One more thing

I hate my upstairs neighbors. While there are many things I like about this place, the neighbors are not one of them. The loud rap music blasting out their windows at 12:04am on a Monday night is just one reason I hate them.

Back in the routine

Another day, another attempt at a blog post.

I'm tired. And I shouldn't be. I'm on an outpatient block right now, which means I'm working an easy 8-to-5 schedule, more or less. I should be resting up for the inpatient surgery and medicine rotations I have coming up. From what I hear, those are supposed to kill me.

Except that I'm not resting. Part of it comes from the fact that I'm trying to finish up my two research projects. One was supposed to be done ages ago and is still somehow taking up my time. The other one, well, I suppose I knew I'd be working on it at this point. The other challenging thing is the fact that Karen has a particularly brutal schedule that requires her to get up at 4am every morning for work. (That's what I'll be doing in January and February.)

But that means that I also wake up at 4am. I don't stay up long, but it's usually long enough for me to fully wake up and spend a little bit of time getting back to sleep. I just don't feel as rested afterwards. I don't blame her; we all know that we'll have that schedule at some point. In January and February, she probably won't be too thrilled to hear my alarm going off at 4am as I get up and head into the hospital for surgery pre-rounds.

Time to stop whining and get to work. This abstract isn't going to write itself.

A short hello

Hi there.

It is December. I keep starting to write on here, then I get distracted, save the draft, and forget about it. This post will be short so I can write it, save it, and post it.

It has been a busy few months. I finished my research block at the end of October and have been back on rotations since then. And I'm starting to think pretty seriously about the residency-related application fun that will be coming up in just a few short months.

Between now and 2008, however, I just have outpatient clinics to attend. They're usually not that hard. However, the surgery clinics are always overbooked, which means angry patients, which means frustrated residents, which means no real interest in teaching. Wonderful.

Happy holidays to everyone!

(cough, cough)

Hello.

It's August. I started writing this post in July. Early July, in fact. The real post I wrote was in April, and I think I made some comment about trying to post more frequently since I would have less free time than ever.

At least I was half right -- on the "less free time than ever" part.

The last four months were pretty intense. A month each of Pediatrics, OB/Gyn, Neurology, and Psychiatry. I thought Peds was fun and worth considering, and Neuro was interesting but probably not my future path. Psych was fascinating, but not in a wow-I-would-like-that-career sort of way. And my month of OB/Gyn, despite my best efforts to like it, made me feel primarily like I were being flogged. I was lucky to deliver a half dozen babies during this time, but it wasn't enough to make up for the rest of the experience.

Anyway.

I'm now on a break from rotations. We have 4 months to do research during third year, and I was lucky that I got my research block during the summer months. I don't have to start my next set of clerkships until November.

Let's see what has happened since I last posted...not that much, really. Except for...

• going to two weddings on opposite corners of the country (San Diego and Maine)
• taking out yet another outrageously large student loan
• moving into a new place with Karen
• starting a garden
• getting screwed by my ex-landlord (re: security deposit) and making plans to take her to small claims court
• training for a marathon
• buying a kitten!

I think that's about it for now. I'll try to get some photos of the kitten online at some point.

Time flies!

What a busy month! I took the boards, vacationed in San Diego, and tried to mentally prepare myself for life in the hospital. And after just a week and a half as a 3rd year medical student, I can say with confidence that I had no idea what I was getting myself into. That isn't to say I'm unhappy -- in truth, I've loved my first real exposure to working in the hospital. But it's just such an enormous change from anything I've done before.

"It's like an 18-month job interview," said one of the speakers at our orientation last week. And she was right. Try getting to know your coworkers, while knowing they're responsible for evaluating you, and do it in a completely new environment, with completely new software, with a completely new schedule that is often revealed to you just days beforehand. Also, remember that your responsibilities are not clearly outlined, they change according to who is supervising you each day, and you should always try to anticipate what will be expected of you.

So far, though, I'm having a blast. Now I just need to get to sleep earlier. I have a relatively easy schedule this month -- getting up around 5:45 am, in the hospital by 6:45, done most days by 6:00pm. My friends on Neurosurgery, though, are waking up at 3:45 am to be in the hospital by 5:00 am. Or earlier.

Anyway, sleep time. Now that I have less free time than ever, I'll try to start posting again. :-)

Mood: optimistic
Song: The Killers, "Read My Mind"

Coming Up For Air

I'm back. For as long as it takes me to write this post. I'm in midst of my preparation time for the USMLE -- the United States Medical Licensing Exam -- and I frankly don't know how I'm going to keep studying. I finished class more than two weeks ago, and in that time I have been studying. All the time. I did take one quick trip to California for a full 48 hours, but other than that weekend I have been studying.

How much studying? I'm aiming for 12-14 hours/day. I usually get in about 9 to 10, maybe 11 if I'm really on top of things. The schedule is pretty simple:

8 am: Wake up
9am - 12pm: Study block 1
12pm - 3pm: Study block 2
3pm-4pm: Magical afternoon free time for errands, recovering my sanity, talking to myself, etc.
4pm-7pm: Study block 3
7pm-9pm: Eat, go to the gym, eat, sit around in a stupor.
9pm-12am: Study block 4
12am: Bed.

Now, let's be honest. Am I really following this schedule? No. But am I trying? Yes. Sort of. Keep in mind that it's 2am now and I'm just finishing for tonight. Eh, so it goes.

And this is what I aim to do between now and March 7th. On March 8th, I will do my best to relax. On March 9th, I take the exam. And the next morning, I'm on a flight to San Diego.

For now, though, it's time to sleep. Tomorrow's Study Block 1 is rapidly approaching, and neuroanatomy is on the schedule. Good times.

Mood: determination, mixed with a little cabin fever
Song: Boston, "More than a Feeling" and David Gray, "The One I Love"