As a first-year medical student, I've grown used to feeling helpless. There's the trivial sort of helplessness, like knowing that in these next thirty seconds I won't be able to point to the coronary sinus for my professor, standing over me with a clipboard and a stopwatch. And then there's the other sort of helplessness, like knowing that this heart I'm holding in my hands belongs to a woman whom I will never be able to thank. Or like listening to a grandmother's voice crack as she admits she has pancreatic cancer. Or like watching a father struggle to follow the description of a central venous catheter, little knowing that this, this is just the beginning of a long year for him and his son.

So when I heard about St. Baldrick's, which raises money to support research in children's cancers, I called Dylan, a former teammate and currently a fellow student at Georgetown University, and I convinced him that two heads are better than one. So Dyl and I are on a team again. It's a bigger race this time, but we're just as determined to win.

Help us shave our heads this Thursday, so I'll be bald for the Boston Marathon and Dylan will be almost-bald for his meet at George Mason. Click "Make a donation" to give online, or donate by phone or mail.