In Westwood, on rotation

That (above) was me a year ago. Thanks to Matt and Lucas (two fellow Pomona Alums), I dislocated my knee right before the Beckman Conference. Anyway, in this second post, I would like to comment on the first "required" rotation for the UCLA MSTP. While everyone can agree that traveling in Europe for all the days leading up to medical school is ideal, I have to say that this rotation thing isn't bad at all. For one, I'm becoming acclimated with UCLA and Westwood in general. It's somewhat bizarre to live in a city where you're a short jog from the pool, where Owen Wilson frequently swims laps, while on the same jog you might run into one of O.W.'s friends at the premiere of Miami Vice (True, all of it...By the way, movie premieres are stupid and pointless and just another excuse for L.A. people to point at each other and say, "We're kind of a big deal; I mean, we have stars here.") Another reason I love this summer rotation thing is that I'm getting to appreciate the pace of research before launching into the sure-to-be frenetic world of medical school. In other words, I'm appreciating the fact that I'll have PhD years in addition to pre-clinical and clinical years (the MD components of my training). Anyway, where was I? Oh ya, UCLA is great. There's a bit of everything here, which, at first, is a little overwhelming. Where do you begin, how do you wade through the endless possibilities, each easily within your grasp? I guess I still am figuring this out, but I'm really "getting into it."