Extra Blog 2: Interesting Revelations

                        In my first interview something that I found interesting that my mentor told me was how no matter what, we can't help everyone, and that it was important to just do everything that we could. At first, it made sense because the sheer number of sick and impoverished people in the world would make it seem impossible to aid them all, but in the during our last research check, I read an article that completely changed my mind in a more hopeful way. The article was based around this young doctor who took part on a program called operation Smile, which focussed on reconstructive surgery for those with cleft pallets.
                       After taking part in the program, this doctor realized that instead of shipping doctors from the states to the third world countries for only a few weeks out of the year, they could solve an exponentially larger amount of cases by simply training the native doctors how to do the cases themselves. After getting back to home, the doctor started dedicating all of his spare time to working out how he was going to organize his soon to be revolutionary idea, becoming so engrossed in it at one point that when his boss took notice of it and gave him the choice between his job and his passion, he happily walked out the door. With no other priorities, he created Smile Train, which incorporated his idea of training local doctors in third world countries how to perform the reconstructive surgery cases themselves.
                     One of the main obstacles was the quality of care, this doctor knew that in the beginning the mortality rates for these surgeries performed by training surgeons would be high, but after years of perfecting his teaching and program method, the quality of care increased. On operation smile, the program was lucky to go through 100 patients in 2 weeks, but with Smile Train, the company helped operate on over 250,000 patients last year alone, which was more than the total number of people born with cleft pallets in that year.
                     Another outstanding outcome was the cost of the surgeries, usually a single cleft pallet case would cost over a thousand dollars minimum, but through the abundance of doctors now trained to handle these cases on a day to day basis, they cut the cost to a tenth, ranging from 150-200 dollars. As i mentioned earlier the number of cases performed exceeded the number of patients being born afflicted with the disease, meaning that as of right now the company is handling the back log of patients with the disease, which potentially equates to the idea of being able to wipe out cleft pallets entirely, only dealing with the cases when patients are born with them.
                     In the end, I now believe thanks to this doctor that with the right method and passion, doctors can help everyone in the world, they just have to be willing to look past the money and focus on why they became doctors in the first place, to fix sick people. The final idea that stays projected in my mind that I only realized was applicable to the medical field due to this article was "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll never go hungry".
 

Second Interview Questions

Content: 
The purpose of the second interview is justify your mentor as an expert in the field.  Thus, you will be asking at least 5 questions about their background and/or the background of the organization or company where they work.

1.  Who is your mentor and where do they work?
A. My mentor is Robinson V. Baron M.D who is a private practitioner who works through Citrus Valley Health Partners

2.  What five questions will ask them about their background?
A. Many of my questions for interview one were about how my mentor started the medical missions and why, so for this next interview it would be appropriate to ask his reasoning on practicing medicine in America rather than the Philippines, where he went to school, what his titles are and have been, how many hospitals he attends currently, and what current events in medicine is he taking part in now (for the past few months my grandfather has been chosen to take place in a new robotic surgery program that is to be incorporated in hospitals nation wide in the next few years, so I'd like more info on that)

Questions will go through a approval process with your house teacher.  The house teacher is responsible to tell you if they are approved or not.  If they are not approved, you will need to resubmit.  Once approved, you are then approved to go to your mentor and complete the interview.  The interview is due 10/25 by 8AM to turnitin.com. 

Blog 5 Project Reflection and Working EQ

Content:   

So far, you have: completed your summer mentorship, started doing some research, maybe completed the interview and hopefully found a mentor.

Using what you have done so far, answer the following 5 questions (be specific and use examples).

The Pentagon: 
(1) Positive Statement: What positive thing happen as a result of what you have completed so far?
a. Due to the nature of my summer mentorship, I started helping people and overall improving my relationships with the people around me. For example, I have a standing appointment to help tutor several of my piers next week who are not having such an easy time in science. I want to continue expanding my friendships because I now realize that this is senior year, and I don't want to be remembered as the guy who was a jerk to everyone. 

(2) EQ Content:  Pick a piece of research or your interview.  How has it helped you improve your understanding of your topic?
a. I performed my interview pretty early, about two and a half weeks before it was due actually, and something that came to light from my mentor is that I was focussing too much on the medical aspect of missionary work, instead of the missionary part. My mentor emphasized that this was about doing what we could for people in the name of God, and that it was our goal to help people spiritually as well as physically.
(3) What has worked for you so far in the senior project?
I started taking a more proactive approach with the activities that go along with senior year, like helping design a potential sweater idea for example. This attitude of being a bigger part of the community has really helped me as a whole in actually getting my work done to the best of my ability. I want to continue this path and hopefully set a pace that I can continue after high school and use that momentum through college. 

(4) What hasn't worked so far?  
In all honesty, I think this is the best performance I have given since my first day at iPoly. My only hope is that it does not die down as the weeks go by and that I am able to keep up my effort in everything I do at school. On a smaller note, I am also having a hard time moving forward with my plans of doing daily problems for mrs. Pittman's class as the difficulty of the problems outpace the content we are taught in class. 

(5) Finding Value:  

•  What is a potential question you would like to study this year?  (working EQ)

So far the best question that comes to mind after my research is 'What is the best way to provide medical care to developing countries?'

•  What do you plan to do for mentorship?  If you haven't found a mentor yet, then discuss where you are currently looking and who you are talking to to find it.  

I plan on continuing on my medical missions to Tecate, Mexico with the ultimate goal of taking place on the medical missions to the Philippines this February .

Extra Blog 1: Interesting research facts

Interesting Fact on Medical Missions

                         The most question inducing single fact that I have found so far in my research is located on medical missions.org, which, by the name alone, you can tell is dedicated to the topic of helping provide medical care to developing countries. Upon digging into the site, I found a list of official scheduled medical missions for 2013. I found that the Philippines has 112 scheduled medical missions this year, while Mexico only has 6, this may be in part due to that some missions are operated by individuals like my grandfather, so maybe there are a lot more missions taking place there, but it made me think about how our efforts can be best directed in performing these missions... Fruit for thought. Below is a graph I found online about the percentage of the world that lacks adequate medical care.

This picture is a statistical graph I found while researching medical missions and the lack of adequacy of medical care in third world countries. The picture speaks for itself, but the figure of 7.6 million really shocked me when I first read it

Blog 4: Interview Preparation

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  Why?
a. For interview 1, I plan to interview my grandfather, Robinson V Baron, chief of staff at Citrus Valley Health Center. My grandfather was an obvious choice for my first interview because he will provide the base and structure of my senior project, which is focussing on medical missionary work. The reason my grandfather will play such an important role in my project is because without him, I would not have any opportunity to take part in the medical missions to both Tecate, Mexico, and the Philippines, both of which he founded and is in charge of. On these missions it is my grandfather who will be my primary mentor in taking me along side him during his work, ranging from patient checkups and rounds, to actual surgical procedures. 

2.  You have to ask 5 questions.  What additional questions do you plan to ask?  Ask open-ended questions.  
a. After reading the contract I noticed that under interview 1 there is a set of 5 questions that I believe are mandatory in helping me narrow down my topic. Along side those questions I would like to gather information on who else can be my mentor on these medical missions as I do understand that it is recommended to find several experts in teaching me about my topic.  I would like to ask about my grandfather's perspective on these missions and what his overall goals are in taking part in them. I think the question I will emphasize the most however is what I can do to prepare myself better for these missions so I can contribute more when the time comes.

Blog 3: Topic Choice and Semester 1 ESLR Goals

1.  List your topic here: Medical Missionary Work 
2.  What do you plan to do this year to show growth in each of the ESLRs?  Be specific and use an example.  Examples can come from senior project, model assembly, core, and/or participation in senior class ASB or other organizations on campus (clubs etc).

• iPoly Citizen
• As an iPoly citizen I plan to get involved in the planning and execution of major school events. To be specific, I was just talking to Jeremy today about ideas on how we could step up Scare Fair as I rememebered the day before Purther talking about how the best year was 200(3?). In general participation is what I see myself doing more to show growth as an iPoly citizen. 
• Effective Learner
• As an effective learner I wanted to experiment in Mrs. Pittman's challenge in completing all of the physics problems in the book she assigned us. There's around 50 per chapter so it may take longer than one semester but in this reguard I believe that this will be my most effective way in showing growth as an effective learner. Doing this will also help me in the class overall and so I'm hoping to do very well in her class
• Effective User of Technology
• As for technology, I plan on becoming a better blogger. Last year one of my weaknesses was regularly doing my english blog, so this year my goal is to not only improve my writing, but try and turn in every single blog. Another thing I'd like to be able to accomplish is learning how to make spreadsheets faster on google docs. This sounds weird but when I was making my log for my summer hours I found myself manually deleting columns and numbers one by one, which took me a good hour to complete. 
• Effective Communicator 
• Becoming an effective communicator will ultimately stem from my participation in iPoly's speech and debate elective. I would like to believe that I am a good public speaker already, as well as a good debater, my belief comes from the fact that my first semester of in speech I won all of my debates and ended up with a percentage of 107% as my grade. Ms. Schiller has told me that she would like to start an actual debate team to go out to competitions this year, and would like me to be the captain. Aside from my competitions, I plan to show my growth in model assembly as I believe it will be the hardest test so far of my public speaking abilities and as an effective communicator.

Senior Mentorship Component

Literal:  

1. (Know) Log of specific hours with a total and a description of your duties (click here for an example)

a.  Here is the Spreadsheet document I made to display my hours and duties: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmlR-XYQ4aaidElDcF9TcXMzRGZHTHFPVFEyWnJpdkE#gid=0

2. Contact Name & Number

a. Robinson V Baron (same name as me). (626)-260-5135  

3. (Need to know) What questions were raised because of the 10 hours of experience?  List them.  

a. Come the main medical mission in January, will I be able to still contribute positively without getting in the way of actual doctors and nurses? 

b. Even though I was able to contribute on the Tecate mission, since all the Philippines is is basically local and major surgical attention, will it still count as mentorship if I don't have as much hands on time? 

c. After taking part in several missions already, it does not seem like they make a huge difference in the community as every time we visit places we've been before, there's always a huge abundance of people. So basically I'm wondering if there is a better solution to medical missions to provide medical care to poorer places. 

Interpretive

4. What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

a. I learned that when it came to helping people in general, I did not have to provide medical care to make their lives a little better. What I am referring to is when I aided in cooking for over 100 people before sitting in with the medical students who were administering medication. My hope is that this will carry over in the Philippines when the mission gains a lot more depth in procedures. 
  
Applied
   
5. How did what you did help you choose a topic?  Please explain.

a.  As previously mentioned, I have taken part in several medical missions already, and taking part in the Mexico one only strengthened the feeling that this topic is one that really interests me and can help build a strong support for a future career. Another major point is that not many people have the opportunity that I do, so it's best to take advantage of it while I can.