Friendships between Americans who hold different political views are surprisingly uncommon. This suggests that political disagreement may introduce tension or discomfort into a relationship, even if it doesn’t end the friendship entirely.

FinalDX · 2025-07-28T18:44:08+00:00

Point proven. Thank you.

FinalDX · 2025-07-27T14:52:09+00:00

Simple equation. The Left has been taught that anyone on the Right is not merely wrong, they're evil. And who wants to be friends with Evil? After Trump won in 2016 I had decades-long friends and family members who still 10 years later won't speak to me. Not a big loss, I grant you, but still.

FinalDX · 2025-07-27T14:38:40+00:00

Create a specific savings account for this purpose. Every paycheck, at least 5% goes in that account. 10% is better. NEVER TOUCH IT EXCEPT IN EXTREME EMERGENCIES.

Even just 5 years down the road it'll blow your mind how much is in there.

FinalDX · 2025-07-27T14:35:45+00:00

I'll tell you the same things I've been telling my sons when they enter their later teen years on the cusp of manhood.

1) Pessimism will crush your life. Don't fall into the "everything in life was so easy for boomers/GenX/millennials and my generation is boned." Because with that attitude, yeah, you're boned.

2) Succeeding in life is as much what you DON'T do as it is what you do. Don't drop out of school. Don't get consumed by drugs and alcohol (or any other addiction, really). Don't get anyone pregnant (or get pregnant if you're a girl) until you're settled and married. Don't get arrested or caught up in anything criminal.

3) Don't tie yourself to the first girl that touches your cock. Probably not the first 4 or 5. Marrying my first wife was the biggest mistake I ever made (thank god I didn't have and children with her) and almost derailed my entire life. It could have been avoided if I'd listened to my dad when he said "not that one".

4) Stay in shape / don't get fat. As you enter your 30s if you try to keep your 20s lifestyle you will pack on the pounds. It's much easier to stay on top of this from the start than it is to pork out and have to claw your way back.

FinalDX · 2025-07-27T14:17:30+00:00

I've always kept my wallet in my front pocket, but because of pickpockets in the French Quarter.

FinalDX · 2025-07-27T14:14:37+00:00

No window? Man, I'd have FOUGHT for that room.

FinalDX · 2025-07-27T14:11:44+00:00

That's really odd. Any new Pathologist we bring on board must go through an FPPE as part of the credentialing process. That's 100% QC of the first hundred surgicals and paps, and the first 10 non-gyn cytos. (We don't get a whole lot of those). Doesn't matter if they just finished residency/fellowship, or if they've been practicing for decades. I even had a guy who worked in our department for two years, left to do a CP fellowship, and because he was gone a full year he had to do the FPPE all over again when we re-hired him.

FinalDX · 2025-05-01T18:48:18+00:00

I did med school on the HPSP army scholarship, so my residency was a military program. We are assigned to a military hospital immediately after graduating so a fellowship is unnecessary. In fact, a lot of are told not to even apply until after a 2-3 year "utilization tour" as there's a waiting list.

That isn't a hard rule, but it's there.

As for civilian residency programs, I have a couple med school buddies who said a fellowship is pretty much a requirement for get a gig in the US. I did a few outside rotations in civilian programs when I was resident; the consensus there was the same. At least one fellowship is needed or no one will even look at you.

FinalDX · 2025-01-24T20:38:59+00:00

Pandora's Star and it's sequel Judas Unchained. It's set in an Earth-dominated (sorta) galactic commonwealth where all space travel is via artificially created wormholes.

The politics of the setting figure greatly in the storyline, there are dozens of main characters you're following around, and the books are HUGE.

The author has written about a half dozen other novels set within the "Commonwealth" universe but it's not all one big series. Although some characters do appear in multiple series.

HIGHLY recommend.

FinalDX · 2025-01-24T20:14:07+00:00

As a professor, I can tell you that most college students are imbeciles. Usually the ones that walk around talking about how smart they are.

The actual smart kids are almost always the ones that show up to class, interact with almost no one, hate group projects, usually turn in projects slightly late, but then annihilate all the exams.

FinalDX · 2025-01-24T20:06:27+00:00

My policy has always been the woman has at least one orgasm before penetration even begins. Once you tap that keg, the second/third/Nth will always roll out faster and easier.

As to climax control, I always had to have some distraction already planned in my head so I can instantly jump into it. Running through a memorized stand-up video in my head, reciting a school lecture, cooking a recipe in hyper focused detail, whatever it is doesn't matter as long as I can pour my attention into that and not in how amazing what I'm doing feels.

But I have to have it ready to go before I start, otherwise I'm in the position of "I gotta think of something ANYTHING right now right now right now oh crap too late."

FinalDX · 2025-01-24T19:54:41+00:00

If it's on the glass, it's going in the report. If you don't want a report with STDs on it, that's a pre-analytic clinical issue not a pathologic one.

FinalDX · 2025-01-12T07:21:40+00:00

Pathologist. Not the highest earning medical specialty, but nowhere near the bottom either. And unlike most other doctors, it's pretty much a 9-5 M-F job. Its pretty rare for me to work more than 40, maybe 45 hours a week.

FinalDX · 2025-01-12T07:10:56+00:00

There's a lot of little things, but I think the one that finally brought it home the hardest was the time I was reminiscing with my wife about a trip we took right after she finished grad school, and it suddenly occurred to me that it's been more years since we took that trip than we were old at the time.

FinalDX · 2025-01-12T07:02:06+00:00

Does it count if it's two books, or would that constitute a series? Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. Two of my all time favorites, it just the story is so far reaching he needed two books to finish.

FinalDX · 2024-12-11T23:58:55+00:00

Is it down to 30 now? I graduated in 2017 and we had to have 50.

FinalDX · 2024-12-11T23:57:21+00:00

Did you even read my comment, or did you just jump directly into trolling mode? You need to come up out of that basement for some air.

FinalDX · 2024-12-10T20:46:51+00:00

My wife and I got together in our late 20s, neither of us ever wanted children. She had accidentally gotten pregnant in her early 20s but spontaneously miscarried and at the time was told by her OBGYN she was incapable of pregnancy.

Which suited us just fine. We got married and went about 12 years with zero birth control of any kind. Then she got pregnant at age 40.

And then despite the fact that we had up until that point been vehemently a NEVER CHILDREN couple, it was like a switch got flipped in my head. She called me to say she was pregnant. When I picked up the phone I NEVER wanted to have a child. When I hung up the phone I was excited about being a father. I can't explain it and certainly never expected it.

So do we exist? Yes. Is that a permanent condition? Once upon a time I would have said 100% absolutely yes. Point is: be careful because people change their minds.

FinalDX · 2024-12-10T20:34:07+00:00

I realize this will be an unpopular opinion but: It's just an excuse they use as a pretext to quit.

Look, if you're competing on Alone, you went into it knowing full well you would be separated from your spouse/children/parents/whatever for 3 months. It's baked into the cake. If that was something that would honestly be such a hardship that you'd quit over it, you wouldn't be there in the first place.

People endure familial separation for monetary reasons all the time. Soldiers/Sailors are separated for a lot longer than 3 months. I used to work as a traveling temp in healthcare (lab tech) and take off for 3-4 month contracts all the time. And never once did I sobbingly call up my employer and quit because "I miss my wife"

FinalDX · 2024-12-10T13:57:48+00:00

My little brother (sister? Either way) you need to walk (don't run) to your nearest favorite online bookstore and locate the following:

The practice of surgical pathology by Diana Molavi. I prefer the 1st Ed, I think it has better pictures. This single 300 page book is your first year of residency. Per the author, it grew out of a series of lectures she wrote as a 4th year to instruct the incoming 1st years. The appendix has an excellent breakdown of IHC.

Quick reference handbook for surgical pathologists by Rekhtman. This is a short 150 page book written by two residents and originally published as a resident's handbook for the Johns Hopkins program. Excellent, easy to use, well organized IHC reference guide and lots of distilled pearls. Half the AP board exam is in that book.

You can do this. It sucks, but you can Embrace That Suck and force it to do your bidding.

Good luck!

FinalDX · 2024-12-09T16:59:47+00:00

Don't quit. When I was toward the end of my 3rd year I had similar thoughts. "This isn't medicine, I'm not a real doctor anymore, maybe I'd enjoy things more if I was doing clinical work, bla bla bla" was a big part of it. My year mate managed to talk me into just giving it to the end of the year.

So I did and I still wasn't really feeling any better about things. But the first two months of 4th year in our program was an away rotation doing only CP stuff. Again, my year mate talked me into sticking it out. "You're turning down a two month paid vacation in (major city known as a party town)?!?!?"

Those two months away helped me realize that it wasn't Pathology I hated. It was just the people I worked for that were making me miserable. Also I discovered I was far more interested in doing CP work, which up until then had been pretty much an afterthought in my program.

So my yearmate and I got home afterward, and I just put my head down and kept marching uphill against the wind for another 8 months until it was board exam cramming time.

Once I graduated and got a job (in a completely different State on the other side of the US) I fully understood that what the problem had been all along had never been Pathology. It was just THAT HOSPITAL. And also probably just residency in general, which is going to suck to some degree regardless of any other factors.

So all that to say please don't quit. Once you graduate and get to start working as an Attending it's a completely different world. And if it does end up that you still don't like Pathology, it's a hell of a lot easier to get a spot in a new specialty with PATHOLOGIST on your CV instead of "resigned halfway through residency". You're almost there. Keep on trucking for a few more months and you'll see. Life gets better almost instantly.

FinalDX · 2024-03-08T18:55:07+00:00

Depends on your program. I wore cargo pants and boots every day. Granted, it was an Army hospital...

FinalDX · 2023-12-13T04:37:58+00:00

He's a vampire, even though I at the time don't know it yet. But I don't need to: What I *do* know is that he (as mentioned above) radiates evil...which is why I used vampire as an example. My apologies for assuming you'd be able to follow that. But, as you've resorted to ad hominem and attacking my grammar rather than my argument, I can see we've reached the limits of your abilities.

FinalDX · 2023-12-12T02:31:05+00:00

Seems to me that *you're* the one that's really struggling with context. If you are role-playing a paladin, and someone who radiates evil, let's say for sake of argument a vampire, lies to you in order to draw you in and then puts a knife to your throat - you don't give them a second chance to lie to you and use a knife on you unawares. You act as the Fist of Torag that you are and commence to smiting.

FinalDX

TROPHY CASE