Of Physician-Assisted Suicide and Snowboarding

Last weekend was for me an eventful one. I had my interview with the University of Washington School of Medicine on Friday and went snowboarding for the first time on Saturday. My dad and I drove up to Seattle on Friday for the interview. I had slept very little the night before thanks to anxiety about the interview so I was very thankful for my dad's willingness to make the three and a half hour drive. The interview itself seemed short to me and I don't have a strong sense of how it went. I was interviewed by a panel of three, two professors and a current student. They asked me how I thought my seminary experience might help as a doctor and about why I felt drawn to medicine. One of the more difficult questions was, "If you like helping people then why don't you just become a social worker?" I struggled to answer this well but in the end I focused on my love for biology and chemistry which I thought suited me more for medicine. The most difficult question though was dealing with physician-assisted suicide. The question was posed to me like this: "You are a doctor and you have a patient with terminal cancer. She is in a lot of pain and has at the most a month or two to live. She has decided that it would be better to just end it now. She asks you how many of her pain pills she would have to take to kill herself. What do you do?" It wasn't fun dealing with that. In the end I said that ethically I couldn't help someone end their life. It made me feel a little better when my interviewer said that most doctors would probably answer the same way I had. After a brief discussion on socialized healthcare and a time for me to ask them questions the interview was over. I hope it went well as UW is my first choice among the schools I applied to.

On Saturday I went snowboarding for the first time. I've done quite a bit of skiing but had held off on snowboarding until now. I had met a guy who was in the church youth group I led for two and a half years at my parent's very re-appraising UMC at the Christmas Eve service I attended. I've desired to keep in touch with the youth I discipled as most of them are not in situations where they are hearing the gospel. I asked this youth if he'd be interested in going up to the mountain and he was very excited at the prospect so I had been praying since then that God would let it happen. So we ended up going on Saturday with a couple of other friends who go to the same pentecostal church I've been going to while I've been home over the break. I picked snowboarding up pretty quickly. We had some good conversations about God and I believe the youth was ministered to. Overall.....a great weekend.