Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.

Category: Long Reads

Stories that take a bit longer to get through.

  • Welcome to San Diego

    Moving here has been less than smooth, but in my first week it really went off-script. It started well enough, with our friends Jon and John graciously helping us load the U-Haul late into the night. Jon even came with us the following morning to take a vanload of stuff down and unload said truck.…

  • End of the End of the End

    Graduation. An event that had been so far off for so long, my dazed mind refused to believe it could actually be happening. And yet, here it was, a weekend of visitors and ceremonies and celebrations swirling around me in a blur of regalia and purple orchid leis.  As with everything else in this eight-year…

  • Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

    A while back my school gave us a pre-graduation checklist of sorts that required students to travel around campus on a “signature scavenger hunt” so that representatives of various departments could sign a single, increasingly valuable piece of paper. Some of them were easy (turn in your scrub machine card, return locker keys), while others…

  • Leaving Dayton

    When I last left off, I was experiencing a smorgasbord of weather variations in the vicinity of Dayton, Ohio while completing my final rotation of med school. Both my mom and Mark came up from their respective states of residence to visit me as Ohio, unlike California, is within a driving distance where one can…

  • Impudent Weather

    Weather is the height of inoffensive topics, typically reserved for such situations as breaking ice, vainly attempting to prevent a relative from espousing their religiopolitical views in polite company, and  interactions that have reached a level of tedium where discussing the class of precipitation seems interesting. One could be forgiven for assuming that, if I am writing…

  • Minor Turbulence

    I’m back in Ohio, this time for ICU rotation, and the week got off to a rough start beginning with the landing. On the first day I showed up naked; that is to say, without my phone, which really got in the way of storing my new coworkers’  numbers for future communication as I stumbled…

  • Game. Set. Match.

    Game news dominated my Facebook feed on Friday night, when, after years of  “up and coming” status, my alma mater UMBC secured a place in history by knocking out UVA in March Madness. If, like my med school colleagues, you managed to miss what will likely be the biggest sportsball upset of the year, the Retrievers…

  • A Match Made to Profession

    You finished medical school. Time to get a job, right? Wrong! Finishing allopathic med school gets one an MD but does not allow one to actually practice medicine. For that you have to complete what is more or less a paid apprenticeship, termed a “residency” because it involves essentially living at the hospital for the…