About Me

          I am a 22 year old graduate of Cornell University, and I am currently in my gap year while applying to medical school.  Yes.  I want to be a doctor.  I am going to be a doctor.  The upshot of the gap year is that I have a lot of free time on my hands.  The downside is that I probably won't be able to say that for the next 10 years.  I am currently employed part-time by a test prep agency as an MCAT teacher.  I play guitar, write fiction from time to time, hang out with my girlfriend of almost two years, exercise, and play a handful of sports, especially tennis.  With all the downtime I have during the gap year, I have also picked up a serious video game habit - I cannot recommend Skyrim highly enough.  It is a great way to make 50 hours of your life vanish.

          I decided to start this blog to help me kill this spare time and as an avenue to share my thoughts about some things I am interested in.  I have a deep interest in nutrition and its ability to affect our health and performance (particularly sports-related performance).  I have loved sports since I was very young, and what I believe was starting to turn into a youth tennis career was cut short by a serious spinal injury.  Since then, I have spent a lot of my spare time educating myself on how nutrition can promote health and performance and training methods designed to maximize performance.

          I also want to use this blog to provide a window into the pre-med and medical student experience.  For example, did you know that many medical schools grade students on a pass/fail basis?  Or, did you know that less than half of the people who apply to medical school each year are actually accepted into a (as in any) US, MD-granting medical school?  Maybe you know these things, but when I began this process, I was pretty surprised to learn them.  That's just the beginning, though, I have much more to show you.

          Then there are some other topics that might occasionally work their way in include: writing, music, finance, and even football - I am a diehard Raiders fan.  And, last, I will probably pretty frequently throw in some links and reviews of websites I like to read.  I can't even describe how grateful I am to have grown up in this day and age with so much of the world's knowledge at our fingertips.  Some people have gone to great lengths to put together great websites with lots of quality information or interesting thoughts, and I plan to pay homage to them for what I have learned and continue to learn from them.

          Bear with me in the beginning.  I am new to this.  It won't take long for me to get it.

          Oh, and by the way, I will be protecting some of the details about me - including my name - until this application cycle is over.






Since I have already acknowledged that I am going to go into healthcare, I think it's time I throw up a disclaimer.  I am not a doctor (yet).  I am not a medical student (yet).  Although my blog will deal with some nutritional and exercise related questions and suggestions, I am not a trained person in a position that qualifies me to make these suggestions.  The things that will follow are merely how I choose to live based on the research I have done.  These are not recommendations; they are my opinion.