Monday, 16 March 2015

Still no word, Fluid vs mystery muscle, And 4 activities to get in shape

Everyday when I wake up the first thing I do is I pickup my laptop and login to my online UBC account and check my application status. I usually do a few things, like make breakfast, do some readings, go for a walk and run, make lunch, then around 5pm I check my application status again in the off chance that it has been updated that day. It's been a few weeks, but there's been no change in my application status. It just says something like "We are waiting for a final official transcript from TRU OL in order to evaluate your application.". Even though I got confirmation from TRU that the transcript had successfully been delivered to UBC on March 6th. I did read that it can take 2-4 weeks for documents to be processed, so really it's only been a week. I REALLY hope it doesn't take 4 weeks. I guess this is a good way to prepare myself for my med application. Although I am hoping I get into medicine in my first cycle.

I said I usually go for a walk and run, but for about a week I couldn't run or even walk because my side was really hurting. I went to the hospital (yay! so fun) and at first the doctor said there was fluid outside of my left lung, but then after some tests and some waiting, she changed her mind and just said it was some sort of "mystery muscle soreness". I really don't think it was just muscle soreness though, because the pain was very different from anything I had felt before. I've had sore muscles, and this was definitely not that. Fluid buildup did feel correct to me, because it felt like something was pushing on my lung. The main reason she didn't think it was fluid buildup anymore was because I did not have any sickness symptoms like a fever. Anyways in the past few days it has almost completely gone away, so I guess I don't have to worry about it anymore. But it was just very frustrating that I couldn't exercise. I was literally in my first week of exercise when that happened to me (because of the few weeks I had to take off exercise after my surgery).

Luckily though, I don't think I've lost any mental momentum for my physical training. I'm going to start lifting weights in the next few days, as I wanted to start out slow as to ensure I don't injure anything. This week, I'm going to up my exercising from 1.5 hours per day to 3 hours per day. I'll be going for an hour long walk, 1 hour of lifting weights, and then 1 hour of some combination of running and playing basketball. I'm thinking either 40 minutes of basketball and 20 minutes of running, or 40 minutes of running and 20 minutes of basketball. I haven't totally decided yet, as I'll probably try out both. For basketball, I'll be shooting on a hoop by myself, but for anyone that has never taken shots from various distances for about 20 minutes straight, I can tell you even when I was in excellent shape, it is VERY tiring. I got the idea from Steve Nash. He has a 20 minute workout video on Youtube showing him taking shots. The first time I watched that video was in about 2006. Crazy to think it has been almost a decade since then.

Also every Sunday I am going to time myself running the 400 meter race at the track. My time is going to start out being atrocious, but I'm hoping after a few months I can start to shave down the seconds each week. It's my goal to be running the 400m in 55 seconds by August 1st. Although, depending on how everything goes, it could change substantially - by either doing worst than expected and the time going up a few seconds to 58-59, or by doing better than expected and doing closer to 52-53 seconds. Sometimes things don't go the way you want, but I really feel in control of my training and have already lost some weight by pretty much only walking, so I think once I get back down to an athletic weight, then I will be in a good position to make the UBC Track team this fall. Although first I do have to get back in to UBC. Just shows that despite all of my goals, it's academics before athletics.


Saturday, 21 February 2015

Chasing dreams since I was 14...

The title of my post is a Macklemore song (all credit goes to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis), and one that I really like too. But the lyric also sums up my ambition. No, not my medicine ambitions, but my athletic ambitions.

It has been a dream of mine to run on a university track team since I was about 14, or earlier. I never really fully pursued my dream, as I sort of abandoned competitive sports when I was in grade 10. I was trying to focus on my academics at the time, and sort of kept ignoring competitive running ever since.

What's sparking my interest now is that I turned 23 a few months ago, so basically if I ever want to run track competitively, the time to do it is within the next few years. What has also added fuel to the fire is that I've become a big supporter of UBC athletics, and their rich tradition inspires me.

Unfortunately, today I found out that there is a 10 semester rule, where you have to complete your 4 years of track eligibility within the first 10 semesters of full time studies. Thankfully though, I have between 2-6 semesters of full time studies completed, so I should be guaranteed at least 4 semesters of track, or 2 years. After some thought, I decided to drop my current courses at Langara, and take a few online courses instead. This way, I can save a semester of track eligibility, but still complete some courses. By doing this, I'm only behind by 2 courses, as I will have still completed 4 courses by April, but technically only 3 courses will count towards my track eligibility, which means the semester will not count against me. What sucks is that I lost $1100 in tuition that I can't get back, but it is a very small price to pay if it means I get to chase my dreams and get an extra semester of track eligibility.

So after about 3 hours of looking online at NAIA eligibility rules, I'm pretty tired (its almost 3am on the west coast) so I'm going to head to bed. Problem is, I can tell I'm not going to be able to fall asleep because I'm too excited right now. All of these ideas and dreams of track and the possibilities and my training get me way too fired up. I'm not in shape right now but I'm going to be maximizing my training efforts by training very efficiently. I have access to some pretty good resources as well, so I'm going to take full advantage and pursue my dreams. In my last post I talked about my childhood dreams of playing in the Stanley Cup NHL finals and going to UBC. Well if those were my childhood dreams, my teenage dream is to run university track. The only school I want to run for is UBC. I just can't give up on my dream, especially knowing that my prime physical fitness years will be over in about 7 years. With track, there is no telling how far I could go. I want to run for UBC. I want to run for Team Canada. I want to run at the Olympics. These are lofty goals but I want to chase them and chase them hard. Chase them as hard as I chase medicine. These goals might be crazy but I want to lay it all on the line. If I fail, then I fail, I came up short, but at least I could wake up 50 years from now as an old man and say that I gave it my absolute best. That is what it's all about.


Tuesday, 17 February 2015

Feeling a bit blah

I've been studying pretty consistently for the past week, and usually I feel pretty good after I study, but right now I feel like I'm sort of in a funk. I am generally a very happy person and very optimistic about everything I do, that is why I have such lofty goals. But right now I'm just sort of tired of waiting and want some action to happen. What I'm referring to is my current application to UBC. But first, some background.

I had a pretty great childhood, and I have a lot of memories. Things that stand out are road hockey, exploring the trails, and going on the Vancouver trip. My grade 6 class went on a 3 day field trip to Vancouver (my school was on Vancouver Island) and we stayed at the UBC dorms and went to all of the UBC attractions, as well as some Vancouver attractions. I loved the trip and it was at this point that I knew I wanted to go to UBC one day.

Fast forward to me being 19 years old, my dream came true as I was accepted to UBC. I moved to Vancouver on short notice, and was pretty happy about being a UBC student and about getting a UBC degree one day. I commuted for 2 semesters and I lived on campus for one semester and that was an amazing experience. I loved living on the UBC campus as I fulfilled my childhood dream (well, technically my 2nd dream as my 1st was to play in the Stanley Cup Finals in the NHL). But it wasn't all good news, as I had some demons and distractions as I either failed my classes or didn't finish them. I had some personal issues I was going through, because I found my mood was all over the place, and I just usually wasn't up for studying. I knew I could do it and do well, but the motivation just wasn't there. I felt dull and empty when it came to doing homework. I felt like it didn't matter. Maybe I felt that I could get away with not having to study. It was very likely a combination of things and factors that contributed to the final result. But the end result was that I was forced to withdraw from UBC because of poor performance. I think I had like a 37% average in all of my UBC courses.

I felt awful, but I knew I had it in me to do better. As I graduated high school I was offered some decently sized scholarships to the schools I applied for. While it may be easy to get around 500-1000 dollars of credit for tuition at a Canadian school, I think most would agree it's a bit harder to lock up around 6000 dollars of scholarship money for a Canadian school, which I what I did when I was in grade 12.

When I was in high school, my days used to go like this:
4:50am: eat a banana and drink a glass of water,
5:00am: do a bit of math homework
5:30am: go for a fast paced 50 minute run which included about 15 minutes of stairs
6:20am: shower, get ready
6:30am: make breakfast (usually cereal with an omlette or protein shake)
6:50am: drive my mom to work
7:15am: arrive at school and do some more homework
8:05am: start first class
10:45am: lunch time, eat my packed lunch fast, then do more homework
11:45am: more class
2:20pm: end of classes, do more homework in one of the science classrooms
2:50pm: leave school for the day and go pick up my mom from work
3:10pm: attend extra-curricular and/or go to friend's house

On days where I didn't have an extra-curricular after school, I would either go to the gym and hit the weights or I would go home and do homework from 3-5pm then watch some news and eat dinner. I was a news addict in high school. Then at 7pm, if I still had unfinished homework I would do that, or if there was a test coming up, I would prepare for the test.

As you can see though, most of the time, I had finished all of my homework by the time I had to leave school and pick up my mom, which was around 3pm. Some days I even finished everything before I even got to school that day at 8:05am. Getting everything finished by 8am is impressive to me and an absolutely great feeling, one that I'm definitely going to get back to.

Anyways back to the time when I left UBC. I took a full calendar year away from school. If a student is asked to withdraw from UBC, they then have to go through what they call re-admission. I actually found out I could reapply to UBC through Access Studies, and I could technically take classes there even though I had not gone through their re-admission process yet. But in January of 2014 I ended up going to Langara instead. This was one of the best decisions I have ever made, as you know how the rest of the story goes as I started my blog in March of 2014, reporting how well I was doing there, and then finding success in future semesters as well.

But now, what I meant in my opening paragraph when I said of my "current application to UBC", is that I am just now applying for re-admission. This is because one of the stipulations is that you have to do something like a year's worth of credits at a different school before returning to UBC.

I have been VERY anxious about my application. Getting removed from UBC has been somewhat of a traumatic experience for me, as it really affected me. So the reason I'm feeling blah is that this UBC application has brought up a lot of negative feelings from the past for me. This, along with the fact that it has been dark and dreary for some time, sort of gets to you around this time of year as you are just looking forward to spring/summer now. Although we don't get much snow here in Vancouver, SAD, or seasonal affective disorder is very present in BC. Luckily though, I feel as though it has been unusually sunny this winter, so this may not be contributing as much for me as in years past. I'm thinking it must mostly be the whole negativity of reapplying to UBC. I just feel like I would be so crushed if I didn't get back into UBC. Because I'm 23 and only in 3rd year, I want to try to maximize my time and get a degree and get into medical school as soon as possible. So you could imagine, that waiting an extra year for my degree is not what I want to be doing (Langara only offers a few bachelor's degrees, with them mostly being in either nursing or business). I feel like I have been waiting to get into medical school since I was 17. I am just sick of waiting and want to get some results. That's why I would feel so amazing if I got back into UBC, and specifically if I got into the Kinesiology program, as that is my first choice, with Arts being my second. It's not medical school, but getting re-admitted to UBC is still a step in the right direction and a sure sign of me becoming successful again.

Thursday, 29 January 2015

No go

So my professor emailed me back and he said that he double checks every exam and also said that he already sent the exam back to TRU. So I didn't bother asking him to review it again. Pretty disappointing to come within half a percent of an A but I guess it works both ways. I know there has been times where I've been at 90.1% or 85.1%, and that means I barely met the cutoff for that grade.

Now I'm just getting ready to write my next final exam on Tuesday for Anatomy & Physiology II. But I've been sick the past few days so I haven't got much done since Sunday. I'm still pretty tired right now so I'm thinking I will just get some rest tonight then do a few good hours of studying tomorrow.

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

1 mark shy

So I got my final exam mark back from my Anatomy and Physiology I course, and by my calculations, I am 1 mark shy from an A. So I'm currently at 84 % which is an A-. 1 more mark would give me 84.5 which they would round me up to an A. The course is out of 200 marks, 50 for each midterm and 100 for the final.

I emailed my professor asking him if there were any other marks that I could get from the test. He hasn't got back to me yet, but I doubt my mark will change. I just think he isn't going to give me any more marks. There is only one way, and that is if he missed something on the written section of my exam. I would be really happy with an A.

In terms of my feelings, I feel really happy about an A+ and a bit less happy about an A and a lot less happy about an A-. But I guess I should be happy about being in the A range again though.

Also I was supposed to write my Anatomy & Physiology II final exam yesterday but I was sick so I rescheduled it for next Tuesday.

Saturday, 17 January 2015

Finished Anatomy & Physiology I!

So I finished the first half of my anatomy and physiology course earlier today. This was the course I started many months ago, but never wrote the exam. I wrote the exam today and as always I'm not going to comment on how I think I did. The reason I haven't posted in a while is because of this exam. For the past week I've spent all of my days studying for it, all while managing to keep up with my homework for the courses in this new term as well.

I'm not out of the woods yet though as I've scheduled my final exam for my second half of the anatomy & physiology course on January 27th. This gives me about nine days to study. I feel confident that I can get through the course, but doing an entire 3 credit course in 9 days will be quite an achievement, I'd say.

And for those of you who are wondering, these anatomy and physiology courses are offered by distance education through Thompson Rivers University Open Learning, so that is why I can schedule my exams in each month.

I also can't wait to get through the course so I can study the circulatory system!

Wednesday, 7 January 2015

Obligatory New Year's and start-of-term post

I was debating whether or not to post the usual beginning of term post. I wasn't going to, but as I was reading the premed blogs that I read (like Premed Post-mom at http://premedpostmom.blogspot.ca/), I realized I quite look forward to when other people post about their start of their semesters, so I figured I should post about mine too.

I am taking 5 classes plus I am finishing 1 class that I've already started. So I'm doing more like 5.5 classes this term. I will be writing 6 final exams from January - April. Three of my courses are online. I'm taking three kinesiology courses, one sports nutrition course, and two anatomy & physiology courses. One of my courses is biomechanics, so it will have quite a bit of math and physics, so that may be a bit diffcult, but I am looking forward to it, as I enjoy the sense of completion one gets from problem solving. I'm looking forward to all of my courses, and I'm also looking forward to doing the coursework on my own time rather than attending 4 lectures. In future semesters I will probably be doing all in-person classes, but I'm going to enjoy it this semester.

I wasn't going to make a New Year's resolution, but I stumbled upon one online. I'm going to be making the most out of my semester by avoiding "should" statements. For example, instead of saying "I should study for 3 hours tonight", I will replace it with "what will make me feel better if I do it?" and usually the answer is doing that same thing you were going to do with the should statement (which in this case, is the studying for 3 hours). So the result of the replacement is that it makes me feel less obliged to do something. Essentially, if I allow myself the option of not doing something, I will actually be more likely to do it. I have tried it so far and it has worked well, although sometimes I have been forgetting to do it altogether. Once it becomes second nature, then I'll be set. I found this concept out from the username makingfetchhappen on the premed101 forums.
Here is the link to the original post:
http://forums.premed101.com/index.php?/topic/81054-what-are-your-non-medicinemedical-school-new-year-resolutions/

I don't have many other updates on my general progress right now, but I do have a  few VERY exciting opportunities that I have started working on. However, I'm not going to share what they are quite yet. Part of me is being superstitious (I know, some scientist I am right?) and part of me doesn't want to get my hopes up in case things don't turn out. In any event, I will post the results within 1-3 months.

Good luck to everyone in their new year and new semester!