Deadlines

When I get stressed, it's usually about deadlines. I have something to do, I have a limited time in which to do it, and I'm concerned that I won't be able to finish it in time. But if I finish the task or if there is a long time left before the deadline, I don't worry too much.

My next real deadline isn't for two weeks, yet I'm already stressed as if it were tomorrow. And I think I know why: I can't truly finish studying neuro. Not even close. I had this feeling last year at times, but it didn't usually last very long because each committee ("class" as most people say) was only a few weeks long. Now, though, I've been studying and studying and studying for a few weeks...and there are still two weeks to go until the exam.

This committee has completely transformed my daily life. Part of me thinks that I'm actually more stressed because of the changes in my daily routine, but I know deep down that I would be even more panicked if I weren't working so hard.

Everyone around me is similarly stressed, or so it seems, and that certainly doens't help things.

Grrrrrr. I've been trying to limit my caffeine intake so I can avoid the jitters and get to sleep at night, but that's not going so well. And I'm getting sick.

I should go running. That would help. But it has been raining and raining, and I haven't been getting home until relatively late recently. Maybe tomorrow.

Time to eat dinner. While I study at a cafe.

Mood: discouraged
Song: Live, "The Beauty of Gray" and Rusted Root, "Ecstasy"

Digging In

My last post was right -- the next two weeks will be insane. And my entire class knows it. We're not exactly the most cheerful group of people right now.

I'll take a break tonight to catch the primary election results from Rhode Island and Maryland, but otherwise I will be working on neuroanatomy and head/neck anatomy all night. Oh, and yes, my house is still a freaking nightmare.

But otherwise life is wonderful. Woohoo.

Song: Bon Jovi, "Livin' On a Prayer" (acoustic). And Hans Zimmer movie soundtracks. Plus some Mitch Hedberg comedy to lighen it up.
Mood: frustrated/exhausted

Clouds on the Horizon

Neuro is getting hard - and we still have three weeks left. I'm getting worn down already (!), and it seems like everyone around me is anxious most of the time.

Hmmm. We only have classes for 4 days this week, and the first one of those was pretty short, so this week shouldn't be that hard. Let's see how I feel on Friday afternoon...

Mood: anxious
Song: Metallica, "No Leaf Clover" and something else cathartic

Labor Day

While med school can certainly give you an altered perception of reality, one thing it certainly makes you more aware of is holidays. Even those for just 24 hours. To say I'm thankful for this day off doesn't truly capture how important this day has been. Last week was pretty brutal, so having an extra day to sleep and sleep is obviously helpful. Perhaps more importantly, though, is the fact that we don't have to add new material to our To Do lists today. One of the hardest things about this committee so far has been the fact that we're covering new material at an astounding rate. If you're not running at full speed on school days, you'll find yourself getting farther and farther behind.

Friday night was a little bit unpleasant as I realized late in the evening that I needed to do some extra work before meeting with my research advisor on Saturday morning. (I thought my analysis had been finished earlier in the week, but I'd missed an important step.) Anyway, I made my way through the analysis (successfull, mostly) and got to bed sometime in the middle of the night...maybe 4am or so. I had intended to get to bed by 11 that night, so I started the weekend with an unfortunate sleep deficit. Fortuntely, the two subsequent nights of 11-12 hours of sleep helped return me to a mostly-human state. And hopefully this week will be a little bit lighter on the extracurriculars than last week was.

On this labor day, I am simultaneously laboring away and recognizing the labor of those around me. Good enough.

Mood: not really sure. a little bored, a little distracted.
Song: Snow Patrol, "Chocolate" and the King's Singers, "Spem in Alium"

PS. No, I don't think anyone else has ever listened to those two songs back-to-back before. I know, I listen to strange combinations of musical genres...

On A Platter

Two weeks ago, I received an email from the two faculty members who are in charge of my current academic class block (we call them committees, for some reason). They're nice people, but the first few lines of the email set the tone for the course:

Dear Year II Students,

Welcome to the 2006 Nervous System Section of the Nervous System/Mind Committee. This memo may help you navigate the course, and most importantly, focus the use of your valuable time most efficiently.

If you don’t read any of this memo, please understand the following:
• Neuroanatomy is time consuming. Very time consuming. Respect that.
• There is only one exam. If you don’t keep up, your butt will be handed to you on a platter. Did we mention that you are expected to know neuroanatomy on the exam?
• (etc., etc., etc.)

The email continued for a couple pages, but those first few lines really captured the essence of what I'm feeling now: this stuff is hard. Really hard.

Today, after three hours of class and two hours of anatomy dissection lab, I studied straight for 12 hours (exluding some minimal driving time). I read several chapters of a textbook, a few dozen pages of class syllabus, and a few pages of a condensed review book, plus used a "virtual glossary" to understand the 3-dimensional nature of certain brain structures. And a few dozen horizontal, corontal, and sagittal "sections" of brain, mostly on CT or MRI. And I am still having a freakishly hard time understanding the acoustic and vestibular systems.

And, believe it or not, after thinking hard for 95% of my waking hours today, it's hard to concentrate on anything at 2:25am.

Tomorrow is Thursday. Then Friday. Then a three-day weekend.

And the unfortunate part? A three-day weekend just means an extra day to hopefully understand this stuff.

Enough is enough. I'm going to bed.

Mood: semiconscious
Song: "I Want You to Want Me" by Cheap Trick (live version)

Olbermann hits it out of the park

Inspiration. I've been studying for nearly 12 hours straight, and I can barely keep my eyes open. But moments ago I found inspiration.

Keith Olbermann's commentary on Countdown tonight was spectacular. Olbermann spoke about Donald Rumsfeld's comments yesterday to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City. In short, Rumsfeld stated that anyone who disagreed with the administration on Iraq (more than half of US citizens, mind you) suffered from "moral and intellectual confusion" and was willing to appease "a new type of fascism," clearly referring to the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain government toward Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Olbermann's comments tonight highlight so many things I despise about this administration...maybe I'm just thankful to hear them finally expressed by someone in the media. It's refreshing to hear someone comment clearly on a issue that you feel strongly about, especially when you're well past the point of being able to think.

I'll post the commentary below. You can also find the transcript at MSNBC, but the best idea is to watch the video at Crooks and Liars.

Without much further ado...

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

News from the Rothenberg Political Report

I like what I'm reading:

The national mood remains bleak for Republicans. President George W. Bush’s job performance ratings are terrible, and the public still gives Congress low marks. A majority of Americans continue to tell pollsters that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

That’s a recipe for a GOP disaster, and there is no reason to believe that things will change dramatically between now and Election Day to improve Republican prospects.

At the district level, voters are more critical of Republican incumbents – and supportive of even unknown Democratic candidates – than they usually are at this point in the election cycle. GOP candidates are running behind where they would be in anything approaching a “neutral” year. While some firming of the Republican base is likely over the next ten weeks, that alone may not be enough for the party to retain the House.

Strong fund raising by the DCCC should mean that some Democratic candidates won’t face the huge financial discrepancy that they have in the past, though RNC money should boost the Republican ground game nationally.

To hold the House, Republicans must retain at least a handful of districts that now appear likely to go Democratic, probably by discrediting Democratic challengers and open seat hopefuls. Unlike previous cycles, when the burden was on Democrats to create upsets, the onus is now on the GOP to save at least a handful of seats before Election Day.

Therefore, we are raising our estimate of likely Democratic gains from 8-12 seats to 15-20 seats, which would translate to between 218 and 223 seats – and a majority – in the next House.

With this in mind, I can resume studying neuroanatomy in peace.