Reasons to Celebrate

I feel like I've got a million reasons to celebrate recently--where shall I begin? Well, where did I leave off? We just carved pumpkins and celebrated Halloween with our classmates.

Then, if you have a facebook account you probably saw the account of this, but me and some of my classmates took advantage of a rare opportunity last week. One of our professors got the schedule mixed up and never came to lecture so we had about 45 minutes to do with what we pleased. We debated for all of 15 seconds about whether or not to go to the library to study but we decided instead to go for a "walk-about." It was a lovely fall day and we ended up stopping to smell the leaves :) and frolic in them.







At the close of last week we had the opportunity to re-connect with all the engineers and graduate students in the Biorobotics lab that I worked with this summer. Again, if you have facebook you probably already saw all of this but, I want to put it on record :).

The Raven robot that I worked with this summer can be spotted in the new sci-fi movie: Ender's Game with Harrison Ford. The Raven only appears for a minute or so, but (without giving away the plot) I'll just say that the Raven is used in a pivitol and emotional scene.
 
The news crew interviewed the engineers at the lab I worked in. The guys got last-minute notice that the crew was coming by and they told me that they really wanted me to come in and run the robot on camera because I've had the most hands-on time with the Rave but they didn't think I'd have time in my schedule so they let someone else do it. So, for now, I will continue to hold the record for the fastest block-transfer time --and I guess for now I'm the most experienced operator of the Raven robot.
 

Click here to watch the news clip online!

The head of the biorobotics lab swung to buy all of us tickets to see the movie in IMAX and we decided to dress up and see the show as if we were on the red carpet (sort of) :)-- as soon as I get the group picture of us at the theater emailed to me I'll post it too--we're a sharp looking bunch of nerds :)
 
We all cheered as the Raven came on screen and confused everyone in the theater but had a blast doing it! Then of course we stuck around to see UW mentioned on the screen in the credits.
 
We came back after the film and watched the recording of the scene on someone's cell phone (because we were all too excited not to see it again immediately thereafter):
 
 and toasted the success of the lab (after all, there were multiple robots in the running for the scene and the UW Raven robot was selected). We also listened like excited school children as the PhD student, Hawkeye (below, and in the news clip) told us his experiences interacting with Harrison Ford on the set of the movie.


I still can't believe that I am/have been a part of such an iconic development of the future of robotic surgery. I'm feeling so blessed and kind of blown away by it all.

Tom and I spent the rest of the weekend studying like mad with one exception --we made time to go to the UW volleyball game on Sunday afternoon as they were retiring the jersey of a Husky great- Courtney Thompson. We enjoyed the great game and even caught an autographed headband by the woman of the hour.

I was more nervous than usual about my cardiovascular final this morning and almost didn't go to the gym for my cardio kickboxing class but thanks to daylight savings time, the sun was actually up when I needed to get going to class (it's been dark the past 2 weeks) and I felt inspired.

I successfully passed the exam (phew!) and celebrated with my classmates again this afternoon. And no medical school celbration would be complete without the musical stylings of my classmates that I have mentioned at least once before: the Anastomoses! Anna and Hilary (part of my fearless study group) rocked it out with Benji, Zach and Sheyda with new parody's about the cardiovascular system and it was the perfect way to end that block of material.
 
Apparently my body is tired of celebrating though because I've come down with the dreaded cold that I knew was coming at some point so I'll be hitting the hay here in about 20 minutes and hoping that the continual sinus pressure, sore throat and sneezing comes to  a halt with a little help from NyQuil! But despite my cold, I feel so happy to have survived October and I'm looking forward to November being a little less intense (although my next midterm is only 2 weeks away!). Now I'm off to bed before we start the Respiratory system course tomorrow. Goodnight all!

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