Who Are You Anyway?
Hi Substack, my name is Nils1. I thought about being pseudonymous but I’m not that careful about that sort of stuff and from a societal-norm perspective I think it’s important that I’m willing to own my opinions in a public way.
I grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley, which is emphatically not “upstate New York” and I will argue with you about this. For those of you who care about credentials: I graduated from a public high school, got my BSc cum laude in neurobiology and behavior from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, spent 2 years doing research of no real consequence at Weill Cornell in NYC, and got my MD from Penn State College of Medicine.
I am currently a 4th year psychiatry resident in Boston with uncertain plans post-graduation2. I am happily married to my wife of 4 years (though we’ve been together for 14) - no kids yet.
What Are All These Words About?
Medicine is often called an art, not a science, and there is no subspecialty for which this is more true than psychiatry (though plastics is a close second). Unfortunately, the art in this case too much Escher and not enough Dali. This Substack is my attempt to start collecting the thoughts I have on psychiatry, putting them into words, and apply a rigorous analysis to them that I would not otherwise be forced to do if I just left them in my head.
My hope is that these essays will make you question some of the conventional wisdom in medicine (psychiatric or otherwise), and give you some useful tools for thinking about these ideas in your own way.
What Do I Get For A Paid Subscription?
Literally nothing other than supporting my writing. I have no plans to paywall anything I write.
