First week down - Sunday Surprise [22-July-24]

Settling in. Uncertainty abounds

Anyoung there!

That’s “hello” in Korean by the way. How are you doing?

Can’t believe that it’s been 1 full week at Stanford already. I’ve finally gotten my sleep into rhythm and settled in on some routines. So much so that I did my first day trip, but more on that later. (I’m also mixing up the order a bit of the sections, because… why not?)

How have you been? Do let me know -it’s one of the fun things of having a newsletter: hearing where the readers are and what they’re up to!

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Actionable insight

Write down the timetable for an ideal day or week.

I did this exercise recently and it was eye opening. Not only did I try to fit all my current projects and work in there and the ideal amounts of exercise but somehow, when written down, you realise just how much you try to squeeze into a day without allowing much slack in case something goes wrong.

Seeing it jotted down made me stop and realise just how unrealistic my own schedule was and that even if I managed to pull off my *ideal* day, just how busy I’d be!

For me, it was a great exercise in stopping the urge to squeeze more things into a day and maybe spread it out over a week or a month. If you end up doing this exercise, let me know if you have any interesting findings.

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Creative update

Youtube - Is the Surface Pro 11 (2024) the perfect 2-in-1?

Yeah, I’m still harping on about the Surface Pro - I really REALLY like it as a device and wanted to make this weeks ago. Finally, I had the time to sit and edit and this video is what popped out.

Every video so far, I’ve tried to tackle 1 new thing while making sure I don’t slip too much on the previous improvements. This one was focussed on pacing. If do decide to watch, I’d love to hear any feedback.

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Interesting thing to read/watch/listen

When architecture was an Olympic Sport

Umm, so yeah. Not a fake headline, it ACTUALLY was in previous Olympic games! Thought it was an article that was relevant since the 2024 games are almost upon us.

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Cool finds

White noise machine for sleep*

This is not something that I was looking for, rather the AirBnb I’m at has one next to the bed. I’m staying at one near a railway station so the train sounds are quite noticeable. I didn’t think it’d do too much to help my sleep but I actually do think it fast tracked me to sleeping through the rumbling.

This isn’t the one I have next to my bed (can’t find that one) but this seems better in that it has a slow breathing light to guide you into sleep and can be used as a speaker in a pinch.

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Weekly Update

This week was actually close to an ideal week worth of work and rest. I ended up being called in to help at Stanford for the SASI Summer program for pre-med students due to some last minute cancellations. The students (thankfully) were in high school and had an intensive 1 week course to get a taste for what clinical life was like. Unlike if I was teaching medical students, this meant I didn’t need to brush up on the different drugs used here and the slightly different protocols in effect. Whew!

The view from my last presentation for SASI

The program required 2 presentations of the same thing: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This gave me ample time to be nervous for one session (I didn’t really get a heads up on what I was doing most days 😂) and refine it by the afternoon while also having hours in between to explore the gorgeous Stanford campus.

As someone who isn’t very comfortable public speaking, it made me unusually nervous given just how low stakes it was for me: this was going to have close to no impact on my “real” life. Now that it’s over, I’m glad the sequence happened as it did- it’s nice knowing that I now have enough clinical experience to be handed some random thing and that I know enough to make up a decent lesson plan on the fly.

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Quote of the week