Urban Adjustments

Now that I've had a chance to write a few entries, I'm realizing that a significant number of stories I want to tell come from time spent not at school, and here is why:

Places I have Lived
Hometown - Brush Prairie, WA - Population: 2,384
Undergraduate Education - Provo, UT - Population: 117,592
Medical Education - Dallas, TX - Population: 1,279,910

As you can see above, the population of cities I've lived in has been growing very rapidly which has been quite a change for me (and I keep moving southeast... based on the incredibly straight trajectory below, Tatia and I will end up raising our family in either rural Louisiana, east Cuba or Haiti [Sorry Aunt Bonnie]).

This change is amplified by the fact that I spend at least 2 hours every week day on Dallas public transportation... which is a great way to really see what the big city is like. I ride from the north side of Dallas into downtown, so every morning the train is packed with people of all lifestyles and socioeconomic background. It's incredible... it's like going to the DMV everyday and seeing who walks through. There are businessman of all kinds, high school students in their fluorescent polo shirts uniforms (I feel bad for those kids), homeless, mother's taking their sick children to the hospital, handicapped, and people speaking all kinds of languages.



This is downtown Dallas; the tower with the round top at center is by Union Station - where I transfer trains each morning. Dallas does have an awesome skyline - that building on the far left is my favorite. From transferring downtown, the next train drops me off at the Medical Center, right in front of Parkland Hospital Emergency Room entrance.

Parkland is the county hospital, so anyone needing care can come there. So just on the walk from the train station to the hospital (which leads to the medical school) I pass more interesting people and situations (and more languages that I don't even recognize at times).

Thus, one major part of my medical school experience takes place not at school, but commuting through the urban environment around the school. It's teaching me a lot... mostly about the ills of society, the good people in society seeking to prevent those ills, and changing how I view these things (or at least solidifying my thoughts on them). Here are just a few quick examples:

1.) I really enjoy seeing how many people on the trains spend that time they travel reading! I'm a bit of a book snob - that is I tend to respect people who read... so it's great to see so many people learning or just escaping in books. I'm also pleased to see so many people reading various religious texts on the train... everybody is free to have their own opinion on religions, and I don't strictly correlate religious people with "good" people; however, I think that religion is a definite manifestation of people seeking to know how to do good in society and how to find meaning in daily life. And for that, I'm thrilled to see that so many people act on those impulses... to seek to do good and find meaning.

2.) Right next to the the hospital ER entrance is the huge laundry facility for the hospital(s). On one side of the building, there are enormous vents blowing out exhaust from the dryers - releasing gusts of hot, Downy-fresh air downward onto the grass by the sidewalk. One morning this fall when I arrived early to school on a particularly cold morning, I saw a one-legged homeless man on a wheel chair, sitting under those vents asleep. To me, it looked like he had stayed their all night, and it was a pathetic site to see that he had to sleep under those vents to stay warm.

Anyway, I'll definitely be posting experiences I have on the train, mostly those that relate back to medical school or those that are just funny... not too many that are downers because that's not my intention with writing this.