I was over at Panda Bear, M.D. today doing some reading, and it struck me that I’ve never given a proper shout-out to the guy. I realized that he had plugged me one day when I noticed a spike in traffic. The plug was written, most appropriately, on October 31, 2006.
I’m sure most of you read Panda. He’s well-known in the medical blogosphere (OK, I hate that word but it fits), and is somewhat of a celebrity over at the SDN forums. If you haven’t read his latest post, I want you to go over and do so as soon as you can.
In it he discusses why Call and Residency Training Still Sucks. It’s a great post, and Panda has always been known to tell it like it is. You’ll find this in nearly everything that he writes. He seems like he’d be a really cool resident to work with, too. It’s a shame that 99% of residents aren’t real like this guy is. A real shame.
Panda is a great writer. When you read his work it’s almost like reading a book. If the EM stuff doesn’t work out, I think he’d do pretty well in writing and web publishing.
Again, here’s the link to his latest post: A Few Random Things
Some other good news is that it looks like he’s moving over to WordPress or Typepad and a solid domain. I can finally get some trackback love from him that I’ve always wanted =)
A Note To Panda
Panda, if you’re reading this, feel free to contact me for any questions or concerns you might have. I can help you set everything up, and I’ll show you how to do a 301 redirect from your old Blogger domain (just like I did at my old Blogger domain) to your new domain in order to preserve traffic and link legacy. I recommend WordPress over Typepad due to the outstanding community support and numerous plugins that WordPress offers. It’s much simpler than you might imagine.
Edit: I see he’s got a Typepad Blog rolling already.
I’ve been a longtime reader of Panda’s blog; he was kind enough to offer some advice to me over at SDN via PM when I came to him as the EM-fascinated premedder, and I always enjoy his take on things.
Panda’s blog is certainly one of the best to read. Much like Med School Hell, it’s funny, insightful, and brutally honest.
Those of you pre-meds, please pay attention for your own good!
There’s a razor edge of difference seperating me and Hoover. Everything on Medschoolhell is true, just like everything on my blog is true (except the patients are always scrambled somewhat to protect confidentially) but I decided that I liked medicine enough to keep plugging away at it and he decided it wasn’t worth it. Family Medicine, what I was doing last year, was a soft, cuddly, non-threatening level of hell and I certainly would have gone back to engineering if I hadn’t ejected from the flaming wreckage that was Duke Family Medicine.
Emergency Medicine is certainly the field for those of you who want to minimize the bullshit. Our hours are decent, our attendings and senior residents are generally professional and friendly, and it is more like a job than most of the specialties which expect you to make them a lifestyle.
Of course, if you don’t like nasty, smelly, disgusting things you won’t like it.
I work as an Emergency Medicine resident. It is not the sum and total of my existence.
Good point Panda, we are different but not by a whole lot. It’s great that EM affords you the ability to treat it more like a job and not as a lifestyle. I’m glad to see the increased entry into EM over the last eight years. Lifestyle is playing a big role in decisions, and I only expect it to increase.
But can’t you just sense the vitriol from the old-guard about people deciding to work at jobs where they can have responsible family lives as well as good pay?
The profession is sadomasochistic. “I suffered so I want you to suffer.”
Absolutely. That is the exact impression I got from many of the older attendings that I worked with. They would actually complain about the 80-hour work week rule shortly after it went into place. They had to had work 120+ hour weeks, and so should everybody else.
Been reading your blog lately after finding it on Panda’s, nice site you have here.
Got a question for you, knowing your disdain for medicine I figure you would shoot straight…
What do you think about a career in dentistry? I am in my 30′s with wife and kid. I have been debating medicine for several years as a second career. After doing some informed reading, I am getting quite nervous about a switch to medicine.
Any insight on dentistry you are willing to share?
thanks,
Ugly, thanks for the compliments. I have a close friend who’s been practicing dentistry for two years now. He loves it. He’s making around $180k per year, and works four 10-hour days per week.
You’ll find that dentistry will offer you lots of flexibility in work hours, and they pay isn’t bad either. He started his first year right out of school at around $165k. He’s currently looking to purchase property for his own practice.
Keep in mind that these numbers are for this one guy only. However, he tells me that his salary and work hours are pretty typical.
To answer your question, I would recommend dentistry over medicine any day for those looking for an abundance of family/free time and a good salary.
Ugly–I don’t know if I was smart enough as a pre-med to realize what I was getting myself into. If I had read a blog like this I would have probably said, “Eh, hyperbole.” Of course, you’re older and probably smarter.
Especially since you have a family, I’m glad you are thinking long and hard about it. Have you considered Pharmacy School? The pay is not as good as dentistry/medicine, and while you could make the argument it’s a little monotonous, it’s probably pretty family-friendly.
Cherokee–yes, I have also considered Pharmacy. I just didnt find it nearly interesting enough. There is no doubt that it is a financially stable career that offers good family time…but it just didnt make me tick.
With dentistry, I guess I would say I am on the bubble. I have spent time shadowing and volunteering and it seems interesting enough, provides a real lifestyle career– but I have to admit that it doesnt carry the same excitement as medicine…of course that was until I started reading the med blogs. I am now thinking that I am fascinated with the “thought” of medicine and that if I was really experiencing the pain of it as I have read, maybe I wouldnt like it.
Dentistry may be the happy medium? I really don’t know…I feel like I have to make a decision pretty soon or I am going to be too old to make the career switch.
Thanks for all the info.
Ugly, you’re never too old man. Follow your dreams. It doesn’t matter how old you are when you come out the other side.
I went with WordPress. I figured out how to upload the theme I wanted. The question now is, can I automatically upload all of my content from the old site or do I have to copy and past 100 articles?
The other thing is this, and my big trouble with workdpress, is that I can’t get links and categories to display on my main page. I enter them like I’m supposed to but I see nothing on the main page. Sometimes they one will show on the /about page.
Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong. They are all toggled to “view.”
Panda, if you haven’t migrated your blogger blog over to the “new” blogger, there’s an import function in wordpress that will import everything over.
In your wordpress backend, click on ‘Manage’ and then click on ‘Import.’ Select ‘Old Blogger’ from the list and let it do its magic. If you’ve already ported over to the new blogger, you can use this plugin to import.
OK, in each WordPress theme, there is a sidebar.php file depending on how you have your theme set up. In order to get your links to show, you’ll need to use the wp_get_links() tag.
Go into your WordPress back-end, click on ‘Presentation’ and then click on ‘Theme Editor.’ On the right-hand side, you’ll see a column of links. These links make up each individual file that collectively make up your wordpress template.
Click on the link named ‘Sidebar.’ It is possible that it is named something different, but try to find the file that’s serving up your sidebar. Within this file, you’ll need to place the following code where you want your sidebar links to show up.
This will show links in your sidebar, and randomly rotate them with each page view. More information on the get links tag can be found here.
Don’t hesitate to email me Panda if you need any help setting things up.
Jesus Christ.
I switched over to new blogger. There is a way but it is more involved than doing it automatically.
Also Panda, I noticed that you’ve placed the blog at pandabearmd.com/blog1, and clicking on the ‘Home’ link takes me to that location.
I would recommend making sure that you put all blog files in the root of your domain, i.e. pandabearmd.com, and not in a sub-folder off of the root.
Edit: If you’ve switched over, you can use the plugin that I linked to in order to import.
I noticed this too. But I just selected the defualts. Do I just move them over to the root domain?
Also, my links still do not show up. I inserted the code in my sidebar file. do I have to re-compile or something like that to make the changes take effect? (which shows how old I am to even ask that question) If you click on the first article, you will see all three links but only two show up in /home and none in /blog1 or the root directory.
Sorry to keep bugging you. My categories refuse to show up too.
If your files are already in your root folder, click on ‘Options’ in your admin area and make sure that WordPress address (URL), and Blog address (URL): both point to http://pandabearmd.com/
If not, do a fresh install with files in your root.
For the links, click ‘Blogroll’ and then ‘Manage Blogroll’ and make sure that you’ve got it set to show all links. You don’t hardcode the links into the template. Instead you add them through the blogroll in your backend. I don’t know if you’ve been trying to edit the template file (I know Blogger was this way), but you don’t do it like that in WordPress.
I can see your General category. In some templates, the categories won’t show until you’ve populated them with posts. It does seem to be working at the moment though.
Man. There is no way to get wordpress to automatically install the blog in the root directory. I deleted the blog, did a new install, and was not presented with any options to do it. I got one option that let me specify a directory but when I browsed, all I got was /tmp as an option. Now the sidebar doesn’t show up in the root directory but does show up in the /blog1.
Hey, if you don’t mind helping me do one more thing, how do I set up an automatic redirect?
Interestingly, even for accountants
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