Cancel The Chickens

[Sticks]

Hello, unlike most introductory paragraphs, this isn’t going to start by telling you that I’ve been reading New Media Medicine for a while, and have decided to start a blog, yaddah yaddah.

No.

That would be lying.

What’s actually happened, is that I found this website in 2009, sometime in the middle of April, and I’ve been dipping around in space-time, commenting on threads at moments where I feel my input is necessary. If you are reading this before the Great Washing-Machine Catastrophe has happened, and you live in Gravesend, make sure you’re out of the house on the 7th of February.





If you are affected by any of the issues raised by this image, please scroll down as soon as possible.



A bit about me:

Vital stati-Sticks: (*groan*) …

Age:21
Memory: 6GB (*groan*)
Aims in life: Doctor and medical journalist.
Aim in life aged 7:Casino owner
Alternative career: Composer/music technophile
If everything goes horribly wrong: Chemist.
Previous career: Rider
Prior to that: Office junior.
Prior to that: School.
Famous moments:
-Going through a Mcdonald’s ‘drive thru’ on a horse.
-Going through a small shopping arcade on a horse.
-Ranting about Margaret Thatcher on a hor - I mean, in a local paper.

To convince you all that I am capable of taking things seriously, I'll post some of my biology class work for your viewing pleasure: 'Abdominal Dissection of rattus Rattus'. Anyone else who has done AQA Biology 1, will know that it's marked out of six for accuracy:

[Sticks]

"Hello. You have reached the Department of Useless Statistics, Sociology Division, Sticks' Brain Inc. If you are homework and you require completion, please hold until every other possibillity has been explored."


*Buffering live thought stream*

.... uy's got such an annoying voice. I wonder if people lisp in their inner monologue as well. Sure, I'll heat it under 'weeflux'.

Oops I'm on air. Sorry! Didn't notice.

Yes I'm being weird again, but I've just been pondering the fact that when you read, you also 'hear' as well, according to how your brain organises audio-visual associations. Interesting huh? So I practically am "on air" inside your head. Got a request? I'll type out the lyrics, but you'll need to do the music.

People who read science books (If you're drunk, reading aloud, or both, skip this next bit) for non personal statement padding purposes, (or personally padded porpoises) might be interested in 'This Is Your Brain On Music', by a guy called Daniel Levitin. He used to be a music producer, and is now a neuroscientist. What a guy. Originally a session musician, he explored the question 'what makes music music' so deeply that he morphed into a demon of brain analysis, and now runs a 'Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise'.

I'm dangerously absorbed in this kind of stuff right now. Earlier this year I put together a track for a cheesy Erasmus programme promotional video, using frustrating music software and a crap guitarist (me). I got into making music rather late, and have been learning how to mix and EQ things since last January by loitering around studios, making tea for people and grappling with expensive equipment while their backs were turned. Beverage provision is a vital foot-in-the-door skill that I learned in my 'down time' as an office junior for a health and safety company. I hated this job so much that I went out of my way to be ironic, and buggered off to learn how to ride racehorses. I only realised the extent to which this was unhealthy and unsafe later, but that's another story.

(I've stuck my toes in some pretty random ponds, so at some point, I will get around to writing a 'relevant' blog entry, and explain why I want to be a doctor.)

In the meantime, another toe - not my own, I've run out - will be busy twiddling more dials in hospital radio, hopefully. Healthcare and media indirectly mashed. Music aside, I want to write a short local history piece to entertain the in-patients, and to give me something to do after the Christmas/January exam-cram is over. (Note to self: E-cell E-cell E-cell)

And now for something completely different:

I’m not religious, but everything that is can be discussed in terms of cutlery:

….And through thy friends, spread the word of our lord. Spread not with a pointy knife, but with a round-ended, flexible knife that will not destroy the crumbling bread of faith. Amen.

[Sticks]

My excuse for posting twice in one day is that I’m always at a loose end on Fridays Also, it gives me a platform to ‘go off on one’ without having eyes rolled at me (now that produces a strange mental image).

Time Travel

Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all Donnie Darko on yo’ ass, I’m actually going to have a bash at answering the question ‘why a doctor, not a vet?’ Which is something I get asked regularly. (Understandably though, considering my employment history.)

About once a week, I get this strange feeling of momentary alertness. I could be doing anything, and I’ll suddenly get half a minute of heightened sensory awareness. At this point I usually go ‘I’m alive!’ and then carry on with whatever I was doing and forget about it till ‘one of those moments’ happens again.
The difference between humans and animals in respect to these moments is fundamental in the doctor vs. vet argument that raged on in my brain a couple of years ago. You might be expecting me to talk about how these ‘moments’ elevate us above animals in respect to consciousness, and anyone who is firmly set on this as true can stop reading now, because in my view, It’s the other way around. Prepare to be barraged with evidence.

Horses’ behaviour defines the evolutionary advantage of anticipation. Once an action is recognised as reoccurring at a time with a regular relationship to the sleep pattern of that individual*, then the emotion that particular action evokes is extended to include the time before the event. ‘Anticipation’ is just a word we use to describe a group of possible physiological states; each state is an emotion; dread, excitement, and so on. The advantage is that, should the event fail to occur, then the <insert species here>‘s physiological state will determine the subsequent action. Whether it’s the alleviation of fear, or the attempted demolition of a stable door by a horse expecting to be exercised.
This is stating the obvious. But in terms of transplanting the mind to a different point in time, the instinctive form of ‘removal’; anticipation, is the only kind horses and other animals are capable of. Other emotional states, grief, envy, joy, take place above the time-line, in the immediate present (I say ‘above’ because the present on a time-line is still essentially a reference point, which animals don’t have.) Since the amygdala is the oldest brain region in terms of evolution, it’s reasonable to assume that elephants are capable of mourning their dead relatives. But the death of those relatives is affecting that elephant in one context only; “Now”. This is why the purpose of veterinary medicine is of no interest to me. In fact, it only exists outside of animal sports because we are sentimental, or because our food supply is at risk of disease. I am forging a rather foggy link to time travel, but this next bit might help.

Context, drags us down. Our success as a species is largely the result of our ability to forecast the outcome of our actions, and to learn from previous mistakes. Unlike animals we can jump around between past, present and future within the confines of our skull, and this is great, except, now this is all that we do. The heightened sensory awareness that we experience occasionally is perpetually present in animals. They are permanently conscious of subtleties in their environment, where as we are asleep by comparison. Locked in our own heads. The analytic ability that has allowed us the evolutionary breakthrough of trial and error, has gone into overdrive. Go back thousands of years to a time when we were considerably more selective about which bits of information were relevant to our wellbeing, and it is possible to imagine that once, we could juggle hindsight, foresight and immediate sensory awareness without dropping any of them.

If anyone is in doubt as to the importance of the absence of time-line contexts in our lives, then ask yourself what you are doing when you ‘clear your head’ to revise for exams. If you are sitting still doing nothing but staring at a computer screen or a note pad, then just what is it you are trying to get rid of? Why does eastern mysticism (Buddhism, Taoism etc) treat the elimination of internal time travel, ‘enlightenment’, as the ultimate goal, with followers dedicating hours to emptying their minds and focusing on the immediate sensations of breathing, listening and feeling? People who’ve read ‘The Private Life of the Brain’ by Susan Greenfield will know that she goes into detail about the mechanical effects of drugs on the brain. By increasing the permeability of myelinated sections of axon, hallucinogenic drugs disperse nervous signals and connect random brain regions. This is very similar to the state of heightened sensory awareness: The brain, primed for action. Another trivial illustration is the sudden retrieval of a fact when you least expect it. You may have been trying earlier, but your brain was too clogged up with the emotional response to failure: disappointment, irritation etc - hindsight because, at the time you ‘couldn’t’ remember. Take away the time-line, and the baggage that’s preventing the answer from jumping out at you disappears.

Evolution has allowed us to function supremely as a species, but as individuals, we suck, (ever wondered what it feels like to be a bacterium?), and that is why, I want to be a doctor not a vet. Since we can’t help but analyse events in terms of past and present, the concepts of death and illness are vastly more destructive to the well being of a person than it is to a horse. This is why people holiday, adventure, drink, take drugs and meditate; to return to that pre-historic state when we relied on our senses to keep us safe.

The people that do, actually manage to balance these two conscious states are automatically labelled by the industrial world as socially behind. You can’t help it. If a tribal society has been living, unchanged, in a certain way for millennia with no sign of technological progression, such an assumption is understandable because ‘educated’ people will automatically place a society on a time-line of development.
I might be disappointed in Richard Dawkins for soiling the rationality of atheism with his incessant arguing (well done, you’ve made a great point, but seriously, calm down) but the brain’s internal time-line also digs more delightful holes in creationist theory. (If you’re bored I think Hollyoaks has started) It’s a simple point; even staunch creationists will automatically place different societies on a developmental time-line, inadvertently contradicting their own belief. It can’t be helped! Despite religion’s best efforts to impose a ‘version’ of events on our history, thanks to our own brains acting independently of the mind (again, Susan Greenfield’s book), rational thoughts are unavoidable.

I really should wrap this up. In my view, having hung around with a few of them, animals can maintain a higher state of sensory consciousness because there is no imprint of fake values imposed on them by a complex society. By fake I mean aspirations beyond what the brain expects in terms of the requirements of basic survival. We jump forwards and backwards in time, constantly processing pointless alternatives. Our mind has ‘evolved’ to expect more gratification than the brain needs. We seek it in every niggly little thing we do, and end up feeling the fulfilment failure.

Literally, they’re lucky beasts.


* The Wellcome Trust had a quality exhibition on this last year.

[Sticks]

Ooops, I forgot I started a blog! Other than having been rejected by my 1st choice St.Andrews, my application status is bleh? right now.

*waves at everyone else in the boat*

I was rummaging through my AS notes, preparing for this so called 'synoptic' paper, and came across these 'notes' on industrial enzyme technology. All through last year, I kept getting told off for doodling in class. Now, as the only person to get an A in biology at my college, I think the teacher has been forced to recognize the cartoon as an official learning method

[Sticks]

Bored of globular snowmen?

[Sticks]

I dedicate this handout to anyone who hates oxygen dissociation curves:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/2/...%20handout.doc

I dedicate this handout to anyone who loves microscopes:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/2/...icroscopes.doc


Tell me I'm not the only nerd who types up their notes?! I have a rather masochistic way of revising; I'll type up a whole topic, then delete the folder and start again. If I come across something that won't stick, I corner someone and force them to listen to me explain it. If that doesn't work, I make up a song about it. Although by this point I probably despise whatever topic it is, and people tend to be good at remembering things they really hate. For example, 17 years ago, I discovered that my best buddy had been gradually stripping my room of all my favourite sylvanian family figurines. I'm not over it Annie, I'M NOT OVER IT!

The section of unrelated topics:

The guys in my chemistry group (of 7 people) were discussing how funny it is to make cars slow down by standing on opposite pavements in a brace position, pretending to hold a rope across the road. *chuckles* ('Growing up' is a myth)

The development of the first MRI scanners was funded by british company EMI, mainly using the massive profits from the Beatles' records! 'I wanna hold your hand' might aswell be called 'I wanna scan your brain'. (I'm still reading that phono-physiology book, sooo good.)

To maintain my sanity, I'm assuming that I'll be reapplying next year. It's getting late, and I haven't heard anything from Leeds. I probably won't get into Southampton either, for the same reason that St. Andrews and now Newcastle (UKCAT = 680) rejected me: 'Your educational background does not meet our expectations'. Right, so my AS grades were a fluke? Sure, I'd love to retake all my GCSE's, but rather inconveniently, I have to eat, and fridges don't fill themselves. Bah.
Accepting defeat now is better than holding out and getting squashed later, I suppose. I've just got to stay motivated and get 'grades in hand'.

Reccommended reading for anyone holding an offer: The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: University.

Medical acronym of the week: UDI - unidentified drinking injury!

Annoying lyric of the week: 'Kids in the street drinking wine on the sidewalk' - Ladyhawke's convincing summary of Paris.


<*))><

[Sticks]

Even I'm the only one who thinks this... Woooo! Half term is over!

I go mad, literally, if I don't keep myself busy. (Reasons why I should be a doctor; No. n) So it was a mistake not to plan anything for this past week, because by the end of it I was a chuntering wreck, prone to sudden bouts of skiffle dancing every time something came on the radio with a tempo of >124 BPM. Not only that, my inner pessimist came out and smirked at my UCAS form, and my forum posts took a darker turn (as some folks on the 'Medicine;check...' thread might have noticed).

When Southampton get around to rejecting me, I'll have my set of four. The reason why I've been pretty blithe about this until last week is because this was the expected outcome; I had absolutely nothing to lose by applying this year. To be honest, there's a greater chance that a future archaeological dig at the Royal Albert Hall will discover a testicle containing the remains of billions of genocidal gametes, than there is of me getting an interview at medical school, due to what I call the 'Proletariat Scum Factor'. Kidding really, I might be a smart-arsed gypo, but there's no way anyone can tell unless they visit my house, which looks like a badly maintained electrical substation.

I'm going to dissect my application, which may be of use to people in similar quandaries, and see what the impact of 'grades in hand' will be, if any, on my chances next year.

People sensitive to low grades should look away now to avoid
psychological damage.

GCSE: AABBCCCC

(Cs include double science)

AS: AAB
That's biology, sociology and an annoying one-mark-off B for chemistry. Resit? No point. Refer to GCSE grades to see why no offers this year :P I was annoyed as my module results were 92% 100%.. then boom - 67%!

Predictions: AAA

Work experience: Highly relevant...

-2 days shadowing 2 GPs
15 hours over 3 weeks tagging along with a medical photographer (relevant? Yes.. access all areas )
-1 year St. John's ambulance (so far)
- 8 hours a week for 2 months at a care home <-- talked about this a lot in P.S.
- Months regularly visiting hospital to see a seriously ill friend.
This is important as to why I want to be a doctor, and was direct observational experience.
Just 'cause something isn't formally arranged doesn't make it less relevant!
- All the times I've dealt with accidents working with racehorses, of which there are many.

N.B: Bar the horses, I squeezed a lot of this in around a 16hr p.w. job and AS levels.

Slightly less relevant:
Crashing medical school lectures, loitering around hospitals, subjecting passing doctors to sudden interviews. (You win some, you lose some )

Relevant for non-medical reasons:

Racing - decision making, responsibility, ability to get on well with the chaviest chav and the toffyest toff. The crucial difference between sympathy and empathy.

Menial office work: I.T skills, 'soft skills' like telephone manner etc..

Extracurricular:

I'm not going there. I'll get distracted by hypercubes and end up making omni-sided planks of toast again.

Reference: My teachers put a lot of emphasis on how my GCSE's don't reflect my academic potential, but this hasn't stopped them blighting my application.


Okay, I've done what I can to get work experience in the two point five years I've known I wanted to do this. Having another year 'out' gives me the opportunity to get a proper hospital job, which can only benefit my application. What do I do during that year.. resit GCSEs?! I honestly can't compute the point of doing that if I have good A levels in the relevant subjects, and.. it's flipping expensive.

As I say up to this point, I've been rather optimistic because it didn't occur to me that It couldn't happen if I got enough work experience and the right A levels. I do believe, now, that the admissions system, even for 'GCSE friendly' uni's, is THAT rigid. My teachers suggest I plead 'extenuating circumstances'.. but I don't think 'I %$£ing hated my school' really counts.

Time to devise a strategy for my 2010 offensive. HUARRRGH!

!

[Sticks]

HOUSE!

Not the critically acclaimed t.v show we all worship, but the bingo call. I’ll throw myself on top of the 2010 reapplicant pile! I’m not too sad, because as I say, I saw it coming for reasons detailed above.

I’ve got a quite a decision to make now, and I’m being forced in one direction. I’m 90% certain I’ll be taking up my reserve offer; chemistry, because a) I like the subject and the university, but more significantly, b) come September I will be expelled from my house. What I’d rather do is get a job as a HCA, porter, etc for a year, but the job market is dead in my area for low qualified positions. There is no point looking now because I can’t apply, and nothing is coming up part time that does not involve distributing Avon catalogues in a car I don’t have. Speaking of HCAs, a friend of mine has recently moved to be with her boyfriend and applied for the job despite completing training as a ‘nurse cadet’.She didn’t get it, apparently there were over 100 applications! (Lesson: follow the work, not the penii.)
So. I can’t gamble on the hope that I’ll find a job (and a place to rent) after June exams, and I can’t stay at home... which leaves university as the only viable alternative. I’m definitely going to reapply this year, but I’m really concerned that applying having just started a different course looks awful. As for my chosen chemistry department, I love you, but staying with you just isn’t true to my feelings *sniff* Graduate entry? No, see previous remark.

My tutors at college, nice people that they are, shrug their shoulders and state the obvious (‘It’s your decision’ noooo..) and the usual brush-off responses from admissions departments shed no light, apart from one which recommended I ‘used my gap year wisely’.
In other words, I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone else who has been in this situation, or knows of someone that has!

A few people have asked me why I can’t stay at home. That’s rather complicated. I call it Munchausen’s of abnormal duration, slight exaggeration :P I can deal with it, but once, I came home at the weekend while on 9 week residential course, to find my stuff in the garage and a hungarian plasterer in my room.
This parent is not, in fact, aware of my ambitions to study medicine. I find it liberating to be chasing my ambitions free of criticism, so that’s how it will stay!

On a more buoyant note, whoever marks my chemistry investigation is going to be alarmed at the amount of extra-curricular graphic design. Sooo fun. Hopefully the science is fine. Erk!

[Sticks]

Endocrinomics?


I think this Pubmed article is so interesting it deserves some minor publicity.

Before I post the link, here's an extract from the discussion section:

'Testosterone may therefore underlie a financial variant of the “winner effect,” in which a previous win in the markets leads to androgenic priming and increased (and eventually irrational) risk taking in the next round of trading. This effect, even if confined to a small number of people, could cause financial markets to deviate from the predictions of rational choice theory.'

So essentially, male hormones accentuate boom and bust economic cycles by taking decision making to the extreme. When times are good they go wild with risk and cause a bust by taking on too much, thanks to testosterone. Cortisol levels, propelled skyward by the bust, accentuate the downturn by making the traders extremely risk averse, thus stopping them engaging in competive behaviour - prolonging the bust.

The 'winner effect' model is usually applied to animal populations e.g. a stag, high on testosterone following a successful fight, will seek to engage in more fights, patrol larger territories and thus expose itself more to predation. John Coats' study applies this to traders. A former trader himself, the idea for the study came to him after he witnessed colleagues displaying clinical signs of mania on the trading floor.

Why am I interested? I find it amusing that the answer to reducing the impact of boom and bust (something Gordon Brown claimed he had done) is to employ more female traders. Why are there so few female traders? The testosterone fuelled environment. Hah! Irony.

Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor

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Mid exam season update:

I'm having a post sociology retake high! I like the exams - where else you get marks for an actual rant - but I hate the lessons, here's why...

Me: '... so, if every country developed at the same rate we'd run out of resources faster than we're doing currently.'

Soc. teacher: 'That's nonsense, there's a whole world of resources out there, other countries develop slowly because we oppress them.'

Me: 'Well exactly, there is a whole world out there.. but only one of them! That's a finite amount of space, so what do you do when you run out of room?'

Soc. teacher: ' There's room for everyone to develop, but the people that tell you there's not are biased toward capitalism. They'll find any excuse to continue exploitation!'

Me: 'Right... So you're saying that the scientist to calculated that blah percent of the Earth's surface is land mass, only arrived at that number because he's a capitalist?!'

Soc. teacher: 'Exactly! People are always biased, that's a fact of life you are going to have to accept.' *patronising smile* 'If you read a scientific fact, you have to ask yourself where it came from.'

Me: 'So the answer to five plus three is different depending on whether you're a capitalist, a communist, etc?'

Soc. teacher:' You're starting to get it!'

Me: *flat stare*


This woman has overdosed on Orwell. Who need's common sense?!