Family Medicine and Chocolate

Unable to decide whether to be a grown-up or a kid this halloween, I decided to do both. The last weekend in October found me in THE Hershey, PA for a family medicine conference...and for what I imagined to be the mecca of trick-or-treating. The conference was a refreshingly enjoyable first taste of the doctor life: in general, I found the family practitioners I met to be intelligent, devoted, passionate, and balanced in their approaches to life. Case in point: between sessions on international opportunities in medicine and the challenges of rural practice, I attended a thorough workshop on how to work less and spend more time having fun with family and friends:). Hershey certainly had more to offer than plenary sessions...I skipped out for several hours Saturday afternoon to gallivant through the hills surrounding town and revel in the colorful crisp-ness of fall. Later that evening, a Hopkins classmate and friend, Teresa, accompanied me on a Halloween journey for the ages - a foray deep within the walls of the Hershey plant, where happiness is always within one's grasp, as long as he's 12 or younger. I was prohibited from joining the trick-or-treat circuit that was netting the little buggers giant bags of free Hershey candy (fresh from the conveyor belts!). There actually wasn't all that much to do; most of the place turned out to be a giant merchandise operation. Nonetheless, we did get one free candy bar each and a couple of "worker" hats. The factory was a little disappointing, but the weekend was exactly what I'd hoped for.