So my cousin Bobby was making his college decision last year around this time. He committed to Maryland (where he’s from) but then got into Johns Hopkins off the waitlist. At the time I encouraged him to go to Hopkins because Maryland kids are thuggish and Bobby was still known as “Young Breezy aka Bitches n’ Tits also known as TYD.” TYD stood for “Throat Yogurt Dispenser.” However Aunt Jenine wasn’t rich so Bobby had to take out a fair number of loans.

So I spend a weekend with him this summer and instead of listening to my helpful hints about orgo this silly ass can’t stop talking about how healthcare reform is going to adversely effect his earning potential. Seriously?

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I feel like everyone who writes for this blog who isn’t homeless, suicidal or living with their mother should write a column like this. In addition to providing more in the way of useful advice I also think it’s important to stress that this is not an anti-education blog. Believe me you still need an undergraduate and probably a graduate education you just need to be alot smarter about how you get it.

Three steps to get where I am for free 1) full-ride to college 2) get into medical school 3) Join the Army.

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Uh, ok.  So I was waiting for Alpha Man to field this one. I could understand the silence on Oscar Grant (Alpha Man says thanks to the rappers that any black man talking about police brutality seems like a thug). But then I saw his love-thy-neighbor bullshit post and I knew I had to do this myself.

There is no such thing as reverse racism. Every white person that hates black people does so because of an institutionalized system of oppression and misrepresentation. Every black person that hates white people does so due to 400 years of rape, torture, murder, slavery AND most likely a lot of personal experience. That’s not racism. It’s a form of prejudice yes. Very understandable prejudice in the case of Shirley Sherrod… a prejudice she overcame by the way.

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I’m feeling good. The worst part of residency is over, the anticipation and the fear. I still haven’t reached that magical milestone where I am more competent than the good nurses but that will take time. I am also on vacation which is lovely. Sitting here on the beach in all my cocoa-bronze glory I reached for a book one of my girlfriends recommended and immediately understood why Erin hates Lisa Scottoline so much. I am talking about Black Urban Fiction.

First a little background. I am on vacation because 1) residency isn’t as bad as doctors would have you believe and 2) Simon knows a blood lab technician who owes him a BIG favor.  Like any other job if you cover for someone they cover for you later. Now if someone covers for me they have the option of getting all their lab work expedited for a week and the gunners love that.

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I graduated from Medical School two weekends ago.  For those of you non-doctors imagine your college graduation plus winning the Nobel Prize and the Super Bowl.  That’s how you are treated by friends, family and people who would like you to think of them as friends or family.  The best though is the love you get from doctors…the same ones who will be treating you like garbage once residency begins. But for now it’s all good.

All the attention though attracts it’s fair share of haters and the numbers are multiplied when for whatever reason people think you don’t deserve what you’ve got or getting what you’ve got would have been harder for them.  Think Obama’s Nobel Prize or Eli Manning’s Super Bowl.

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Ok, please someone tell me I wasn’t called out because I’m going to be “just a regular” doctor making “only $150,000” minimum?  Please tell me when I made the misguided decision to read the latest post by Triforce’s lackey he had the audacity to not only let some real private stuff slip but I was called out on becoming a primary care physician.

Actually, it’s never been a better time to become a primary care physician.  And physician still doesn’t belong in the same sentence, paragraph or even document as lawyer.

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So as my vacation began to wind down I asked myself how all the overpriced coffee shops, dive bars posing as pubs and tiny bookstores with the selection you would expect from any the shelf of an eighth grader with a C average stay in business during the other 11 months and two weeks when I never deviate from the from the well-worn path between the apartment and the hospital.  The answer of course is hipsters.

So what is a hipster? A hipster is a self-righteous individual well into adulthood who rationalizes living off an income they do not generate while contributing nothing to society.  The individuals are plagued by an almost crippling insecurity and the need to validate their existence by constantly talking about their own achievements real, exaggerated or imagined.  Hipsters tend to be very selectively judgmental, priding themselves on their ability to adhere to a personal code of ethics based upon a celebration of their own appetites and a condemnation of others who prefer different vices.  They are also self-absorbed. Facebook.  Twitter. Myspace.  Need I say more?

Is it possible for a student debtor to be a hipster? Am I…a hipster? Read on to find out

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I know I am going to regret this post as soon as it is published.  But I took an extra week of vacation and I wanted to drop a few posts before it was back to the grindstone.  First a confession: sometimes when I don’t want to write a post I just antagonize Alpha Man.  We used to date and I know how to get him riled so a few of those posts where he’s extra crazy…that might be my bad. 

So this is also for Alpha Man.  I am writing about Soul Doctors.  I am writing about Dorothy I. Height the matriarch of the Civil Rights movement.  Simply put, I owe everything to her and the thousands of African-American women of her era who were and are known only to their immediate friends and family.  These women healed the soul of a nation.

So what does that mean for us in debtor’s prison? Read on to find out

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I ran into one of my boyfriend’s buddies at a Medical outing at the Philadelphia Art Museum. He’s an interesting fellow, a collector of Medieval Weaponry. He asked how I was doing and I told him I was doing my residency locally and that I was pretty jaded right now. I expected the usual response, something along the lines of reinforcing the prestige of the medical profession and saying other programs were foolish for not taking me.

That’s not what happened. He simply chuckled and when pressed admitted that Simon had predicted this entire sequence of events…15 months ago. Exaspirated I asked why Simon didn’t tell me.

Read on to find out why.

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Jefferson Hospital.  I will be a resident at Jefferson Hospital starting sometime in…oh who cares.  Jefferson is in Philly and I don’t have to move.  That’s what it comes down to.  I just don’t want to move.  That’s about 20% boyfriend, 30% laziness (I get a two week vacation where everyone else has to go find a new place to live in their new city) and 50% savings.  Since my boyfriend pays the rent those savings are significant and since I have debt, they are also extremely necessary.

Remember your senior year of high school? How just didn’t care about anything? Remember your friends telling you how you passed your senior year in college in a drunken stupor and stating you don’t remember any of it because you somehow evolved past not caring? Med students hit that a little late.  See, when we were in high school and college we were on a mission, a treasure hunt for the fabled M.D.  Now we have it and we’re all thinking…this is it?

I know. I know.  You’re all thinking I’d be singing a different tune if I got a more prestigious residency.  Read on so I can tell you to go

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