mindful-med

June 8, 2022

Today the lab I spent much of my freshman and sophomore year working in (and that I probably wrote about a ton on this blog in 2019) had a celebration for all the graduating seniors. I remember working in this lab at the beginning of my UCLA career and being so anxious and afraid for the future, and now being in the lab as a senior and reflecting on how much I’ve grown since then was quite surreal. This end to my work in this lab culminated quite nicely with the publication of a paper that showcased the data from the project I helped work on, and my research mentors were gracious enough to list me as one of the authors (peep the screenshot above!!)

Highlights of the lab celebration include:

Gossiping and chatting about anything and everything in the lab break room just like the old days :’)

Watching one of my mentors use lab materials to make a makeshift graduation sash for one of the lab’s seniors (which, came out surprisingly good, and was a solid alternative to the $40 sash ucla scams us into buying)

Becoming an owner of the highly coveted Eppendorf pipet pen

Sharing plans for the future with my Day 1 lab partner

MPLS Review (9/10)

Minneapolis highlights include:

No wife, no kids, no stuff

Three girls in a revolving door, ain’t never seen that before

Taking sash pictures all across the city, and running into a couple who met at UCLA a couple years ago and are now married with a kid :’)

Meeting a trio of midwestern besties who we proceeded to spill our life’s tea with

Infiltrating a bachelorette party at the Union rooftop and chatting up the mother of the bride

False alarm Common Loon sighting

Molluscum #iykyk

The fact that literally everybody was outdoors to enjoy the great weather after enduring one of their longest winters in a while

$13 Whole Foods BBQ pizza

Canoes in the rose garden

✈️ PDX Review (4.25/10)

I think I’ll start making this a thing and posting reviews of every city I visit. No disrespect to any loyal Portlanders, but here are my honest thoughts:

If I had to describe this city using one word, it’d be “sus.” I really tried my hardest to like it, but found it really difficult. The city as a whole was pretty disappointing personally, but I can see how it’d be attractive to the qUirKy artsy types and those with niche interests (beer brewing, coffee, street art, etc). Besides the overt homelessness and drug use (felt worse than LA although the sheer # of homeless in LA is higher), the numerous people wandering the streets babbling nonsense or disturbing things, and the absolute ass weather (this is coming from someone who grew up in LA), the people I came across during my visit just screamed cold and distant :/

Bumped my rating up an extra star and a quarter because of the city’s few redeeming factors, including:

FOOD. Every meal I had was *mwah* (pictured above is a spicy chicken bao bun)

The airport: expansive food options; $6 mimosas and a cute theater; serenaded by local musicians while waiting for my flight

My Uber driver who said he used the excuse “My elephant back in Africa misses me, I need to go see him” in order to ditch his post-doc position at the University of Oklahoma

Powell’s City of Books—bigass bookstore that took up an entire city block. Didn’t end up buying anything because ~paradox of choice~, but I had a grand ol time getting lost in the endless aisles of books.

Highlights of PDX Day 2 included:

Breakfast scramble + photo worthy latte (I’m usually not one to take photos of my food but this latte was beautiful)

My first ever poster presentation! This was actually a lot more fun then I expected—I had a lot of great conversations with fellow students who were interested in the work I was doing or were doing similar research themselves. Seeing their eagerness to hear about my work and chat about the topics in general was really invigorating. I’m looking forward to UCLA poster day :D Unexpectedly, I also had a couple students come up to me to ask about general UCLA advice, and I’m glad I was able to impart some of the wisdom I’ve gathered over the last 4 years on them.

This cute robot that served us food at the Burmese lunch spot!!!

A couple of odd shops on Misssissppi avenue, including one that sold exclusively cat themed gifts, one specializing in lightbulbs, and a … disturbing taxidermy shop.

Flew into Portland to present at the Western Psychological Association research conference, my first ever conference :o

Day 1 began with beautiful views from the plane and from my hotel room (which was upgraded to a room on the top floor with a view of the river!). I had Thai food for dinner—which was surprisingly, very good (and very hot)—at the 3rd street food carts and spent the night wandering through Powell’s City of Books. The store took hp a whole city block and had every book you could ever dream of!! Apparently it’s the largest independent bookstore in the world, which in theory sounds great, but I ended up walking out with nothing because I was ~overwhelmed~ by all my options :’) I did end up ordering a hard copy of Empire of Pain on Amazon later that night though—spending time in Powell’s filled me with a sudden longing to read from physical book rather than the illegal epubs I’ve been using. We ended the night with donuts from Voodo Donuts, another one of Portland’s quirky~ ans iconic establishments.

April 22, 2022

April 16, 2022

It’s certainly been a minute since I’ve posted on this blog. Now that I’ve graduated and begun working, I feel as if I’ve entered a new stage in my life. I want to work toward making small positive changes, one of those being taking the time to reflect on what I’m grateful for and what I’ve accomplished.

Today was UCLA Active Mind’s annual mental health conference and it was in-person for the first time in 2 years. Here are a few of my takeaways from the conference:

Healing is not linear; don’t ever let anyone judge or belittle your experiences

You can learn to foster a healthy relationship with social media. With all of its bads come a lot of goods, and you don’t want to lose out on those

At the same time, you need to take time to live life outside of social media. Time is best spent being present and building relationships in person

January 20, 2020

After having a rough first 2 weeks back at school, the past few days have given me hope and heightened my excitement for what’s to come. Earlier this week I had my second volunteer shift at the clinic, and it was a wholesome and insightful experience :’) During my shift we saw a child who was on the spectrum, and watching how the med student was able to connect with her and make her feel comfortable in what must’ve been a stressful situation for her was so heartwarming. After every interaction and encounter in the clinic I find myself growing as a communicator and advocate for the patients that I work with, and I’m just so grateful to be able to be a part of something that continuously reminds me of why I desire to pursue a career in medicine.