CURRENT MISSION

I'm a med student starting this fall in New Orleans.This summer I've set aside some time to explore the best parts of Europe--the one's off the beaten path.

ABOUT ME

Lately I've been playing a lot of guitar, trying my hand at crafting homemade pizza from scratch, and mountain biking in the hills north of Atlanta.

For the last 5 years I've been conducting urban neuroscience research at Grady Hospital (Atlanta's not for profit). Since undergad at Emory I've been exploring the city, painting, drawing, & finding trouble while I finish up my post bacc classes. Just finished doing an acoustic version of 99 problems with my band, Big Fat Delicious. Turned out well.

PHILOSOPHY

From the mountain-tops!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'm brand new. Wish I had more experience with CS, but hopefully that'll change soon. Herd about it through my bud Hilary whose done a lot of traveling to South America for her direct trade coffee company.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've done my share of couch surfing with friends of friends throughout the years. This is the beginning of my experience with CS. Also, when I was little I use to pretend my couch was a boat and the carpet was the ocean, if that counts.

Interests

books
good friends
mischief
my family
music
adventure

• books
• coffee
• boating
• traveling
• painting
• drawing
• music
• guitar
• cycling
• surfing
• neuroscience
• volunteering
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Books: Confederacy of Dunces, Social Intelligence, Watership Down, The Help, Lord of the Flies, The Kite Runner, Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance. some: Thoreau, Foucault, Jack Kerouac. Tina Fay, Bossypants.
Movies: The Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, Cool Hand Luke, Good Will Hunting, Anything Monty Python, Paris J'taime, City of God, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I Heart Huckabees, Easy Rider.
Music: The Kinks, The Black Keys, Common, The Cool Kids, Erkah Badu, Daft Punk, Jose Gonzalez, RjD2, Collie Buddz, Ratatat, The Phoenix, The Shins, Weezer, Lots of oldskool Soul (Just borrowed my parents old record player), Nirvana, Jay-Z, Eminem, Biggie, Outkast, Drake, The Traveling Wilburies, Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Broken Bells.
Lately: Bangladeshi, Sushi, Thai.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Hmm...cant think of any 'amazing' things at the moment. Here's a cool experience I pulled from one of my med school essays:

Many of my research and clinical experiences with Grady Hospital’s Trauma Project (examining Post Traumatic Stress among the urban inhabitants of Atlanta) have been discussed as part of my primary application. However, before I was offered a full time position and opportunities for publication and therapy collaborations I had to prove myself, conducting endless sets of clinical screening interviews with patients in the hospital’s primary care waiting-rooms. The horrific instances of domestic abuse, child molestation, and gang violence that befell the patients I interviewed often left them with deep emotional wounds. Addressing these wounds over the course of extensive clinical interviews provoked both profound sadness and strong, displaced anger. I had to learn to deal with feelings and the people behind them right then – in the moment. The first time someone cried with me--I mean really broke down and cried--I didn’t know quite how to react. In this position, a comforting pat on the back isn’t really permissible. You can’t say you understand. You usually don’t.
Towards the end of my first few months of volunteering, I sat with a female participant who inexplicably took a cold, dispassionate and slightly hostile tone with me through most of our lengthy interview. It took all the skills I had to finally establish enough rapport with her to hear her story of being kidnapped and brutally raped by a stranger one night on her way home. “He gave me HIV,” she said with a pained expression on her face. And then, after a long pause she added “...and he looked a lot like you.”
Only once have I allowed myself to cry in front of a participant. This was that time. At the sight of my tears her anger gave way to true grief. She wept, and then, unprovoked, reached over and hugged me, hard. I’m a firm believer in “the rules of patient interaction”, but in this situation there wasn’t much else to do. I hugged her back.
In the later years of my work with the Grady Trauma Project I mastered technical skills; I learned how to establish diagnostic criteria, write about patient interactions, and present statistical analyses in compelling ways. In my first year I learned how to be genuine in situation that took me far from my comfort zone. I was faced with the challenge of collecting reliable data, maintaining boundaries, and showing compassion to participants--all at the same time. This was a set of experiences in-and-of-itself. It has contributed a great deal to my perception of what it means to treat.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm usually most interested in people who have a perspective I haven't herd before. Also people who do their own thing in their own time. I love a good story and have more jokes then I know what to do with. Philosophical thoughts are usually something I dig and I've devoted some academic research and personal exploration to 'the evolution of self'.

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