2019 has come and gone. It was the first year I was employed full-time throughout, and correspondingly the days, weeks, and months flew by when most I had to say about it were boring medical adventures and revelations that aren’t really blog-worthy. Still, I do want to maintain my tradition of public reflections, so off I go! Continue reading 2019 in Retrospect
Category Archives: Radiology
Now I am Doing the Reading
Two days into my radiology residency and I’m already producing reports for body CTs. What a terrifying thought.
On day one, when they sat me down at a PACS workstation, they taught me how to log in, how to select a study and scroll through it, and which button to press to record dictations. The senior resident then basically just said “go for it. Say what you see!” Continue reading Now I am Doing the Reading
Young Ravel: a recital
You probably know that I’m playing a lot of Ravel on piano because I talk about it incessantly. You might’ve even read at about it here in Illusory Standards or Temptation, Dread, and Terror on Piano or #Ravel. Well, guess what: It’s senior recital time, featuring all Ravel! See above for the poster. Continue reading Young Ravel: a recital
To Just See
It’s match week. Read about the residency match system in a previous post Schrödinger’s Match; it features cats. I thought I’d share my personal statement, pasted below.
Today at 11 am, I will find out if I failed to match to my first-year “preliminary” residency or my radiology residency. If I didn’t, my life will be in shambles and I would spend the week frantically vying for leftover slots around the country. Hopefully not. <1% chance, I estimate. Continue reading To Just See
Schrödinger’s Match
I assume you know about Schrödinger’s cat, which represents quantum uncertainty by existing simultaneously both dead and alive in its box. The cat will only establish a singular state because it is observed as you open the box.
And as all imminently graduating medical students can tell you, that’s kind of what the national residency matching process feels like. Continue reading Schrödinger’s Match
2017 in Retrospect
2017 was strange mix of freedom, commitment, and uncertainty. Never in med school have I had so much unscheduled time, during which I committed to and hacked away at several big projects. Meanwhile, I also made enormous binding decisions, the result of which still floats in a cloud of vague possible futures…
How to Train Your Rads AI
In DreamWorks’ 2010 animated fantasy film How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup, the young un-viking-like viking prince protagonist, learns to cooperate with dragons through his compassion and engineering know-how. With his dragon Toothless by his side, Hiccup protects his village more than the traditional vikings before him could have ever imagined.
Now, I haven’t shot down my own artificial intelligence out of the sky, but I do have rudimentary cross-disciplinary know-how. Let me try to describe how we might unite computer science and radiology to usher in the future of automated radiology. Continue reading How to Train Your Rads AI
Cubes and Chest X-Rays
The world record for fastest official single Rubik’s Cube solve is 4.69 seconds, set by Patrick Ponce earlier this month (edging out perennial champion Feliks Zemdegs at 4.73 seconds). That’s brain-meltingly fast, but the robot called Sub1 Reloaded holds the robot record at 0.637 seconds.
Holy shit, right?