Christian's Blog

Hey National, 

Twelve weeks down. Three to go! Time on the grind is in full mode from here on out. Thankfully, Easter was a little early this year and allowed a nice weekend of some celebration, fun, and poor eating choices to gear up for the stresses of finals. 

Being from Boston, weekend holidays are pretty tough to get home to see the family, financially and time-wise. I spent Easter weekend with my girlfriend's family in the local area. Her brother and his girlfriend came home from college and added to the fun shenanigans. A couple weeks ago, Ashley's mom mentioned she planned on a dinner and asked if we wanted to do anything else. I, being a true kid at heart, suggested EASTER EGG HUNT! To my happiness, she rolled with the idea and went next level creative on that hunt! The rules were we had 6 eggs carefully hidden in the backyard so at least part of the egg was showing (my grandpa is notorious for completely burying eggs so this was a nice positive). We came to find that each egg had a piece of paper with a word on it. We had to find all 6 eggs, open up all the pieces of paper inside and put them in a sentence. Mine read: GO TO THE DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM. I almost peed my pants leaping across the house to the bathroom (get it ;). I busted open the door to find a wonderful Easter basket! I wasn't sure what to expect but an Easter basket was above and beyond what I expected and I was elated, along with my blood sugar, as I consumed some delicious chocolate and thanked Ash's family for such a great holiday. 

On a school note, I attended a Gonstead adjusting seminar off campus. Dr. S was the instructor and as usual for my readers of this blog, if you aren't going to seminars, don't come to chiropractic school. You're wasting your time. As abruptive as I can be: School will prepare you to become a licensed doctor--a pretty good doctor, but not a Great doctor. You need to learn from the best and practice a ton to be the best, assuming you want to be a great doctor, of course. (Sadly, there are plenty of people that don't care...you know who you are). The one big knock I have on National is they don't expose their students to enough techniques. Why should they choose what techniques from our rich Chiropractic history that we should get taught? Shouldn't we be taught most of them and then choose which ones we like the best and want to integrate into our tool bag? Just my humble opinion. As usual, there's a way around this fault by just going to outside seminars and seeing for yourself! Problem solved! Boom. Hope you have a great week, email me with any questions. 

For starters look into AK, Gonstead, MPI, Functional Rehab (SFMA/FMS), DNS, Nutrition, Sports Rehab, Homeopathy, TBM, etc. Have fun future docs. 

Well, that's it for me this week. See, National isn't all work and no play? It's for people that work hard and play hard. 

Stay Classy,
CC

Hey Everyone,

Wow! What an AWESOME weekend! I am so exhausted writing this in class today (don't tell Dr. H lol). My sister, Eliza, came to visit Friday morning and stayed until Monday morning. We made an epic Bucket List and went on adventures galore! Details below: 

Friday:

Eliza and I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo! In case you've never been there, it is FREE! We drove into the city (fun on its own!) and basically parking is the only fee ($20 for 3 hours). There were a lot of animals and I was impressed for a park that is free to the public! My favorite animal, if you can guess, is the LION! But he was sleeping on the rocks and wasn't too animated to see me (how dare he!) The most animated animals? A tie between the camels and the monkeys. The gorillas were pretty awesome as well. Right on the edge of the zoo there is an EPIC view of the city skyscrapers (see picture), a nice bonus!

Later on that day was the Frat Party. We inducted the newbies, gave them some ridiculous "bro names" and had a grand time. The party took a turn for the legendary when the slip 'n slide got set up! We added baby oil and dish detergent for extra 'slip-a-bility' (real word?) that resulted in NUHS' first ever slip 'n slide bash! Many people thought this would be a bad idea until they saw how fun it was. I myself still have some scrapes on my stomach but it was...WORTH IT! Let's be honest, I'm a kid at heart!

Saturday:

Saturday we ventured into the city and knocked out the Navy Pier, Millennium Park, The Bean, the new Batman movie (my new favorite movie ever), and fireworks! We almost made a comedy show, but time and a misunderstood public transportation schedule were the true culprits.

Sunday:

Sunday was one of the greatest days ever. Kendall let us borrow his bikes and Eliza and I took them onto the train and then biked around the city. This is something I've wanted to do since I got to NUHS two years ago. This was a BLAST to ride on the bike trails right along the water overviewing the tall city buildings! We biked over to a dock and walked to the end and had lunch (cool find), and then biked over to the beach and did flips into the water from the side docks. Then we biked up to the end of the beaches just north of the city and had some really unbelievable views of Chicago. Next, was the most EPIC thing I've done this summer. We rented JET SKI'S for an HOUR! It was AWESOME! 55 mph, big waves, splashes galore, city views in Lake Michigan…pretty remarkable. My sacrum needs an adjustment for the beating we took trying to jump the waves! We finished with some Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and the Olympics at a nice location downtown.

All in all--an unbelievable weekend.

I'll leave you with this. NUHS has an edge over many other DC schools because of its location. Does Logan have a little bit newer facilities? Sure. Does Palmer draw you enough to be in bum-stunk Iowa for years? I hope not. Chicago is where it is at. It's an excuse to live in a part of the country I would never get a chance to live in ever again and experience the local fun in a way I'd never do as a tourist. Love the workload or hate it (mostly hate it), the weekends you have to take a breather and I recommend my new favorite city in the world--Chicago. If you're on the fence, choose NUHS (and they don't even pay me to say this!...well sorta ;)

Peace,
CC

Hey, everyone! Welcome back from a wonderful winter break! Winter break is always our best (and longest) break! I was able to head back to the Boston area and hang out with my family and friends and I had a blast. My buds and I all went into Beantown for New Year's and a shenanigans-filled night! You know you're going to be lifelong friends when you haven't seen each other in 4 months and it doesn't even feel like you spent a week away.

One of the highlights of my break was watching my youngest brother's hockey games! Jordan is just a wee freshman and he made our high school's varsity hockey team! This is a big deal, and I was extremely proud as he was following in my other brother's and my footsteps (we made varsity as frosh, too). The insane part was that there were a couple of injuries after the first game and one of the senior starters got suspended. Our first year coach, trying to build a program, decided to start my brother on the first line!! My family was wondering why he would do that but soon enough Jordan had played his first game and surprisingly skated like he belonged with the big guys! Jordan even scored his first goal in his first game as a starter! I was a proud oldest brother :)

So the new trimester is up and running. I'm on a full 4-trimester schedule now and looking forward to completing the basic science portion of the curriculum. I'm much more clinically-minded and heavy sciences, while important, are grueling and memorization heavy.

My favorite class so far is Dr. Ed Bifulco's cervical adjusting class (E&M). He's hysterical and equally competent as an adjuster, which makes class a pleasure, despite the 8:00 a.m. slot.

I hope everyone enjoys the short week and I'll see you next week!

Peace,
Christian

With the holidays in full swing it's easy to get distracted by the corporate advertising, the pressure to buy gifts, and the freezing temperatures. I want to take this opportunity to think about what I'm thankful for. I'd like to challenge you to do the same! 

One of the things I'm thankful for is having a great family that even when things get rough will always be there for me no matter what. I'm thankful for the great friends I've met at National because moving across country where I didn't know anyone meant that this wasn't a guarantee. There are a zillion other things but those are the most important to me right now.

This picture is of the "ugly Christmas sweater" my
friend found for me for a party this weekend! Ha, ha!

I recently read a study on happiness where researchers tried to figure out if money had anything to do with how happy people were. What researchers found was money helped to a point when all your necessary needs like food, shelter and clothing were met. Once you had the essentials, money was not important to overall happiness like many people believe. Often they found that "just making a little more money" was not the key to happiness. In fact, the best "happiness factor" they found was getting together with a big group of family/friends at night for a dinner and stories. Interesting since Thanksgiving and the holidays are upon us, and family dinners are the norm instead of the exception. 

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and didn't pass out in a food coma too long! Who am I kidding; that's the best part!

I wasn't able to make it back to Boston since the flights were outrageous, so I spent Thanksgiving with my friend Shannon and her family. I have to admit I ended up having a blast with her family and we shared a ton of laughs, food, football, and of course Apples to Apples. In case you haven't played, Apples to Apples is a board game were you have outrageous topics and you put down cards based upon what you think the other person will pick. So, there's a fair amount of psychology in the game if you want to win. Over a couple glasses of wine it becomes hysterical to see what cards people will play and pick. We played so long that we had essentially seen every card in the game at least once!  

Well, back to studying for me, we have only a few short weeks until finals and before you know it we will be on Winter Break! Hurray! I need a break. :)  

Cheers,
Christian