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My Daily Routine
(Unknown author)
I am a conservative.
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.
After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level
determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.
On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.
After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.
And then I log on to the internet — which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration — and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can‚Äôt do anything right.
Merry Christmas, Bob
by Chris Shugart
“So, what are you doing for a living these days?” Bob asked me. We’re sitting on the couch at one of those tedious holiday get-togethers, you know, the ones where you’re supposed to be nice to family members you never see except during major holidays and funerals. I think Bob is my wife’s brother-in-law’s second cousin or something.
“I’m the assistant editor and a writer for Testosterone magazine,” I say. Bob looks at me with a blank expression on his face, as if I’d just told him I sell handmade testicle warmers beside the freeway and was looking to open franchises across the nation.
“It’s a bodybuilding magazine,” I say.
Blank expression. Deer caught in the headlights. Ronnie Coleman doing trigonometry.
“Oh,” Bob finally says, “I heard you were, like, one of those bodybuilder guys or something. So, what’s that like, you know, working out every day and stuff? I just don’t have time to lift weights all day, but I have been meaning to get rid of this beer belly.” He takes another sip of beer. “What do you suggest?” Sip.
At first I was a little offended. I wanted to grab him up and say, “You can’t tell I’m a bodybuilder?! Look at my ass! Now, if that’s not a nice round squat-built piece of sirloin, I don’t know what is! You think that comes naturally? I can crack walnuts with this puppy! Wanna see? Huh, punk? Do ya? Do ya?”
Then I realize this just might cause a scene and could cost me several Christmas presents. I was planning on returning any presents I got and using the money to buy a power rack, so I didn’t want to jeopardize this gift getting opportunity. I also realized that old Bob probably had a certain preconceived image of a bodybuilder and I just didn’t fit that image. I’m not gorilla huge; I weigh about 205 at 5′11″ right now. (When I first started lifting I was a pudgy 159, so that’s not too shabby.) Also, I wasn’t wearing clown pants, a fluorescent string tank top, a hanky on my head and one of those little fanny packs. And isn’t that what real bodybuilders are supposed to wear?
Bob continued to sit there drinking his Natural Light, smoking a cigarette and waiting for an answer, oblivious to the fact that he’d come this close to seeing some serious walnut- crunching ass power. I tried to figure out how I could explain to the average guy what the typical T-Man does and why he does it. How could I get him to understand what it is we do, how we feel, how we live? So I took a deep breath and told him something like this:
“Well, Bob, I guess you could use the term bodybuilder if you really need a label for what it is we do. Most of us actually don’t stand on stage and compete, though. We lift weights and manipulate our diets so that we’ll look good naked. Sure, it’s healthy too, and we’ll probably live a longer and more productive life than the average guy, but mostly it’s about the naked thing. Truthfully, it goes beyond even that.
“Let’s be honest here. We do it because of people like you, Bob. We look at you sitting there with your gut hanging over your belt and we watch you grunt and groan just getting out of a chair. Guys like you are our inspiration, Bob. You’re better than Anthony Robbins, Bill Phillips, Deepak Chopra, and Zig ****ing Ziglar all wrapped up into one. We love it when guys like you talk about not having time to exercise. Every time we see you munching on a bag of potato chips, you inspire us. You’re my shot in the arm, Bob, my living and breathing wake-up call, my own personal success coach.
“You want to know what it is we do? We overcome. We’re too busy to train, too, but we overcome. We’re too busy to prepare healthy meals and eat them five or six times a day, but we overcome. We can’t always afford supplements, our genetics aren’t perfect, and we don’t always feel like going to the gym. Some of us used to be just like you, Bob, but guess what? We’ve overcome.
“We like to watch ‘normal’ people like you tell us about how they can’t get in shape. We smile and nod sympathetically like we feel your pain, but actually, we’re thinking that you’re a pathetic piece of **** that needs to grow a spine and join a gym. You smile sheepishly and say that you just can’t stay motivated and just can’t stand that feeling of being sore. (For some reason you think that admitting your weaknesses somehow justifies them.) We listen to you bitch and moan. We watch you look for the easy way out. Because of people like you, Bob, we never miss a workout.
“You ask us for advice about diet and training and usually we politely offer some guidance, but deep inside we know you won’t take our advice. You know that too. We smile and say, ‘Hope that helps. Good luck,’ but actually we’re thinking, ‘Boy, it would suck to be you.’ We know that 99% of people won’t listen to us. Once they hear that it takes hard work, sacrifice and discipline, they stop listening and tune us out.
“We know they wanted us to say that building a great body is easy, but it just isn’t. This did not take five minutes a day on a TorsoTrack. We did not get this way in 12 short weeks using a Bowflex and the Suzanne Somers’ ‘Get Skinny’ diet. A good body does not cost five easy payments of $39.95.
“We like it that while you’re eating a candy bar and drinking Mountain Dew, we’re sucking down a protein shake. You see, that makes it taste even better to us. While you’re asleep we’re either getting up early or staying up late, hitting the iron, pushing ourselves, learning, succeeding and failing and rising above the norm with every rep. Can you feel that, Bob? Can you relate? No? Good. This wouldn’t be half as fun if you could.
“We do it because we absolutely and totally get off on it. We do it because people like you, Bob, either can’t or won’t. We do it because what we do in the gym transfers over into the rest of our lives and changes us, physically, mentally, maybe even spiritually. We do it because it beats watching fishing and golf on TV. By the way, do you know what it’s like to turn the head of a beautiful woman because of the way you’re built? It feels good, Bob. Damned good.
“When we’re in the gym, we’re in this indescribable euphoria zone. It’s a feeling of being on, of being completely alive and aware. If you haven’t been there, then it’s like trying to describe color to a person who’s been blind since birth. Within this haze of pleasure and pain, there’s knowledge and power, self-discipline and self-reliance. If you do it long enough, Bob, there’s even enlightenment. Sometimes, the answers to questions you didn’t even know you had are sitting there on those rubber mats, wrapped up in a neat package of iron plates and bars.
“Want to lose that beer belly, Bob? I have a nutty idea. Put down the ****ing beer. I’ll tell you what, Bob. Christmas morning I’m getting up real early and hitting the iron. I want to watch my daughter open her presents and spend the whole day with her, so this is the only time I have to train. The gym will be closed, so I’m going out in my garage to workout. You be at my house at six in the morning, okay? I’ll be glad to help you get started on a weight training program. It’ll be colder than Hillary Clinton’s coochie in there, so dress warm.
“But let me tell you something, Bob. If you don’t show up, don’t bother asking me again. And don’t you ever sit there and let me hear you bitch about your beer belly again. This is your chance, your big opportunity to break out of that rut. If you don’t show up, Bob, you’ve learned a very important lesson about yourself, haven’t you? You won’t like that lesson.
“You won’t like that feeling in the pit of your stomach either or that taste in your mouth. It will taste worse than defeat, Bob. Defeat tastes pretty goddamned nasty, but what you’ll be experiencing will be much worse. It will be the knowledge that you’re weak, mentally and physically. What’s worse is that you’ll have accepted that feeling. The feeling will always be with you. In the happiest moments of your life, it’ll be there, lying under the surface like a malignant tumor. Ignore it at your own peril, Bob.
“Don’t look at me like that either. This just may be the best Christmas present you’ll get this year. Next Christmas, Bob, when I see you again, I’m going to be a little bigger, a little stronger, and a little leaner. What will you be? Will you still be making excuses? This is a gift, Bob, from me to you. I’m giving you the chance to look fate in those pretty eyes of hers and say, ‘Step off, bitch. This is my party and you’re not invited.’ What do you say, Bob? Monday, Christmas morning, 6am, my house. The ball’s in your court.”
Okay, so maybe that’s not the exact words I used with Bob, but you get the picture. Will Bob show up Monday? I don’t know, but I kind of doubt it. In fact, Bob will probably take me off his Christmas card list. He probably thinks I’ve got “too much Testosterone,” like that’s a bad thing. I think Bob is just stuck in a rut, and as the saying goes, the only difference between a rut and a grave is depth.
The way out of the rut is to make major changes in your life, most of which won’t be too pleasant in the beginning. The opportunity to make those changes seldom comes as bluntly as I put it to Bob. Most of the time, that opportunity knocks very softly. What I did was basically give Bob a verbal slap in the face. You can react two ways to a slap. You can get angry at the person doing the slapping, or you can realize that he was just trying to get you to wake up and focus on what you really want and, more importantly, what it’ll take to get it.
If you’re a regular T-mag reader, I doubt you need to be called out like Bob. But maybe you’ve caught yourself slacking a little here lately. Maybe you’ve missed a few workouts or maybe you started a little too early on the usual holiday feasting, like, say, back in September. Just remember that the time to start working on that summer body is now. The time to get rid of those bad habits that hold you back in the gym is now. You want to look totally different by next Christmas? Start now. This isn’t because of the holidays or any corny New Year’s resolutions either. The best time is always now.
Christmas day I want you to enjoy being with your family and friends. I want you to open presents, sip a little eggnog and have a good meal. But if your regularily scheduled workout happens to fall on December 25th, what will you be doing at six o’clock that morning?
That’s what separates us from guys like Bob.
Why I Chose Stanford
As many of you know, I have recently chosen to matriculate at Stanford University this fall for a Ph.D. in Bioengineering. Though I feel tremendously lucky to be admitted to such a fine institution, my decision only became possible after many weeks of agonizing and second-guessing, and it was only after speaking to almost everyone I know - including advisors, research mentors, colleagues and family members - that I could choose with any sense of closure. The reason behind my ambivalence lay in the following:
Washington University in St. Louis - Accepted 1/16, 1 year fellowship ($27,000)
Boston University - Accepted 1/23, 1 year Distinguished BME Fellowship ($27,300)
University of Southern California - Accepted 2/23, 5 year Provost’s fellowship ($30,000)
California Institute of Technology - Interviewed 2/20, Accepted 3/2, 1 year DEAS fellowship ($28,000)
Stanford University - Interviewed 2/27, Accepted 3/8, 2 year Bioengineering fellowship ($29,600)
UC Berkeley/UCSF - Interviewed 2/23-24, Accepted 3/9, 1 year fellowship ($27,000)
Johns Hopkins University - Interviewed 3/13, Accepted 3/22, NIH fellowship ($26,855)
University of Pennsylvania - Interviewed 3/6, Accepted 3/24, HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Fellowship ($27,540)
Duke University - Offered interview, withdrawn
University of Washington - Offered interview, withdrawn
Columbia University - Offered interview, withdrawn
HST Medical Engineering/Medical Physics - Rejected 2/15
I had the extraordinary fortune to be accepted to twelve out of thirteen Bioengineering/Biomedical Engineering programs I applied to this year, which led directly to my indecision during the past several weeks. During my five interview weekends I was able to witness a diverse range of schools, varying in location, size, research focus and program age, and met many wonderful people - fellow prospective students, current graduate students and faculty alike. To summarize some of my thoughts about the different schools:
California Institute of Technology. The campus was beautiful, and the faculty were absolutely brilliant - everyone I met had amazing ideas for their research in addition to the track record proving they could bring those ideas to fruition. I especially enjoyed speaking to the professors involved in imaging - Mory Gharib, Changhuei Yang and Chin-Lin Guo. However, being used to the behemoth that is UIUC, I felt the campus was too small and that there wasn’t enough to do in the surrounding area. In addition, as the Caltech campus is relatively far from the nearest large hospital, I felt that I would have to compromise my interests in translational research.
UC Berkeley/UCSF. I really enjoyed touring the UCSF Mission Bay campus and speaking to the professors at the MRI suite - Dan Vigneron and John Kurhanewicz especially. I was lucky enough to be given a tour of the Surbeck Center for Advanced Imaging and its multitude of MRI and NMR scanners, which was very exciting. On the other hand, I did not particularly like Berkeley’s campus and the fact that I would most likely have to commute between my apartment, Berkeley and the UCSF campuses for many of my classes - I really prefer having everything in one place as I feel dashing from place to place wastes too much time.
Stanford University. There is a short backstory to this: prior to my Caltech interview, I had to give a 45-minute presentation on directed evolution for my molecular/cellular bioengineering class at UIUC. This presentation introduced me to the field of synthetic biology, or the application of engineering principles to create molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids to serve novel functions, ranging from therapeutics to imaging agents to biofuels. I became increasingly interested in the field in the week leading up to my Stanford interview, and as a result I took the chance at Stanford to speak to a few professors working in the area - Christina Smolke and Jennifer Cochran. It was at Stanford that my research interests transformed from being undecided within imaging to specifically molecular imaging and synthetic biology, which was a huge deciding factor for me later on. Overall, my interview weekend was absolutely spectacular - I tremendously enjoyed speaking to the faculty, staff, and the current students, and I loved (of course) the gorgeous campus.
University of Pennsylvania. At Penn I applied to the HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Program, a prestigious training program allowing students to take almost two years of the medical school curriculum with a focus on clinical imaging. Matriculating only 4-5 students per year, the program would provide an unparalleled educational experience, combining medical training with graduate work in order to maximize each student’s potential. Moreover, I think that ultimately I had the most fun during my Penn interview weekend - I truly enjoyed hanging out with the current graduate students, especially those currently in the HHMI program. However, during my interviews I only met one professor I was very interested in working for - Andrew Tsourkas - and given my newfound interests in molecular imaging and synthetic biology, I would have liked to have more than just one option for a rotation.
Johns Hopkins University. As this was my last interview, and having already received offers from Caltech, Berkeley/UCSF and Stanford, I was much less nervous during my Hopkins visit than the others.¬†It turns out that I didn’t need to worry anyways - apparently they accept the vast majority of the interviewees, and they would only reject a student if he/she really didn’t fit in or did something completely stupid during the visit. (Apparently, there was a prospective in the previous weekend who had sexually harassed some other students during the night out, which obviously resulted in him being kicked out.) At Hopkins I had the chance to speak to Elliot McVeigh and (briefly) Xingde Li, who work on translational MRI and optical imaging respectively. Though by this time my research interests had already evolved, I was extremely interested in both professors’ work, and in addition was in awe of the sheer volume of work conducted at the Johns Hopkins hospital. However, I was not as impressed with Baltimore in general, especially the aging buildings and obsolete architecture that make up much of the city.
My decision ultimately came down to between Stanford, Penn and Johns Hopkins. I loved the molecular imaging research at Stanford, the prestige and medical training at Penn, and the clinical and translational focus at Johns Hopkins. Stanford had the advantage of being in California and so close to both beaches and mountains, but Penn and Hopkins were closer to Boston where Morgan will be for at least a year. Hopkins had an extremely well-established program that had the track record of turning out superstars, but Stanford had a terrifically planned, newer department that still had so much nascent potential. There were just too many factors to consider, and even after I quantified them one night with a weighted metric system, I could not say for sure where I wanted to go.
With such a monumental decision on my hands I felt I could not decide logically on my own, and as a result requested help from my advisors, mentors, colleagues, and parents. Their replies generally centered on two common themes: Where did I enjoy the research most? And where would I be happiest living? After pondering these questions for a long time, running through my experiences at each school in my head, I realized that the answer to both questions was Stanford. Stanford had a terrific molecular imaging program headed by Sam Gambhir, and in addition recently hired two more really great synthetic biologists to their faculty. It was close to beaches (which I love) and mountains (which I also love), had a great hospital and medical school for my clinical work, and in addition had many opportunities for entrepreneurship in case I wanted to start a company. In essence, it would allow me to do anything I could ever see myself doing - a fact I realized did not apply to any other school. As a result, in the middle of night last Wednesday, I finally arrived at my decision.
Although I currently feel that I have made the right choice, I know that there will be a part of me that will always wonder how it would have been had I chosen any differently. On the other hand, I am tremendously excited for what Stanford has to offer, and I am definitely looking forward to this fall and the years to come.
Introduction
It has been quite some time since I last featured a consistently updated journal on this site, but with the start of a new chapter of my life I feel that for the sake of self-reflection, I should start putting my thoughts and experiences in words. I hope that this journal will help bring an additional clarity to my life, allowing me to trace my steps towards a more concrete set of mental and physical goals.
At this point, I am working towards my Master’s Degree in Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Under the advisorship of Professor Rohit Bhargava, I am investigating the possible application of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to image, analyze, and quantify human skin. I will finish my MS by May 2009, after which I hope to matriculate at a prestigious MD or combined MD/PhD program, working towards a career as a practicing physician or a physician-scientist. I am as of yet undecided which path I want to take - my experiences working in healthcare in rural Tanzania have shown me the truly rewarding side of medicine, whereas my research background both at the University of Illinois and at Harvard Medical School have drawn me into the intellectually stimulating, exciting world of scientific research.
Beyond academics, I am currently involved with two jobs, both of which are teaching positions. I have been teaching high school competition math (usually AIME and USAMO) for Sabio Academy, a tutoring center headquartered in Glenview, IL, for three years. This past year I also began teaching the MCAT for ExamKrackers, a test prep company that specializes in medical school and law school admissions, in contrast to the giants Kaplan and Princeton Review which cover a much greater variety of disciplines.
Specifically, this journal will cover four major categories, as described below:
- Career. I will post periodic updates on both my successes and failures as I venture through my aforementioned career path in medicine.
- Bodybuilding. I have been weightlifting in bursts for the past several years, but I have never done so consistently enough to be able to track my progress over a long period of time. This school year, I hope to set and reach goals for both muscular strength and body fat percentage, and I will be keeping a workout and nutrition log to help me track my progress towards these goals.
- Design. This website has been in existence in one form or another for over nine years, a product of my interest in programming and graphics design which has lasted at least that long. Although most of my web design work has recently been lower on my priority list, I am still working on a handful of projects, which upon completion will be posted here.
- Sustenance. I have always been a fan of good food, and recently I have discovered my love of wine. Accordingly, I have decided to keep notes for myself about restaurants I have been to, exceptionally delicious meals I have eaten and notable wine I have tried.
From this point onwards, I hope to find the time to update this journal regularly, even if it is just a few minutes per day. I believe that continually writing about my life will help me understand both my triumphs and defeats, and with the help and support of my friends and family I am confident that eventually, I can change into a better, more capable person than I am now.
Here’s to a great year.
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