Happy 2006

Happy 2006 to everyone! 2005 was a pretty fantastic year for me -- a great time living and working in DC, getting into med school (finally!), and forming a new group of friends in Cleveland. So here's to a great 2006!

I'm still working on resolutions. As usual, one of them is to get back in touch with people I haven't heard from in ages -- usually at least a year or more. Otherwise, I'd like to resolve to stop biting my fingernails, but that has been one of my resolutions since the early 90s and I still haven't succeeded. Perhaps the 14th resolution will finally be the one? :-)

Merry Christmas!

I'm back in Oregon for a few days after spending some quality time with my relatives in southern California. I don't have a ton of time to relax, but hopefully this will give me time to rest and relax before I head back to Cleveland at the end of the week. And, hopefully, the new year will bring me back to the blogging world. The med school schedule hasn't been particularly conducive to keeping up with the blog, to say the least.

In the words of Rep John Dingell (D-MI), "Merry Christmas to all, and to Bill O'Reilly, Happy Holidays."

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! This is my first Thanksgiving away from home, but I've had a pretty good day. Baked a few tarte tatins this afternoon, went to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by one of my med school classmates, and played a little bit in the snow. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've had snow at Thanksgiving in a long, long time.

It will hopefully be a nice, slow, relaxing, restful weekend. Wish me luck!

When you least expect it

This weekend has been surprisingly fun. We have a enormous cell physiology-neuromuscular-histology-anatomy exam on Thursday, so this weekend (and all of next week) is supposed to be filled with studying, anxiety, and books. And while that has been true to some extent, the last few days have also been incredibly reaffirming. On Friday night I went to a theater to see Shopgirl, which I liked for the most part. Last night I went out for dinner at the Great Lakes Brewing Company to celebrate a friend's completion of the Series 7 exam. And I've spent a lot of time building some bonds with some very important people.

This week is going to be pretty rough for the next 96 hours, but I know I can do it.

First goal? Finish my note summaries on our neuromuscular lectures. Here goes...

Mood: surprisingly relaxed and content
Song: Some of the music from Shopgirl...don't know the names of the songs yet...

Mental wanderings

In just a few short months, I've learned that med school can get pretty intense. Every so often, you need a day that can focus on more than academics -- on errands, on financial demands, on personal issues. Today was one of those days. I know that the next eight days will have some serious academic demands, but for now I feel content. Right now I'm happy. I can handle the next week.

And, by the way, our Halloween party was insane. Turnout was two or three times higher than expected, and everyone seemed to have a pretty good time. Certainly a night to remember.

Mood: cheerful and optimistic (despite near-constant fatigue)
Song: Toad the Wet Sprocket, "All Right" and Van Halen, "Not Enough"

The Lights Come On

Somehow, in the last 24 hours, anatomy has started making a lot of sense to me. I don't know what happened, and I'm not sure if it will last, but for now I have the first hint of academic confidence since the start of med school. And I like it.

And tomorrow is Friday. Hooray. (The fact that I plan to study nearly the entire day doesn't make a dent in my excitment.)

And Saturday is our Halloween party. Super hooray.

Mood: optimistic
Song: Live, "The Beauty of Gray" and REM, "Man on the Moon"

Studying as default?

I've noticed recently that studying is now my default behavior. Unless I have something else to do -- eating, sleeping, going to lecuture, etc. -- I will virtually always be studying. And somehow it seems normal. In the past, I had a difficult time imagining how medical students could really study so much...didn't it get old? Didn't they want to do anything else? Didn't they lose their minds?

As I've learned, the answer is "yes." But that doesn't mean I won't keep going. When virtually everyone you see is studying most fo the time, it somehow becomes a normal baseline activity. If someone asks what I'm doing this weekend, I will probably say, "Not much." If it's a med student who asks, they'll assume that means I'm studying all weekend. If someone else asks, they'll just think that I'm not very active.

As a side benefit, I seem to be able to repress most of my emotional issues when I'm studying. It doesn't do anything to resolve them, but at least I can ignore them for a while. Amen.

Back to anatomy. Only another few billion names to learn.

Mood: Calm
Song: Evanescence, "Listen to the Rain" and Garbage, "Only Happy When It Rains"