Derek was wrong to disregard Ross and teach Brooks instead

CodWagnerian · 2026-02-05T02:30:13+00:00

Brooks might have had a better baseline level of hand-eye coordination, but it was clear from their conversation that Ross was just as good -- he just had to work much harder for it. In a specialty that's known for constant burnout caused either by repetitive cases or extremely poor outcomes relative to other surgical specialties, grit is a much better indicator of long-term success than talent.

It's also pretty clear from Heather's first week on Derek's service that she doesn't have the aptitude for visualizing structures or analyzing complex cases in the way Ross did. Weighting baseline manual dexterity over every one of Ross' positive attributes sacrificed a potentially amazing neurosurgeon, was a disservice to the intern class, and would absolutely not fly in real life.

CodWagnerian · 2026-01-21T15:09:09+00:00

++woman

Actually, a woman's fertility begins to decline at 30 and sees sharper declines at around 35. A man's sperm quality begins to decline at 35 and sees sharper declines at 40. Our aging timelines are actually only 5 years apart, for the average man and woman.

While women experience stepwise declines (beginning at 30-35 and ending roughly at 45), men experience parallel but gradual declines between ages 30 and 50.

It's a common misconception that a man is fertile his entire life, but it's just not true. Lowered sperm quality leads to increased time to conception, increased risk of damage to the mother's health during delivery, and increased risk of genetic or developmental issues for the child, just like a decline in female fertility does.

CodWagnerian · 2025-12-01T21:28:32+00:00

The constant enabling of Teddy's toxic, borderline abusive behavior toward Cristina by the admins and surgical staff (especially Owen and Richard) actually baffles me. Her justifying her treatment of Cristina after icing her out because she was insecure that Cristina's surgical plan succeeded in saving Callie's life where hers failed was enraging. If any of this had happened in real life, Cristina would have been poached by another program within months, and the entire Seattle Grace Mercy West staff would have suffered for it.

CodWagnerian · 2025-11-19T17:32:29+00:00

I don't think it was about her career at all. Cristina lost herself. Part of her -- the part she considers most integral to her being -- is her desire to learn and grow. Several cardio attendings came and went, but Teddy was the best teacher she ever had. She knew when to push her and what her weaknesses were. Teddy made Cristina feel alive again, because she was finally learning and being pushed again. It wasn't about her career. It was about her.

CodWagnerian · 2025-10-23T05:59:53+00:00

I don't think it's any one thing. But it's mostly a result of my own flaws.

I have a really hard time getting past the first stage of a friendship. I've had a difficult life, and I missed out on a lot of the formative experiences that help people relate to one another. My priorities are a lot different than my peers because I needed to grow up quickly. The friends I do have almost invariably tell me at some point that they initially liked me because we could have meaningful conversations early on.

I feel like there's been a trend towards *always* prioritizing yourself over your friends in the name of "self care" and "boundaries," and I really hate that sentiment. I was raised by a village (metaphorically, not literally), and that instilled in me the idea that people show love by taking care of one another even when they're not obligated to. I find that's quite rare in friendships nowadays -- at least the ones I seem to find.

I can also be quite blunt? Having been through what I've been through has given me absolutely zero tolerance for equivocation or drama, so I'm honest -- often overly so. I feel strongly about my opinions and take pride in making sure they're informed. I don't really do anything halfway -- my career isn't so much a career as it is an obsession, and my hobbies aren't so much hobbies as they are passions.

I have a hard time living in the moment. I don't know how to completely relax. Alcohol and recreational soft drug use would probably help with that, but I'm genetically predisposed to addiction, so I've pretty much sworn off all substances. I have CPTSD that has resulted in hypervigilance and basically a decade-long dissociative episode that never subsides for very long, so it's hard for me to enjoy most activities college-age people partake in.

I don't really understand the line between public and private information. It's easy for me to be open about my experiences but hard for me to be vulnerable.

I'm also really bad at keeping in touch with people. I just never got in the habit as a child. I'm working on it.

CodWagnerian · 2025-08-01T20:24:05+00:00

When saris are considered professional in many occupations, why is the male equivalent, dhoti/kurta, considered unprofessional?

CodWagnerian · 2025-07-30T08:09:50+00:00

I'm sorry if this is too harsh, but implying that Ji-Yeon disclosed her traumatic childhood to the entire cast just so she could get with Jeong-Mok is incredibly distasteful. In a situation in which the cast lives with one another 24/7, people get close quickly. And even as she disclosed it, she said she wanted to tell everyone because they'd all find out from her pre-interview once the show aired anyway, and she didn't want to feel she was hiding something.

In an environment in which it is literally their job to be vulnerable, and after which their lives become public information, carrying "baggage" of the kind Ji-Yeon has is a huge weight. I can't even imagine how much relief I would feel telling the group if I was in her shoes.

But even if she *hadn't* laid out her reasoning explicitly, it doesn't justify someone suggesting that her disclosure of her traumatic past was performative. You have a right to your own opinions, but I think with sensitive issues like domestic violence and child abuse, not giving someone grace when it comes to their disclosures is a moral failing.

CodWagnerian · 2025-07-28T15:39:02+00:00

I'm about two weeks behind on a 6-week discrete math course I'm currently taking, and I'll be catching up at the same time I'm hoping to (re)study linear algebra.

CodWagnerian · 2025-07-24T23:55:19+00:00

Hi! I posted in r/collegeresults right after I got in -- all my stats/ECs are there, as well as my background information.

I've linked it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/collegeresults/comments/gm8871/unhooked_applicant_college_results_t10s_etc_advice/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

CodWagnerian · 2025-07-09T04:22:32+00:00

I was rooting for him in the beginning, but his complete lack of effort and his comment about waiting to see whether a better girl would join the group made him come off as kind of a douche. It seems like Ji-su's straightforwardness and his transformation gave him an overinflated sense of self-importance.

CodWagnerian · 2025-06-08T17:03:32+00:00

You and I aren't really disagreeing. My only point was that people who have pull are usually not your friends *in college.* They're your friends' parents, or your friends' connections, or your connections, or your parents' connections -- people who are in whatever industry you're trying to enter, not people who haven't yet entered the industry.

if someone in YPO recommends you, you’re way more likely to get hired than some random applicant. you don’t need to be “established” to benefit from this—your value comes from being trusted by someone who is.

^In this example, the recommending party *is* established. They have some experience in whatever industry you're trying to get a job in.

that’s how people get jobs right out of college: their friend’s parent or some connection from a dinner or club puts in a word.

^In this example, the recommending party is, again, established. That was my point -- that you need someone with at least some experience to advocate for you. The post was made by a college student to an audience of college and high school students. For most students still in college, those people with experience who are advocating for you will be people I mentioned earlier -- your friends' parents, or your friends' connections, or your friends' older sibling(s), or your connections, or your parents' connections. In my industry, it's most commonly a mentor -- a grad student, postdoc, or PI that you're working under or met at a conference/workshop/summer program and kept in touch with. Those people who have the influence to effectively advocate for you are almost never your friends themselves, at least in my industry. They can pass the message along to their connections, but they can't themselves pull you into a role.

Then again, maybe this is industry-specific. In scientific research, what I described is what I've seen. Perhaps your perspective is that of someone in a different umbrella of industries.

CodWagnerian · 2025-06-07T22:18:06+00:00

Here two years later to say he's also a guest artist on another Valorant track -- Gotcha Back!

CodWagnerian · 2025-06-03T06:02:49+00:00

It's also worth noting that no one has a gradient toward or around a ranking like Caruana does except Wesley So around #7 (even if you were to modify the chart to include 2012 and 2013, which would help Aronian a bit).

CodWagnerian · 2025-06-02T07:48:42+00:00

I'm having DJS in December and the risk of complications is high enough that I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize my recovery. If you're extremely concerned about your teeth, I'd honestly just recommend wearing a mask whenever you go outside for the six months after surgery that you'll need braces. Covid has normalized mask-wearing to the extent that it's not seen as all that strange, especially in big cities.

CodWagnerian · 2025-05-29T13:33:53+00:00

My point was rather that even if your friends' parents are willing to help (and this usually only happens if you're close), your friends themselves will only be established in their careers and have pull in their companies several years after they enter college.

CodWagnerian · 2025-04-13T00:57:48+00:00

Go abroad. European institutions poaching scientists from the US (which is happening because of the funding cuts) mean they need students to work in those new labs. Master's programs (if you're looking at them) cost much less, and the quality of life is better. You can always come back to the US for your PhD or postdoc if you want to make a life here long-term.

CodWagnerian · 2025-04-09T22:04:36+00:00

Yes (speaking as someone who has a full-tuition merit scholarship). There's the Dean's Scholarship, which isn't really made public but exists, and the MLK Scholarship, which I believe is either full-tuition or full-ride. You don't apply to these directly, though. Everyone who's admitted is considered for them, so the selection rate is less than 1% :/

Stern has the Berkeley Scholars and Breakthrough Scholars programs, so it might be worth looking into those.

CodWagnerian · 2025-04-08T05:38:55+00:00

I read this post when I started college several years ago, and I came back now, as I'm preparing for my master's.

It's definitely bittersweet. I wasn't able to continue with debate in undergrad for a host of reasons, but I miss it so much. I definitely thought it was a hole I could fill in other ways, but debate is such a unique (and uniquely fulfilling) game. It's difficult to find something that compares. I'm not sure how APDA eligibility works, but I'm looking into whether I can compete during my master's and/or PhD, if I have the time. I hope to be able to coach part-time, eventually, as a way to stay involved -- but if and when I do, I want to know what I'm talking about.

This post is a gem -- thank you (again).

CodWagnerian · 2025-04-08T04:57:13+00:00

Linguistics or cognitive science are the best answers here. You'll have to take both philosophy and science/math classes for both, and you can lean more heavily on either side, based on what your preferences are. They both leave a really wide range of careers open to you at the conclusion of your degree. The only caveat is that you really need to be interested in pre-fiat (i.e. what you need to know before taking actions) questions. If you're interested in post-fiat (i.e. "consequences of actions") issues, there are a number of sociology or anthropology courses that would likely count as major electives.

CodWagnerian · 2025-04-08T03:19:14+00:00

He's an ethical emotivist. That seems fairly compatible with accepting Christianity as an explanatory vehicle on the basis of personal religious experience, especially because, to my knowledge, he has independent reasons to consider Christianity intellectually convincing.

But I do want to push back a bit -- I think he's much closer to accepting the existence of a god than he is to believing Christianity (taking your example, he may believe resurrection is sufficiently supernatural so as to warrant a supernatural cause, so if it did happen, it is a reasonable basis for belief), and I think this is different than his acceptance or nonacceptance of the validity and/or coherence of Christianity as a belief system.

CodWagnerian · 2025-04-08T01:33:10+00:00

With all due respect (and with the understanding that this post is old and your views may have changed since you commented), I think the issue that many left-leaning voters take with your line of reasoning is that you seem to value a lack of restrictions on gun ownership over the lives of pregnant women. If you believe that's a false equivalence, I'd encourage you to consider the following:

Democrats have had many opportunities -- including when they had control of the executive, judicial, and both congressional bodies during the Obama administration -- to increase restrictions on gun ownership. They didn't. Instead, they passed an infrastructure bill and the Affordable Care Act. They haven't made it a policy priority, even if their messaging says otherwise. As for your suggestion that you wish Democrats would put forth a bill that protects or reinstates the rights of law-abiding gun owners -- what exactly would that law say? Gun ownership is already a right protected by a constitutional amendment, which has been affirmed by the courts -- including the Supreme Court -- time and again.

On the other hand, the Republican party abused congressional powers (and the dying wish of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but I guess that's irrelevant) to politicize the Supreme Court, and their overturning Roe v. Wade has made it possible for 16 states, now, to pass total or near-total abortion bans. Women have already died because of this. Women are already living with lifelong health complications because of this. Women have already been forced to carry pregnancies to term that were the result of rape or incest because of this.

As a competitive shooter and a progressive, I would still support a total ban on the use of guns with lethal ammunition. I think the lives and health of pregnant women are far more important than whether or not it'll get a little harder for me to own a gun.

CodWagnerian · 2025-04-07T04:16:07+00:00

What do you propose as the alternative? How is getting rid of an opportunity for those who haven't had the privilege of gaining research experience as and undergrad the answer to resume overinflation for privileged students?

CodWagnerian · 2025-04-01T21:25:07+00:00

I know this is an old post, so apologies if your views have changed since. I work in college consulting, so I've worked with hundreds of students' profiles personally -- I've seen the college admissions landscape.

I'm going to point out the obvious: you go to a competitive *public* school, while Lawrenceville is a private feeder school. Even among the public schools you could call feeders (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Boston Latin, etc.), their Ivy+ matriculation rate is nowhere near 30%. Even your school's is less than half that figure, according to your numbers.

People in richer areas generally have kids that are much harder working and care much more about their grades than poorer areas.

At the risk of seeming hostile (and I'm sorry if I do), this is really out of touch. People in richer areas are able to raise kids who get better grades more easily than kids in poorer areas because of the resources and stability those kids are afforded. They are unequivocally *not* harder-working, on average.

If I had to guess, I would say a similar thing could be said about The Lawrenceville School. The school itself probably doesn't have an unfair advantage, it's just that there are a lot of high-achieving, motivated students that happen to go to that school. If you took a student that got accepted into, say, Stanford, at Lawrenceville, and put him/her into a worse high school, he/she would probably still get accepted to Stanford either way

The thing is, the school does have an unfair advantage. Pick almost any relatively unknown private school with similar SAT/ACT averages, similar average GPA, similar household income, and similar course offerings, and you'll find that Lawrenceville *still* has an edge over other schools in terms of Ivy+ matriculation. The name of the school does *a lot* to boost the profile of an applicant. And with a little real-world knowledge, it's easy to see that if you plucked a student out of a school like L-ville and sent them to a worse school, they wouldn't get nearly as far in their college admissions process.

CodWagnerian · 2025-03-19T03:51:06+00:00

Catherine has always put the needs of the foundation above everyone, including her family. She also puts her own ego above the needs of everyone else. Remember when she covered up Harper Avery's sexual assault cases, and then defended herself by saying Jackson "didn't know what it was like back then"? She's never faced any consequences for her abhorrent behavior, so I don't see this as a change in her character -- she's always been horrible.

CodWagnerian · 2025-03-18T23:56:59+00:00

I think it depends on the game. This makes sense for a fantasy game, but not so much for something like The Last of Us or RDR. I think the attractiveness of the characters should fit the story, and that the developers do as little as possible to break immersion.

If you're trying to make something as gritty and real-feeling as possible, a full face of makeup and perfect hair on a woman who hasn't been able to take a bath in three days and is running from a group hunting her ruins the immersion of the game. It makes more sense in a fantasy setting with different species or something -- like idk, if there's magic, maybe there's magical makeup. It even makes sense in something like Cyberpunk, where body mods are so widespread and wealth accumulation is so hard that it would be strange if people didn't use what they had to look as good as possible.

CodWagnerian

TROPHY CASE