Public service announcement

My Tier 4 student visa finally came in the mail today. Ughhhh. Right now, it's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen (because its non-arrival was the only thing preventing me from flying to the UK). Word of warning to those wanting to obtain a student visa: Apply for your visa more than one month in advance of your planned departure. Not less than one month. Not exactly one month. More than one month. Save yourself from an aneurysm or something.

My college "family"

I'm in the unique position of being treated like a fresher and a third-year student simultaneously. I get to participate in all the fresher festivities, but my coursework will be up to par with third-year neuroscience students. One of the fresher things I get to indulge in is being part of a "family." They are kind of like "units" back at Brown, except that members are grouped by shared interests rather than dorm subdivisions. Not surprisingly, my entire family is composed of math and science students: 3 CompScis, 2 Mathmos, 2 Bio NatScis, and 1 Phys NatSci. 

WHOOO NERD POWER ♥

Clinical indecision

This post isn't Cambridge-related, but I figured a blog is as good of a place as any to muse about career prospects. I just finished reading When the Air Hits Your Brain by Frank Vertosick Jr., MD. It's a fantastic book, by the way, and should be mandatory reading for anyone seriously considering surgery as a profession. Oliver Sacks, it's not. But for what it lacks in obscure-medical-mystery department, it makes up in the brutally honest, sometimes self-deprecating, descriptions of day-to-day life as a neurosurgical resident.

I've been searching for a book like this one for a while. You know, to beat humility and reality back into me. For the last two years, I've been idly entertaining the idea of becoming a neurosurgeon. I love the human brain—the three-pound universe between your ears. Love it, love it, love it. What better way to pass the time than being wrist-deep inside someone's cranium and saving their life? I've shadowed my dad's neurosurgeon multiple times. Rounding up on the post-op patients, talking with patient's families during clinic hours, conducting pow-wows with other specialties to decide on a patient's fate, being hyperfocused on a surgical procedure for hours... I can really see myself doing that for a living.

I must admit, however, that self-aggrandizement also plays a role—albeit a small role—in my desire to become a neurosurgeon. Thankfully I'm not alone in this regard. The very first sentence in Frank Vertosick's book reads, "Neurosurgery is an arrogant occupation." A fellow PLME student observed that all neurosurgeons exude some degree of overinflated self-importance. As for me, I enjoy envisioning myself strutting down hospital corridors with a slew of residents and interns in tow, kind of like that one scene in Kill Bill where Lucy Liu leads a pack of yakuza gangsters in style.

But alas, these are the siren calls of a profession guaranteed to exact a toll on nearly every other aspect of my life.

For one thing, I want a family. It appears that surgical residency, especially for neurosurgery, tends to preclude a happy domestic life for women (and for men, to a lesser extent). If you're spending 18 hours a day at the hospital, that leaves you 6 hours for sanity-saving sleep and not much else. Try carrying a baby to term on top of all that. I've heard that some female neurosurgeons plan a single pregnancy during the "research year" of their residency program, and then pass the baby off to a full-time babysitter. It's the only feasible option, besides paying exorbitant sums to hire a surrogate mother.

I'm also not sure if I would be resilient enough to handle 6-7 years of grueling residency. How do I know if I can handle the pressure of making life-versus-death decisions on the spot? How emotionally devastated would I be after making a stupid mistake that cost a patient's life? Would I eventually burn out and become an unfeeling surgical psychopath? What if I don't have what it takes to be a neurosurgeon?

Maybe I don't have what it takes to be a neurosurgeon. And I would be okay with that. Perhaps I would be better off as a war strategist and message decoder instead of risking my limbs on the battlefield. To appease my intellectual hunger for studying the human brain, I can still decide among plenty of medical specialties and sub-specialties that have "neuro" in their names. Neurology, behavioral neurology, neuroradiology, interventional neuroradiology, neuro-ophthalmology, neuro-oncology, and neuropsychiatry are all careers for which I would be more than happy to bear the name on my white coat.

BUT GAH, THE INDECISION.

92 and still kicking

Woooaaahhh. I just found out that Andrew Huxley (of the Hodgkin-Huxley model) is:

1. Still alive
2. Teaching at Cambridge, somewhere

I don't think I have any lectures taught by Huxley, but I will be sure to keep an eye out for any special seminars or talks that feature him.

A different take on academics

My impressions of Cambridge thus far have been based on website descriptions and hearsay, so my judgments should be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I suspect that Cambridge's attitude toward academics is pretty much antithetical to Brown's.

One major difference I see is the element of academic competition. At Brown, tour guides often emphasize that Brown students are not cutthroat, and that they are much more likely to seek help from a peer than sabotage the work of others. Of course, one could flaunt this quality at many American colleges, but it seems that Brown especially likes to give the impression that we all approach our studies with the placidness of Hindu cows.

In contrast, Cambridge appears to shamelessly pit students against each other in every way imaginable. Individual colleges vie for the highest proportion of top-marks earned by their students. At some colleges, your pick of next year's housing is based on your exam scores. Monetary awards are routinely given to those who earn the highest marks. And, of course, your exam results are publicly displayed. In 2008, Peterhouse was denied permission to hold a May Ball event because their exam results were profoundly poor that year.

(I'm sorry—but can you imagine if Brown did that? "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PROVOST: BECAUSE THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF BROWN STUDENTS HAS NOT MET EXPACTATIONS, THE UNIVERSITY MUST CANCEL SPRING WEEKEND THIS YEAR." Well, uhh... damn.)

Another big difference is how students choose to display their academic diligence. Brown students tend to moan and groan about how much work they have (guilty). This is especially true of pre-med students, who often whine about how many all-nighters they've pulled at the Sci Li, how many pages they need to write for a paper, how many hours they've spent in lab, how long they've gone without showering... Want evidence of this? Read Brown FML during exam time.

I am told that Cambridge students, on the other hand, tend to hide their industriousness from others (except maybe from their Director of Studies). In fact, the guidebook given to us by our study abroad office warned about being lulled into a sense of complacency by the lackadaisical attitude of other students. I wonder if showing off how much free time you have is Cambridge's version of academically one-upping each other in casual conversation. We'll have to see.

Despite these differences, I'm actually looking forward to a change in pace, a change in attitude toward academics, a change in teaching style. Oh, especially a change in teaching style. Although Brown's teaching is generally superb, I was starting to get bored of the usual memorize-regurgitate-rinse-repeat formula in many neuroscience classes. I've been itching for a real challenge, and I sure hope I'll get one through Cambridge's cozy-but-intense supervisions plus amassing vast amounts of knowledge for a single end-of-year exam.