It is really hard to know. While it is probably hard to tell from my very rare posts here, I am what most people would consider successful in my career, extroverted, and socially very comfortable in many, many environments (off the top of my head, the only place I’ve ever felt out of my element is the poolside bar at…

It doesn’t seem that way now, but you’ve got so much in front of you to look forward to. Rejection is always hard, but you can succeed professionally from pretty much any starting point. I’ve spent my entire life in academics and have either studied at or worked for MIT, Harvard, Duke, UNC, Pitt, and Tufts, and at…

Good luck! I recently got licensed to practice medicine in Massachusetts and it was a nightmare. After six months of turnaround, they asked for a letter from my supervisor (who doesn’t even work at the same institution any more) for a research fellowship I did in 2009 to talk about my attendance and duties. No time…

You have to play enough to accrue with a season (different from being “credited” with a season), or else you do not progress to being a UFA. In order to “accrue” a season, you have to be on the active roster for 6 games. Any less, and the team still owns your rights.

When I was in medical school, our model for learning how to do prostate exams was the clerk of the medical book store. Every customer he ever had has had a finger in him. Now, that *was* awkward.

The baseball system is totally broken, but I think the parallel that is being lost is that in baseball, you have to be in the league for 6 years to be an unrestricted free agent. In football, it is 4 years. Butler has only played 3. When he plays 4, he gets the big payday (if he has a good year and anyone wants a…

I am a doctor, and, yes, you get a blistering rash that follows a nerve distribution (dermatome). It’s very characteristic, so you don’t usually need any lab testing. In cases where the rash is atypical, you can culture the vesicles that erupt looking for the virus.

Or know where roads come from

The one and only time I have ever used the “I’m a doctor and need to make it back to the hospital” with an airline was when I was stuck in Iowa City and there was bad weather in the Chicago area keeping me from getting back to an ICU full of patients in Richmond VA. Our team was already down a physician due to an…

I just moved from Pittsburgh to Boston, and due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control, the start of my job was put off for 2 months after I had already moved. The cost of living adjustment was very, very apparent without any income.

Critical care doc here butting in. Not restricting salt is the right answer. I wouldn’t try to manage your fluid intake beyond your normal thirst response, either. Until you’ve had your next visit with your physician as it is so close, I wouldn’t try to do anything acute for the swelling. Following your labwork…

While not as high end as this sort of dealership, I used to have to take my car to a Jaguar/Land Rover dealership for service. I used to joke that I knew that I was in a high-end place because the only magazine they had out in the waiting area was Cigar Afficianado.

My first job was at a mall foodcourt Haagen-Dazs and we realized that it actually cost less to order a la carte whipped cream and hot fudge over a cup of ice cream than it did to order a sundae. That’s some balls on a combo.

It’s the trouble with having a country that was essentially founded on the principle of not wanting to pay taxes.

Of course, this may be just a case of why you shouldn’t have a dairy farmer run an intelligence committee, but if you want to be more conspiratorial:

If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a hundred times: Spinal Tap first, Puppet Show second.

I had the opposite experience once when a friend cut his hand open on a broken wine glass at a steak house. The manager tried to get us to take him to a hospital in an ambulance. While the cut did require stitches, an ambulance would have been way overkill.

Once, when I was in Pittsburgh, I asked a bartender if they had Maker’s Mark, and the bartender told me he’d look to see what they had on tap. My friend and I got up from the bar and left on that note.

That’s great stuff. Cheers!

I’m not a diabetic, but I am a physician. Sugars are carbs (and eventually all consumed carbs are broken down to sugars to be used for energy production in the body). It is more important to maintain a day-to-day consistency of carbohydrate intake such that your medication regimen is appropriate for your diet and…