Risk verses benefit, update

Hi everybody. Though it may seem like I have ignored my blog, the real truth is, I have not, I am constantly thinking of things to blog about and it just so happens that I have not met my next blog material. I choose to blog today not because I am overwhelmingly inspired to but because I do some some positive updates.

July 26th at 1302 a fantastic dream of mine became true and I was offered a job at Duke University Medical Center or DUMC. I asked no questions, consulted nobody, and said yes. I spent the following days collecting Duke paraphernalia and reading everything I could on oncology and radiology.

During my study breaks I thought a lot about my dreams versus goals and how they relate to what I am experiencing now. After some thought I determined that goals are mostly self inflicted and self driven. I believe that most goals only require one resource, yourself. I differentiate this from dreams in the very real sense that my dream of working at Duke required many resources. It was not entirely up to just me, I had to convince several people en route to working at Duke that I would be a good addition and that I should be hired. I had to have a lot of things go right which is why dreams are much harder to pursue and to obtain.

I do have a large threshold when it comes to risk, about 70%. That meaning that whenever I want to do something, I will as long as there is less than a 70% chance that I will fail. During my two day solo drive to North Carolina I recorded myself being "real" and saying exactly what I planned to do. I had X amount of money and a 6 month lease obligated to me and I promised myself that when the money was gone and I still did not have a job then I would pack my stuff up and go back to DSM and start over.

I think taking risks are fun--without taking risks you will never be the hero, you'll never reach your maximum potential and you will always wake up disappointed that you were having a dream rather than living it. Some of you 13 followers are probably thinking, whatever, I am living the dream and I didn't have to move half way across the country to obtain my dream and I can agree with you, your dreams are different than mine which is awesome. If your dream is to have kids and you have kids then your exactly right but don't ignore the risk you had to take to follow that dream. This is supposed to empower you all, not tell you how awesome I am...I feel like I have to explain that a lot to people. The real point here is that everybody takes risk so own the risk you take, acknowledge them and embrace them.

Ok, I wil end with a small scale example. I was in the airport a couple months ago and I sat across from an asian man who was sleeping. I noticed him waking up every 10-15 minutes and look frantically at his watch when he was satisfied with the time, he fell back asleep. While he was asleep I heard on the loud speaker "Traveler Myung Soo Kim last call, Myung Soo Kim please report to terminal C12...Last call Myung Soo Kim." I could not help but think that maybe the oriental man sleeping across from me was Myung Soo Kim. I thought about it for a few seconds before I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him if he was Myung Soo Kim because they just announced last call for boarding. He looked completely weirded out and said in perfect english "My name is Alex Hansen you stereotypical idiot." I was not embarrassed, perhaps I should of been though. But I just explained to him my theory of risk versus benefit and how I was prepared to hear exactly what he said and I was also prepared to be the hero. He accepted my explanation and apologized for calling me a stereotypical idiot. We ended up talking for the next half an hour.

Update success...later people.