dan’s blog & trip reports

I was offered a position at UCLA, and I am taking it. I would have loved to see UCSF and UW first-hand, but that’s just the way things go when your specialty is not match. Even so, chances are very good I would have gone to UCLA anyway. I have been reluctant to define which program is my “first choice” (as so many have recently asked) simply because I haven’t had the chance to see many programs. But given what I now know, UCLA is a great program. Their faculty coverage is great and stable with a 3:1 student to faculty ratio, the clinic is modern and technologically up to date (with digital radiography and computers in each cube, plus a surgical microscope about to be installed), their faculty wrote the perio book that 80% of dental schools use, and the director is a level-headed, fundamentals-based periodontist who strives for clinical excellence and has vision for the program. Oh yeah, and one of the covering faculty just won the Master Clinician Award from the AAP, given to one periodontist per year. So you could say that things could be worse. There is no tuition, and stipend is a cool $20,000 per year.

Given that I will be in L.A. for the next 3 years and 9 months, I decided to go home, especially since I’m on break now. I brought my camera with me, and I spent the past couple of days surfing and photographing the coast. Here are some of my better pics (the proper gallery will be set up soon). Click for a larger image (trust me, it’s worth it).

Brown pelican in Half Moon Bay:

Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz (incidentally, the point break where I decided to become a surfer two years ago):

Shortboarder at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz:

A bird at a beach just south of Ano Nuevo. There was a whole flock of these wading in the surf, and whenever a wave came they’d pop up and over the wave. I must have spent an hour trying to capture the right moment, and this was the closest I came. Not bad, eh?

This is that same beach:

Call me crazy, but I loved the overcast weather, the Monterey pines, the lack of crowds and the chilly wind. It just felt like home, and it was a great break from the ghastly heat that’s been afflicting most of California recently.

For the next few days you can download Bruce Springsteen’s new single, Radio Nowhere, free off of iTunes. It’s an awesome summer top-down-driving rocker with the full E Street Band backing the Boss; too bad summer is almost over. The new album is out October 2nd, and I’m psyched. Yes, I’m easy to please.

Today’s partial UCLA interview went great; I had three of my five interviews, with the next one on Friday and the final one next Thursday. I’m optimistic. I certainly enjoyed all of the compliments on how much better I look in a suit compared to my usual Smurf scrubs. I also submitted my SF application today. I just hope I’ll have a chance to interview before I get my first offer.

I blame that program’s six different essay questions for my last-minute application. Those were some of the most difficult questions ever - imagine trying to answer “please tell us about yourself” in half a page. Now do something like that six times. Sheesh! Every other specialty has standardized applications.
Other happenings this week: reviewing 1,086 powerpoint slides for one class, and writing a 15 page business plan without any instruction. Yikes! Oh yeah, and I have a morning and afternoon patient tomorrow. I can’t decide if I’m going to party like a rock star on Friday or just go to bed early.

Yesterday I got my interview invitation to UCLA. Every applicant from UCLA gets an interview, but what the heck, I’ll take what I can get. People have a lot of good things to say about the program, and it pays. Hard to go wrong with that, right?
I just moved out of my old place in downtown Westwood across the 405. My friend and classmate Neil has a condo here, so now we’re roommates. Funnily enough, he’s a Los Altos kid. I pay ~$350 less per month and I have more space. Hard to go wrong with that, right?

Tomorrow I am beginning the interview season at the Eastman Dental Center in Rochester, New York. Right now it’s 10:15pm local time and I’m wondering how I’m going to fall asleep given that it’s only 7:15 back home. I’m also wondering how I’m going to wake up at 4:30am California time. Why am I out here? It pays, the program director was the president of the AAP, the UCLA faculty have a lot of good things to say about this place, there are many highly educated people out here, and the quality of life was ranked among the highest in the nation. What are my reservations? I have four: It’s upstate New York, it’s cold and dark in the winter, and it’s upstate New York, and it’s cold and dark in the winter.

I know I just had 2+ weeks to frolic around, but this month of July has been a constant torrent of urgent things demanding my attention. I don’t think I’ve ever worked this hard in my life. Well, maybe that’s not true, but I haven’t sustained this kind of workload (read: stress) for this long. For one thing, my patients are calling me and trying to get in ASAP. Second, my patient load has doubled since my old 4th year graduated. Third, starting Wednesday I go on a 3 week oral surgery rotation and I can’t see any of my own patients. Then I can see patients for a week while I cram in final exams, and then I go on 3 weeks of break (which will realistically be spent interviewing). So clinic is full and busy. This is ultimately a good thing, and this alone would be just fine if it weren’t for the perio applications I’m working on. Thanks to a non-standardized format, I get to fill out 7 different applications. I also get to make sure my score reports and transcripts are requested on time, and all of the other 15 things on an application checklist (and if I only get 14 of the 15 things, my application goes in the trash). Pile this onto a busy 8-6 schedule already, and it’s no wonder I’m feeling under pressure. I hope to have a decent break this coming weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

• Applying to periodontal postgraduate programs. I’ll probably know where I’m going by September. My goal: get paid, go to a program I like, and stay on the West Coast.
• Checking the news daily to make sure that the King-Drew hospital I will be rotating through for three weeks in August isn’t shut down for killing patients (search the LA Times news archives if you don’t know what I’m talking about).
• Surfing (I caught and rode 23 waves on Sunday)
• Hanging out with my college roommate, Regan, who recently moved to Westwood
• Recently discovered the joys of Costco membership, especially gasoline
• Swimming about 3 days a week with the Bruinmasters. Hardcore workouts are about 2000m per workout. Basically that means show up, swim as fast as you can for about an hour and go home. This usually involves a lot of gasping, but when I’m done I actually feel accomplished.
• Changing my lifestyle to eat less overall, and eat more fruits and veggies. I’m sick of having a gut. I’m actually down 10lbs from a month ago so I guess something is working. Funnily enough, I haven’t been hungry yet, and adjusting my eating habits only took 2-3 weeks. Then again, that adjustment wasn’t so easy. It’s weird to feel a little hungry, then reach into my lunch box and wonder if I feel like eating a banana, a bag of blueberries or a bag of grapes, but so far it’s worked just fine. My goals: vanity, living longer by eating healthier, lowering my cholesterol, and just taking care of myself better. Lofty!

Last weekend I noticed a beautiful guitar that I’d been eyeing for about 3 years. It was on sale, and I dipped into my dwindling saving account and got it. It’s beautiful and sounds even better. Now my fingers are sore, trying (usually in vain) to replicate the sounds of Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Jimmy Page and - oh the audacity - Jimi Hendrix. Yeah right, good luck! But I’m having a lot of fun with it. I even downloaded some freeware that will split an mp3, so I can repeat a section until I know how to play it. My new goal is learning how to solo. Occasionally I totally get in over my head; this is one of those occasions.
I’m on break right now, spending a lot of my downtime surfing (until all remnants of a swell vanished), swimming, visiting family and friends in San Diego, and for the next 5 days, driving up north for some time in the Bay Area. When I return it will back to clinic and my final year of dental school. That, and morning swim workouts with the local Masters team.

I’ve surfed 5 of the last 8 days, clocking about 2-3 hours per session. I caught my longest wave yet at Malibu (affectionately called Mali-zoo), and I can now catch waves on my shortboard. I can actually turn, go up and down a wave and have time to think about what to do next. I guess this means I don’t stink anymore. Amazing! I seriously never thought I’d get to this place. Equally amazing is that I caught a wave today and had no fewer than three people drop in on me and block me out of the best part of my wave. Makes me want to toss away all surfing etiquette. It was classic L.A. to have a vain megalomaniac - earlier bragging about how many women he’s bagged - drop in on me, and then whine like a baby when someone did the same to him. You just don’t get people like that up in the Bay Area. I miss home.

Duke Prosecutor Throws Out Case Against Players (nytimes.com)

Total Repudiation - Cooper Declares Lax Defendants Innocent

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And finally, a transcript of Nancy Grace making an ass of herself last March

…then cooking omega-3 rich, heart healthy, high-protein fish would not stink your apartment to high heaven. Yecch.