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
I’ve lost count of how many times recently that I’ve stumbled back into my apartment past 2 am, dazed, tired, hungry, and with sore hands after a three- or five-hour session at the piano. For the last six months I’ve been playing nothing but Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, which makes it, by far, the biggest musical project of my life. Now, I can play it front-to-back from memory, but still I’m so vexed and worn down by this damned piece that frequently I think to myself: “I wish I had a different hobby.”
In its 22-minute expanse, I have an interminable list of details to refine: the smoothness of the cascading double-stops in Ondine, the constancy of the bell in Le gibet, the snappiness of chord pairs in Scarbo, so on. I’m resigned to the fact that I will never play Gaspard precisely no matter how much I practice — it’s just that hard — but now I start to wonder: with these diminishing returns, when should I stop? Continue reading Illusory Standards
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…
Autumn in Central Park is such an idyllic scene. Vibrant foliage, characteristic New York props, and convenient proximity makes it an ideal place for a magazine-style photoshoot, so my ridiculously photogenic friends (and also classmate) did just that! Continue reading Autumn in Central Park
Gaspard de la Nuit: Ravel’s complex, atmospheric, dark piano masterpiece. I’m learning all 22 minutes of it right now, and the music is consuming me unlike any other piece has before.
Yesterday night, I fulfilled my goal of going up onstage at a Moth live storytelling event to tell a story. Continue reading Telling a The Moth story
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
It’s a moment I’ll remember forever.
I’m sitting in a stadium full of 60,000 Coldplay fans, the chilly and dark atmosphere tense with anticipation. In fades the ambient intro to “A Head Full of Dreams,” and sea of wristbands awaken unexpectedly and bathe the crowd in a warm red glow. Cheers echo across as Will Champion’s beats and Guy Berryman’s bass line begin, and Jonny Buckland’s guitar riff enters. The spotlight illuminates Coldplay onstage, rainbow fireworks explode, and Chris Martin dances forward spinning merrily and crooning “oh, I think I’ve landed / in a world I hadn’t seen!”
I’ve liked Coldplay for a while now, but I rarely attend (non-classical) concerts, so when one of my best friends scored Coldplay tickets for Saturday, we fulfilled a longtime dream: Coldplay, live.
