Though he didn’t sing a single melody, the driver on the 16 this morning had a truly operatic voice — he sounded not like an aspiring amateur, but a world-famous singer. “On top of that, he could easily sit in for James Earl Jones” I thought, as we bumped down University Avenue. Now, perhaps the driver leads a church choir during his evenings and weekends, but I couldn’t help but wonder how many gifts we possess of which we are not aware.
What if the hotel maid riding the bus to work, catching a few minutes of sleep, could be the best painter since Rembrandt? What if the construction worker, savoring a few minutes to rest his back while sitting down, has the timeless gifts of a sculptor? What if we only completely fulfill our potential when we transcend this coil for another?
The spark of creativity is one of the most singularly electrifying experiences of the human condition. To bring something, no matter how small, out of nothing — a clever turn of phrase, a pleasant melody, an arrangement of paints on a canvas — is a powerful experience. In dental school, I miss the creative spark intensely. The longing for time to write a melody on the piano or a poem in a notebook makes me wonder: would I feel the opposite way were I in music school? That is to say: after countless assignments to “compose a melody in this time and this key signature,” would I crave a list of facts to memorize, a test in which the subjective was eliminated and I could objectively, predictably achieve success?
I don’t know. I think, though, that it’s easy to get tired of too much structure. Every life needs some breathing room. Anyhow, if you would like to hear more about creativity, consider listening to Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of Eat, Pray, Love) give a wonderful talk at TED 2009. (Via kottke.)
Have 3 minutes and 30 seconds? Why not take some time out of your day to watch a rather surreal and well-produced video featuring remote control car drifting. When I first saw this, I thought the big cars in the background at the beginning were a billboard! They weren’t. They were just regular-sized cars.
“This is a horror show we’re watching,” said Lawrence
Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a
left-of-center economic research organization in
Washington. “By every measure available-loss of
employment and hours, rise of unemployment, shrinkage of
the employment to population rate- this recession is
steeper than any recession of the last forty years,
including the harsh recession of the early 1980s.”
I hope all the readers of tumbledry are able to remain employed throughout this unbelievably tough time. Makes my test studying at hand seem even more urgent — I’ve just got to get through this. Hope everyone’s Friday is happy, despite the news.
This Southwest Airlines Commercial entitled “Deposit” illustrates why following instructions is important. And here’s the thing about those drive-through bank teller set-ups: should I be trying to make eye contact with the lady on the other side? I mean, they can see and hear me, and I can hear them… yet, isn’t there kind of a void there? I raise the question because I think there is at least one person in tumbledry’s audience who can provide advice.
Now I am off to study for my physical evaluation test, wherein I learn the techniques used to accurately obtain a holistic picture of the health of one’s patients. Really, it’s the first class that tries to answer the dental question “to drill, or not to drill?”
I think I’ll have my patients just call me “Alex.” Is the “Doctor” prefix really necessary? I think, in most situations, it isn’t. Our bench dentist said his father, a physician, only used the “doctor” prefix when making dinner reservations. Interesting.
Imagination is powerful. When it’s far below zero and the sun hasn’t yet risen, as I’m riding the bus to a day of underground lectures, I close my eyes and imagine I’m somewhere else.
I’d like to do a catch-up dinner with you all. I’m thinking the weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. So, something like the 16th of January, we could all go out to dinner somewhere… hence the McRupekoeclapespe moniker for this post. Naturally, all others who I wasn’t able to wedge into the catchy name are absolutely invited. RSVP* here with regrets, suggestions, and acceptances. It will be awesome.
* I just learned this is an abbrevation of the French phrase répondez s’il vous plaît. Interesting.
Ostensibly, the reason for my total radio silence on tumbledry is clear: the second half of my first semester of dental school was extraordinarily busy. For example: for the first time since I began working out in 1999, I voluntarily gave up the gym for six weeks. I ran through gross anatomy flash cards on the bus to and from school, I ran through flash cards before sleeping, I ran through flash cards with Mykala, I ran through flash cards while walking across the train tracks between my bus stop and apartment, I woke up running through flash cards in my mind. Incidentally, I slept little. I skipped so many meals that by the end of the semester I looked at the mirror and was shocked to see someone who appeared quite gaunt. So, that would seem to be the full story. It is not.
November 12, 2008 was the biggest day of reckoning in my life. My mid-term test results in two big classes came back with some stupendously low numbers. I don’t mean just not good… no, my performance was earth-shatteringly bad. I crunched the numbers on the grades and realized that, if I didn’t do nearly perfectly on my remaining tests of the semester, I would be kicked out of dental school. I would be booted from what I’d been working toward for 5 years, with a shockingly large debt load, into the worst economy since the Great Depression. Those were the stakes — so on the night of November 12, I almost gave up. And I don’t mean that lightly. I didn’t almost decide not to go to school anymore. I almost gave up on myself completely. Totally. In an utter panic, I called Mykala and said I didn’t know what to do — she left very early from work and came down, just in time to watch me totally, completely melt down. Weeks later, talking it over with Mykala and later with my parents, I described the event as something snapping in me. In time, it felt like something snapped into place. At the time, though, I felt no such comfort from an alternate path illuminated before me: I was a caged animal gnawing my arm off for release. I didn’t know if I could go on.
It all boiled down to this: I had four final exams (2 lab, 2 lecture) split between histology and gross anatomy in which I had to perform unfathomably well. I had to step up to the plate four times and hit four home runs. Once I decided I might be able to do it, I focused exclusively exclusively on studying. Saturday night after Thanksgiving found me in the Histology lab, reviewing slides and trying to organize all the organ systems and their interrelating hormones. I attended lectures, then I rewatched them online, pausing every 30 seconds and writing down everything I heard. I remember spending five hours straight in the histology lab before the test, desperately trying to make sure I could identify organs in histological slides. The histo course director was absolutely amazing — endlessly enthusiastic and helpful, she did weekly tutoring sessions and stayed as late as 8pm to help me with all the concepts. And then there was gross anatomy.
In an effort to reinvent the way I had been studying for gross anatomy, I made a stab at a method I hoped would work: I diagrammed everything. Everything that I could possibly draw, I drew. I now have a binder full of schematics for structures like the external carotid artery, parasympathetic and sympathetic contributions to the Vidian nerve, dural venous sinus drainage, muscles of facial expression, sensory innervation of the skin on the skull, and on and on and on and on. The last night the lab was open before the final, I spent 13 hours on my feet, examining my group’s dissected cadaver in addition to all the cadavers of my classmates. I took a half hour break for a panicked dinner.
Then on January 1, 2009, between 1:30 and 2:30am, the U of M’s computer grading system FINALLY refreshed and I found out that I had passed my classes. I made it. More accurately, we made it — Mykala and I. During that living hell of endless studying, we grew closer to one another and grew more as people more than I would have ever thought possible (especially during such a time like this last semester). We came out on the other side more in love, more understanding of one another, armed with an arsenal of tools to tackle future crises… and me owing a huge debt of gratitude to my wonderful fiancée. I even became closer to my family: my mom answering all my phone calls, my dad emailing advice, and my sister praying for me and sending me the occasional funny video.
It was amazing. Terrible. And amazing. Life-changing. My entire worldview has been shifted, clicked into place, and I am a much better person for it.
And one more thing: never again. Never, ever, again.
Good news! In the past few days, Mykala and I put together our wedding website. You can find the product of our work at alexandmykala.com. We’re both really happy with how it turned out and I’m looking forward to including it on invitations.
Eight miserable years full of reckless American leadership decisions have nearly passed and the only widely-consumed contrarian views came from network TV: sputterings of miserably incoherent, self-righteous, closed-minded sycophants. Sadly, the most coherent commentary presented has been ironic humor at the current administration’s expense. It’s funny and entertaining, but by no means a catalyst for action. The rest of the opposition to our leaders, as far as I can tell, is composed of scattered bumper sticker sales. So, I ask the same question asked by those who lived through the Vietnam War: where is the outrage? At this point, about the best we can get is this New York Times piece about Bush by Bob Herbert entitled “Add Up the Damage”:
This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and
Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the
Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold;
who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our
civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad;
who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was
doing a heckuva job.
The Bush administration specialized
in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a
feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq
as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11
attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept.
11 attacks?
Exploiting the public’s understandable fears,
Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us:
“We cannot wait,” he said, “for the final proof — the
smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom
cloud.”
The piece is an angry enumeration of the mistakes of the past eight years of American leadership; it derives most of its force from the multitude of offenses it lists. Mr. Herbert calls for angry crowds in the street, protests, a public unified behind unanimous disgust with a leadership task horribly mangled. Unfortunately, one of the pieces of propaganda of the publicity machine that brought Bush to power follows: protest has been marketed as an “unamerican” activity. The smear campaign against social activism was so successful that protesting is now universally viewed as the domain of crackpots and extremists. I’m looking forward to a time in the future (who knows how far in the future), when people full of common sense, justified rage, and a commitment to change can march to get their ideas heard.
And yes, I saw Colin Powell’s 2003 address to the United Nations Security Council about Iraq before the war. I believed it. Yet, everything in it was false. I was duped, and I didn’t do anything when I found out. I’m guilty of inaction, too.