well as those who might be interested in med school in general.  Additionally it would serve as a journal that would help me explore medical related topics while working towards a mindful focus of my new career.

Who are you? Well, I’ll get to that, but the story so far.  I’m a second career medical student who is matriculating in the fall.  I began this process over two years ago when I was looking for a career change and someone suggested medicine to me.  I started volunteering, and immediately I could tell that medicine was for me.  So, the following fall I enrolled in a local state university (who will be getting a new psuedonym, I never liked the old one) in order to take some prerequisite and highly recommended courses.  One year into the coursework I took the MCAT and applied to a number of schools.  After a few interviews and a few months of sweating by the email inbox, I received an acceptance to medical school.  I will be matriculating later this summer.

I am a second career medical student with a background in computers.  I am married to a beautiful woman who has been goodly enough to follow along with me on this crazy adventure.  When I am not studying, I am usually either toying around with computers or cooking.