Floyd

Duke-NUS applicant day

It has been such a long time since my last interview, well if you would call that casual conversation with my Ph.D supervisor an interview..

It is the first one in the last four years, but now they do not call it interview any more, it is Applicant Day. It was a long day, packed with a lot of stuff: TeamLead, two rounds of one-to-one interview, and an on-the-spot essay. I cannot remember for how long I have not realized that I could do so many things in a single day, evil Ph.D time!

TeamLead is their teaching method, basically, students study the materials by themselves and took a close book quiz. After that the same quiz will be taken again in a group, members are allowed to discuss and come out with a answer as a group. It is a good idea, at least we have a second chance to correct our mistakes we made during the personal testing stage. or sometimes as Dr. Kamei said, right answers might come from wrong reasons. So even the answer is right, grade is fantastic, the understanding is not there actually. But it is the understanding and the knowledge that really matters, not the grade itself.by repeating the same test in a group again, the risk of right answer but wrong reason or wrong answer but right reason can be greatly eliminated. After the quiz, practical situations will be given to the group, and the knowledge learned and tested will be applied, but in an open-book and open-internet manner. Overall I think it is a good idea in terms of learning. But honestly, it is much more time consuming than conventional lecture teaching method. Faculty members are there to monitor the whole process and try to judge the level of understanding by each of the student. I guess if all of them go to the wrong direction, faculty will drag them back on the right track and make sure the understanding is correct.

Interviews were a total disaster for me. Interestingly I did not feel this way on spot, but the feeling gets stronger and stronger afterward. Probably I overdo too much (talking too much about RESEARCH.....), and the message was not clearly delivered (i just wanted to know if people like me who are so involved and passionate in research are welcomed in medical school). Some questions were completely out of my expectation, and my reaction to some of the questions was even a surprise to me: who could do that in an interview?!!! (what I did exactly will be a secret!) But the interview rooms are very nice: doctors' consultation room! I am afraid this type of interview venue would be the first but also the last that I will experience. Very special.

On-the-spot essay becomes no deal at all after the TeamLEAD and interview. we sat in a conference room with very comfortable chairs extremely cold air-con, and the beautiful views of Outram.

I make new friends, experience very local American ascent that you can only hear on TV here in Singapore, and start to realize how competitive it is to be a med student even in such a new school. Among the 14 people there, the only advantage I have is 4-years of research training. Yes you can say it is valuable, but they can gain such trainings any time they want to after their MD. moreover,for majority of them, they might not have intensive research training as I have, but they all have some sort of research exposure. My so-called advantage is really nothing. 

There is a high chance that the friendship is short, some of us go to the school, some of us go to other schools, and some of us just go back to their own lane. We might never meet each other again, even we do, we probably cannot recognize each other when we meet. But I will remember this day, my applicant day.

what do you do with facebook or twitter? keep in touch with old friends, follow someone you like, get updates on what is going on with whatever you might be interested (people/organization/events).

It is a huge success in social networking, but can we transplant the idea into more specialized networking? is there such a need? I believe so.

I am a newbie in research, and when some new idea strikes me the first thing I do is to make sure it is indeed something new. With billions of research papers online, and thousands of new works published each year, it just becomes more and more difficult and time-consuming to perform this task. Or shall I say it is more and more difficult and time-consuming to do an in-depth literature review on a given topic and find out what is going on in the field?

It is true that we have databases and search engines, but are they adequate? is there supplement solutions? Of course, yes, an online network specialized for researchers. you can setup personal page and let people know your work, and more importantly make your personal page as a research notebook; you can follow well-known figures in your field; field specialized discussion groups can be setup so that researchers in that particular field can communicate and share thoughts, ideas and updates.

虽然我还很年轻，可后悔的事情也已经太多了。不知道什么时候会成为生命中的不可承受之重。

后悔这个东西，当动词用的时候应该是个及物动词，重点是后面的名词。

如果买了一只股票后来赔钱了，这种事情是不应该后悔的，可是如果买股票的时候是一时脑热，稀里糊涂，那就很应该后悔一下了。这个时候后悔后面跟的对象就应该是脑热，而不是赔钱。

脑热这个东西才是祸根。要不怎么说冲动是魔鬼呢。

书上说教育应该多用奖励，少用惩罚。我的经验是：对教育宠物还是多惩罚比较有用。可是对人，还真是奖励比惩罚来的有效。

所以今天主要是想表扬一下自己最近的表现。能把买房子这样的诱惑按住，不容易，要表扬！终于算是理智战胜了一次。

申请博士的时候曾经有机会跟一个乌克兰人做有关大脑模拟的研究。回过头来看其实我还挺适合做这个的，喜欢在公式和文字之间来回翻译。现在神经兮兮的要学人家拍照，尽管摆出做研究的架势却收获甚微，脑子里转的问题始终找不到答案。有些照片的确是能讲故事的，说不清是因为构图，色彩还是什么东西。也许全是，可自己却从来按不出这样的照片。是自己不动脑子不思考？没有哲学修养？或者干脆脑残，没有艺术细胞。可能这都是原因，哪怕是慢慢积累也还好。可技术上的问题却无法解释：思考的内容怎么才能在照片中体现出来呢？

或许这个问题本身无解，或者题干就是答案。思考了，修养到了一定层次就很自然的在照片中体现出来了。

可是，怎么说我也是接受西方式教育将近二十年，即使是艺术，是说不得，我也想能不能量化，至少定性也可以。一个像我这样没有底蕴脑残的人出来的片子，和我认为好的，有故事的片子差在哪里呢？触觉吧。摄影或许就是用相机截取一个时间和一个空间。并不是每个组合本身都会有什么故事，但特定的组合如果出现在身边，又恰好手上有一个相机的话，用合适的焦段，合适的曝光记录下来应该就是了。熟悉相机的视角，快门光圈的组合应该是第一步的任务。

身边每天发生无数的事情，走过无数的人，一旦溜走就不会再回来。什么时候是应该按下快门的时候呢？或许这就是思考转化为相片的关键：在现实中寻找脑海里的影像。 清晨拥挤的地铁，穿着整齐的男女，听音乐，补妆，打盹，遇到同事不得已的寒暄。地铁门打开刹那挤上挤下的人群，挤掉的高跟鞋。。。。如果这是你的理解，见到这样的场景，自然会果断的按下快门。如果看到的超过了或者和想象的完全不同，本身的对比也是很好的向导。

当然了，这应该是第二步。

可是，快门谁都会按，对一些事物的理解大家大同小异，怎么才能分出高下呢？这个时候是不是就要看敏锐和经验了呢？就像画鸡蛋的画家，简单的形状不同的光影，一遍一遍的练习。

也许到了一定程度，就需要细微处见差别了。

这些算是发现吧。虽然摄影不能像绘画一样有那么大的自由度。可是也可以一定程度的创造，比方说商业摄影。。。

恩，这是看了几位高手的博客想到的，不知道能中几分。。。。。