What I Look For in Med Schools

It's scary how fast time creeps by when you don't pay attention to it. The AMCAS (the "common app" for medical school) will be open in less than 3 months on May 1st! There is also the TMDAS  which is for certain Texas schools that opens on the same day, but I won't be applying to any of these because of cost and there is not really a Texas school that I was DYING to apply to (that I know of). I am still in the middle of doing research on the schools that are out there so the verdict is still out on that. 

Currently my goal is to finalize my list of schools that I will be applying to. I qualified for the Financial Assistance Program (FAP) for AAMC. One great advantage of FAP is that you can apply to 15 schools for free. Hallelujah! Yeah having this will definitely really help with being in debt and having to sell your liver/other unnecessary body parts to be able to go to med school. 

I have began really looking into criteria to look for while applying to medical school to know which school is right for you. I used to think location, location, location was all the really mattered but now I know (a little bit) better. Although location is very important, there are a lot of factors that go into a medical school as well. Below are some factors that I feel are important to me, sorted loosely in order. 

1. Grading system

Did you know that there are schools out there that does Pass/Fail system which means no scary competitiveness between you and your peers?! I mean don't get me wrong, being the aggressive go-getter Christina Yang is what I am all about. But I think there is truly something special about working together with your peers who you will be with for the 4 most important years of your life and who understands exactly and perfectly everything you are going through. It might be wishful thinking, but going to a school with this system is definitely a crucial criteria for me. Not only can you hold hands and sing Kumbaya with your colleagues, it will definitely help to really not stress you out because you are not restlessly up at night attempting to study more to get that precious "A" you so desire (trust me, I understand this feeling I have definitely been there plenttyy of time). 

On the other hand, there is the traditional letter grading system eg. A, B, C, D... This system has its positives as well. You can really understand where you stand compared to the rest of your peers regarding the knowledge you obtained from the classroom. This system could tremendously motivate you study harder, more and resulting on possibly a higher Board scores. But I really think that just being in medical school and being thisclose to your life-long dream is enough motivation as it is for you to study hard and do your best. This is purely my opinion, it could be different for everyone :)

2. Location

Yes, I know that right above this list of factors I look for in medical schools I stated that location is not everything. But location is a very important aspect of attending medical school - I mean, after all this is where you are going to be for the next 1,424 days (4 years, calculating it out in days is super daunting now that I think about it...). Location not only affect your personal life during medical, you could possible meet "the one" while in med school *moment of silence to let the seriousness of the situation sink in* 

Location definitely will have a huge impact on the type of training you will receive in med school as well - are you in a metropolitan area? Are you going to be working mostly with an under-served population? Are you going to be dealing with crazy trauma cases or more day-to-day problems? All these things add up and will shape you in ways you never imagine. It is to you whether you want to be in a crowded city or in a calmer area. 

3. Curriculum 
There are to different kinds of curriculum that med schools are kind of "grouped" into - integrated and standard. Standard curiculum will be a lot like how undergraduate classes work where you have different classes for different subjects regarding the human body - chemistry, biology, biochemistry, etc. You are learning about different aspects of the body in each class. The integrated system, you learn system by system. So you will learn all the stuff you have to learn for a system (chemistry, biology, biochem, etc.) and then you move on to the next organ system. I am unsure which one is better than the other as both of these curriculum will provide you with the same information. For me personally, I think integrated would be easier for me to learn since it will help things organize better in my brain. I'm really just throwing ideas out there right now though haha. I am pretty even on this part and it is not going to be a deciding factor for me.

However,  there is another component to the curriculum - the length of the basic science. Some schools teach basic science the first 2 years and then do the clinical portions the last 2 years. Others are accelerated and have basic science for 1.5 years and giving you an extra half of an year to gain hands on experience to know which specialty you are most interested in before you have to apply to residency. I think that right now, not knowing a lot about the different specialties I think shortening the basic science year would be better for me to learn more about what is out there. There are like a hundred different specialties under radiation! And that is just the beginning of it all *gasp*

These are just some of the qualities I am looking for in medical schools but it is always evolving as I learn more and various aspects of medicine. Only you know what's best for you and every case is different. I might see a school that has nothing of what I am looking for and it may just feel right - I would pick gut feeling over a list of qualities any day. I can't wait to keep sharing my journey with you guys :)! Here is the link to a really comprehensive guide by Rice University on being a pre-med student in general and it really helped me to learn what I'm looking for in a medical school

http://www.scribd.com/doc/111627193/Rice-Premed-Student-Guide-2012

Learning From Others// Barrett Ladies' Tea

This past Sunday I attended an annual Ladies' Tea for my school. I have been going since my freshman year and have never truly appreciated its importance until this past time. The Ladies' Tea is an opportunity for the ladies of Barrett, the Honors College to come together to meet established alumni of Barrett. For the past two times I have attended this event, it was all about getting the delicious free food and having fun dressing up with my girlfriends. This past Sunday, there was a 1st year medical student at the Ladies' Tea and I had an opportunity to talk to her. It really helped me to gain perspective and light a fire under me to get my ish together and start thinking about the next step to get to med school - the application process. Her passion for medicine and the medical school that she is currently in was super infectious. It really helped me to realize what I want to look for in the medical school that I will hopefully one day attend. I have always thought that it was better to experience life for yourself and just blindly delve into your passions. But having someone who is going through the same exact thing giving you advice is going to save you from making those same mistakes. That doesn't mean you won't make any but these mistakes won't be just simple, dumb mistakes these mistakes will help further shape you as a person. Wow... just realized how cliche and cheesy that sounds. Sorry I've been writing too many scholarship applications, I've gotten used to being dramatic in my writing haha. Anyways, more about mentorship and medical school application in in another post. 


Here are some pictures of me and the girls at the Barrett Ladies' Tea - felt super Blair Waldorf-y and Upper East Side not a big deal... joking it was a HUGE deal. Enjoy!

[On me]

Dress: Q Boutique

Cardigan: Aeropostale

Necklace: Dogeared Jewelry

My Valentine's Night

As you all know... there is a huge place in my heart for all things New York City! For Valentine's night, my boyfriend and I spent it in Downtown Phoenix which is the closest thing to New York City in Arizona haha. I thought it was super cute and we restaurant-hopped for dinner and then dessert which is super New York-y to me. I had such a fun time dressing up and really taking the time out to appreciate someone who is super special to me (god... I am so cheesy it must be almost that time of the month!). Here are the pictures from our night. WARNING, I wore a super scandalous For Love & Lemons Mini Antigua Dress. It looks like I'm wearing a leotard but I promise it covers my cooch and it even had sleeves! All throughout the night and the restaurants we went to, all the girls commented because it's a super memorable type of dress since it's sheer and scandalous but it's all an illusion. Ughh.. that made no sense haha but when you see the dress you'll see what I mean! 

Dress: For Love & Lemon

[Every girl and their mom commented on my dress!]

Jacket: H&M

Handbag: Michael Kors 

Shoes: Gianni Bini

Valentine's Night Dinner

Let me start off this post by saying that I am in no definition a romantic at all, I tend to avoid Hallmark holidays like Valentine's Day. However, this past week while volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club we really delved into the positive side of this cheesy holiday - appreciating the people around us and showing that love. Anyways, this lead to me making plans with my mom to cook her dinner on Friday, hiking with my cousins on Saturday morning, and having lunch with a friend who's recently gone through a breakup on Saturday. And the night my boyfriend has planned a nice evening out. But I am really loving extending my Valentine's Day into a much more meaningful weekend. 

Here are some pictures of the dinner I made my mommy <3 I made glazed salmon, lemon garlic shrimp, pasta, and garlic toast. To top it all off I also made creme brulee in little cups, so they look like shots of deliciousness!

Lemon Garlic Spicy Shrimp

- 12 oz no-shell, deveined, tail-on medium shrimp

- 1/4 tsp salt

- a dash of pepper

- 2 tbsp unsalted butter

- 3 cloves garlic, minced

- juice from half a medium-sized lemon

- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper [more if you want a dash on top for presentation points]

- 1 tbsp chopped parsley leaves

1. Rinse the shrimp with warm water.
2. Mix in salt and pepper to your liking into the shrimp, put it aside. 
3. Heat up the butter in a pan, add in the garlic until it's golden brown and making the whole room smell amazing!
4. Add in the shrimps and cook until the shrimps have all turned pink. 
5. Add in the lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and parsley leaves. 
6. Cook for a couple more of minutes when the sauces have thickened to your liking. 
7. Ta-da!

Glazed Salmon

- 4 salmon filet

- salt and pepper for taste 

- olive oil 

- 4 tbsp honey

- 4 tbsp all-purpose flour

1. Run the salmon filet through warm water.
2. Add salt and pepper for taste to the salmon.
3. For each filet, cover it with 1 tbsp of flour and drizzle it with 1 tbsp of honey.
4. Pour enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan and wait for the oil to heat up. Sear each filet of salmon in the pan until golden brown. 
5. Pre-heat the oven to 400^o F to bake the salmon until the salmon is cooked thoroughly all the way through. 
6. Serve the pieces of healthy deliciousness! 

Pasta

- 1 Pastaroni box of Garlic & Olive Oil Vermicelli 

- 1 3/4 C. water

- 2 tbsp butter/margarine

1. This box was heaven-sent while I was stressed out trying to coordinate and cook everything! 
2. Follow the instructions on the box, you really can't go wrong with any of their products!

Garlic Toast

- 1 box of New York Texas Toast Garlic

1. My go-to for any special dinner occasion. Sooo good! No words to the describe the buttery guilt gliding down my throat as I eat this.
2. Follow the instructions on the box and you should be good to go!

These tasted sooo good! But the sugar did not melt and caramelized the way I wanted to, I will keep continue tweaking my recipe and methods. I will post my success story on here soon. 

Summer Internships!

So... it is about that time. The time that we all dread. This time of the year is always the worst for me - from scholarship applications to internships and to figuring out where I will be living next year. So much is going on right now that a lot of deadlines get by me. I just wanted to take some time to talk about summer internships :) They are a great to gain hands-on experience and network with amazing individuals in your field. 

Last summer, I got the fortunate experience to be at the Mayo Clinic as a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow. I have done a lot of research in my undergraduate career but none of them are medical-related. So I thought that the Mayo SURF Program would help me gain a lot of hands-on medical research experience. It turned out to be all of that and more. I met amazing friends who I still keep in contact with, gained an amazing mentor who put up with my ridiculousness the whole summer, and learned sooo much about cancer immunology. I can still talk your ears off about my research over the summer, but I won't haha. 

I was super naive last summer and I did not have a clue how summer internships worked at all and I was not even sure what I was signing myself up for when I applied to the Mayo SURF Program. Strangely enough, I was still super unsure about my summer plans when I applied because I did not know which MCAT test I was going to take. So after applying to the Mayo SURF Program, I realized I wanted to take the old MCAT since I would probably just start crying during the test if it took 7 hours like the new MCAT. So I stopped applying to internships after I submitted my application for the Mayo SURF Program and completely forgot about it. Fast-forward to mid-March, I was sure that I was going to spend my entire summer locked inside the house studying for my MCAT when I got a call from my would-be Mayo Mentor. The call was to let me know that I had been accepted into the program. I was a mixture of shock, excited, and confused - shock because it's the FREAKING MAYO CLINIC!, excited because it's the FREAKING MAYO CLINIC!, and confused because I was sure there were so many other much more qualified applicants to the program. 

Admittedly, this weird mixtures of feelings wore off and I got scared of what I should do. I had spent the last couple of months preparing for a summer of MCAT self-studying. I called my best friends to ask for their opinion, which did not help at all because my 2 best friends had completely different opinions. I either sacrifice my MCAT score (since accepting the internship would mean no time to study) or sacrifice a really great opportunity that could open a lot of doors for me. After weighing my options and realizing what a once in a lifetime chance doing research at the Mayo Clinic is, I decided that I would attempt to do both - Mayo Clinic SURF and MCAT. You can read all about this on my first couple of blog posts back in May talking about "The Summer that Started It All..."

This summer, I wanted to try and apply some summer internships as well but since I got a lot of research experience last summer I wanted to venture into the Public Health realm this summer. I have always been passionate about the topic of public health and growing up in an impoverished country really helped me to gain perspective in this aspect. I had a friend in the Columbia Summer Public Health Scholars Program and he had such an amazing experience and would not stop raving about how the people and the knowledge he gained really changed his view-point and deepened his appreciation for the health-care field. So, here are the summer internships I have applied to so far:

1. Columbia Public Health Scholars Program
2. MCHC/RISE-UP at the Kennedy Krieger Institute 
3. Future Public Health Leaders Program at University of Michigan

I found out these programs through applying for the Columbia program first, if you guys want to learn more about summer internships follow this link below. It is such a helpful website that one of my friends discovered! Happy summer internship applying!

http://myhealthcareernavigator.com/page/summer-internships-and-programs

Crazy Weekend in Arizona

Do you sometimes feel like your life is super jumbled and everything is happening to you?! Take that feeling and multiple it by a thousand - that is how the whole state of Arizona feels this weekend. Not only is the Superbowl being held here, but also the Phoenix Waste Management Open, UFC Fights, and countless celebrity studded parties are being hosted all around town. On top of that my best friend, Laurie, turned 21 just yesterday! So, this weekend was jam-packed with festivities and I still had to submit all of my summer internship apps (more on this in another post, I promise!). I was literally running around like a headless chicken. 

Anyways, here's a recap of my crazy weekend and the outfits I wore. Hope you guys enjoy!

On Thursday, we went to the DirectTV Fan Fest in Glendale. Jason Derulo, Alesso, Calvin Harris, and countless more were performing. Weirdly enough this whole weekend Arizona was sprinkling like crazy so we look like wet dogs but had the best time!

On Friday, I went to the Phoenix Waste Management Open to watch the exciting game of gold *sarcasm* Even though Tiger Woods was horrible, it was still super exciting to be like 5 feet away from him. 

Saturday night is my best friend's 21st birthday. Sadly I am still 20 *cries* but we went to Main Event, which is an adult Chucky Cheese's so I could still come and get turnt with the rest of the group. 

Top: Tobi.com

Pants: 7 Jeans Black pants

Shoes: Gianni Bini

Jacket: H&M

Vanilla Cupcake w/ Strawberry Whipped Marscapone Frosting

So... after the last couple of week's failure I refused to let this week's baking adventure suffer. Instead of trying a new recipe I decided it would be fun to bake an old recipe that I have baked and loved. 

I will always stand by the statement that you can never go wrong with vanilla cupcake/cake/pie/ice cream/ or anything else for that matter. This cupcake was seriously like a fluffy comforting pillow of vanilla-y goodness to make me feel like I'm competent in the kitchen again -__- 

The frosting was something I have been wanting to try again for a really really really long time. Not to be dramatic, but a couple of years ago I made a Whipped Marscapone Frosting and have been having wet dreams about it every so often haha. So I just had to pair it with this cupcake, I figured adding a little bit of strawberry jam in there would be refreshing and help make this cupcake over the top. I brought these cupcakes up to campus for my residents and they were gone in a second so that definitely help boost my confidence for future baking adventures haha. 

Having the cupcake turns out well encouraged me to be extra with the frosting. The Strawberry Marscapone Frosting turned out to be the prettiest shade of pink, so I thought the rose was only fitting.

My pretty little cupcake garden <3

Vanilla Cupcakes:

- 1 ½ all-purpose flour

- 1 cup granulated sugar

- 1 ½ tsp baking powder

- ½ tsp salt

- 8 tbsp unsalted butter, room temp

- ½ cup sour cream

- 1 egg, room temp

- 2 egg yolks, room temp

- 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract 

1. Heat the oven to 350o degrees and line the cupcake pan with liners. 
2. Add the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt) together and mix it together.
3. Beat the butter until creamy and add the wet ingredients (sour cream, egg, egg yolks, vanilla) all together. 
4. Slowly add the mixture of dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix it all together.
5. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full (for both regular-sized and cute-sized cupcakes).
6. For the mini-cupcakes they should be in the oven 12-15 minutes. This really depends on your oven so check with a toothpick to be sure, I will not be hold responsible for undercooked or burnt cupcakes haha. 
7. For regular-sized cupcakes, it should take 20-25 minutes. [This is one of the main reasons I don't bake regular-sized cupcakes, I hate the waiting game.]

Strawberry Marscapone Frosting:

- 1 cup heavy whipping cream

- 8 oz. marscapone cheese

- 4 tbsp strawberry jam

- 1 cup powdered sugar (or more if you like, unfortunately my mom is a health freak who was giving me the eye when I was adding in the powdered sugar so I had to stop)

1. Using a mixer, whisk the heavy whipping cream until there are stiff-peaks. 
2. Add the marscapone cheese in and continue whisking it together so it is uniform.
3. Then add the strawberry jam in.
4. Slowly add the powdered sugar a little bit at a time and mix it into the frosting mixture, if you want more sugar add more than the 1 cup but I thought it was super delicious with the 1 cup since the strawberry jam is already adding a lot of the sweetness as well.