Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas Eve!

This morning Kris and I were awakened by a crash and the tinkling of delicate glass Christmas ornaments breaking. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Unfortunately it wasn't even our own animal's doings. We volunteered to babysit Jennifer and Andrew's cat for the week. Yikes. Maybe we should start an insurance policy for when Milly visits. The 2 ornaments I was really worried about didn't break - a long spiral glass seashell one from our Honeymoon and the one of a bride and groom for our 1st Christmas from Kris's mom.

Kris just looked at the mess, looked at me, and said "Merry Christmas Eve!"

Then we started cleaning. The cat got a time-out in the bathroom and Woodrow got a time-out outside. We aren't entirely convinced of his innocence. Meery Bob got no time out because she is infinitely cute and innocent. She laughed at the other animals.

Plans for the Day:
Wrap Kris's presents while he's at work
Clean house (why is this always on the agenda?)
Laundry
Bake


That's about it for now. Merry Christmas Eve everyone!

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Slacker

So, tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I still don't have presents for the majority of the people on my list. Fortunately we're not having Christmas until several days afterward for most of the people on my list. That = major save... Also, my sister and her new hubby are gone to Ft. Lauderdale for the week so that gives me an extra 6 days to pick up their gift. I may just have to stagger buying presents. I'm very thankful that I live less than 5 miles from every mall in the greater Jackson area.

I went on a shopping extravaganza yesterday. I thought I had nearly gotten Kris's shopping all finished up until I came home and he said: "I hope you didn't get me xxxx or xxxx." Of course that was all that I had gotten him. Great :) Guess I get to go return and re-shop today. Or I might just be lazy and save those things for next year.

Here's something to be thankful for - I passed all my tests!!! Now two of them I barely passed, but I passed them all the same. So there. Take that school.

Gotta run now. Slept until 2:00 today (awesomeness) so I should probably start getting ready and being productive.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

1 More Test and I'm a Free Woman!!!

Wahoo! The depressing thought that I'm about to study like nobody's business for the next 10 or so hours and then wake up and go at it some more is just made so much better by the fact that I'll be finished taking tests tomorrow at 11:00. Then we have 2 weeks of freedom. I still haven't put Christmas lights on that tree in our front yard and now I'm debating whether I even should with only 1 week left 'til Christmas.

Kris spent the whole night wrapping my gifts last night. It took him around 3 hours to wrap about 6 gifts, but I'm pretty sure it's because he was watching The Dark Knight and because he couldn't find real tape. He had to use a giant role of packing tape. No complaints here. They look so pretty sitting on our mantle and make me very excited for Christmas to get here. I haven't wrapped a single present yet! If it weren't for online shopping I don't know if anybody would even have gifts yet.

Anyway I must now start the cram session and hope it pays off tomorrow even though these particular professors are pretty cruel. Wish me luck!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Want to see what my future esteemed colleagues have to say? Here it is:

These are the facebook status updates my classmates have been posting. For those of you "old folks" reading who don't know what facebook is... For normal people it's a social networking tool. For medical students it's a way to live vicariously through those people while writing down their angsty feelings.

Joseph D Verzwyvelt just placed a piece of scotch tape on his anus....looks like a bunch of flattened footballs to me.

Jeffrey Reeves is confused. It must be the Coxiella.

Emily Faulks is worms WORMS WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORMS!!!

Joseph D Verzwyvelt is thinking he should have went to Antonelli College, I would be on track to the career of my dreams in a quarter of the time of med school.

Heather Gardner doesn't have anything nice to say.

Jeffrey Reeves has the micro blues.
Responses: Kari Giurintano: Are you sure it's not blue/green? It could be Pseudomonas!
Joey Verzwyvelt:
Could be Wucheria bancrofti causing epididymitis or as the lay man likes to call it-- "blue balls"

Oy...

As I predicted, the easy test was not so easy this time. It was full of murmurs, thrills, and hypertrophied hearts. I, however, neglected to pull out my physiology book from last year and relearn all of cardiac physiology. You hear that faint dropping sound? That's the sound of my best average dropping down to meet my other sub-par grades. I guess it was lonely at the top.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Something Intelligent

Well, I couldn't think of a very creative name for this entry, so there you go. Hooray for being 2/5 of the way finished with tests! That's almost 1/2 right? The good part is we're actually 1/2 way finished with the actual hard tests. The one we have tomorrow is what I always call "the easy test" when I'm explaining to Kris why I'm not stressed and I'm taking a nap. It goes a little something like this:

A: (watching tv while eating, or doing laundry, or napping)
K: (in a 1/2 kidding, 1/2 serious manner) "Hey you! - shouldn't you be studying? Haven't you been freaking out about all these tests for the last 2 weeks? Why aren't you studying right now? Huh? Huh?"
A: "Don't worry honey. It's no big deal. Remember, I have the easy test tomorrow."
K: "Oh, okay." (goes back to playing video games)

Now to be fair - K doesn't usually yell out me for not studying because he's controlling or manipulative. It's because he has to listen to me gripe about not studying enough or cramming hard enough *occasionally* when I am disappointed with my grades.

Although to be honest I've begun to make peace with my grades. I used to get all hung up about class average and analyzing where I was in relation to it. I've come to realize that I'll just do the best I can, get all this stupid stuff over with in a few months and then begin rotations, where the ACTUAL learning begins. I guess I learn by doing - and there's not much to be done the first 2 years except look in books. The honest truth of it is that when you're applying for residency they don't really analyze your actual class grades very much. They judge you based on one number.

Enter, the STEP.

I don't know if I've written about it before, but the STEP is this giganto test we take upon completion of the first and second years of school. It covers every subject we've taken and often integrates material. It is an 8 hour long test with about 350 questions. It's not just some standardized test our school makes us take. Every medical student in the U.S. takes it and it follows you everywhere - even to your grave. It is the 1st step in medical licensing in the United States.

You know how they gave us 1 day to study for the boards last year? Well they give us 1 month to study for this test. That should put it into perspective. I've scheduled mine for May 29, 2009. Some people are saying they'd be burned out by then and have scheduled theirs for 1 week earlier. I say to them - I'm always burned out. I will probably take a short break after the end of school in April and then go through peaks and troughs of studying. If I get burned out I'll have time to get a 2nd wind, then a 3rd. I'll also have an extra week of studying and since I always feel like I could make an A on the test if I'd had 1 more day to study, maybe this will work.

Rotations start 1 week after that. Then scores come in July. 14 people failed last year. I'm not really sure how it threw off their schedule, but I'm sure it did. The faculty has been pushing us to start studying because they were freaked out. You know what I say? Give us better teachers. Noone goes to class this year - and they're doing BETTER on tests. Does this make sense? No. Does it show how completely inept most of our teachers are? Yes. Now, they are nice people and I hate to talk badly about them because I could never give the same lecture over and over and over for 15 or 30 years. But my gosh... These people make me wish Powerpoint was never freakin' invented. That's a rant for another day though. But even though I've been going to class so far I think I'm comfortable enough with their testing styles to give it a break next block. I'll let you know how it goes.

Wow, that was a long one! That was completely inadvertent. Gots to go study for the *easy* test now. Watch, I'm going to fail it after talking about how easy it is...

Monday, December 15, 2008

1 Down, 4 to Go

Hooray! Even though I didn't have a stellar performance on the first test, it is over! The rest of this week will simultaneously drag on and fly by depending on the day and time. I'm ready for this limbo to end... I'm not counting or anything but I think it's something like 3 days, 20 hours, 14 minutes.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

ACE Inhibitors are Perverts

So I'm perusing my *meticulous* notes for pharmacology and see that I have pregnancy written as an adverse side effect of ACE Inhibitors. How exactly does that work?

Friday, December 12, 2008

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Next Week's Forecast - Hazy

I haven't been posting as much lately - here's why:

Monday 12/15/08: Pharmacology Test(all heart meds and antimicrobials) and Genetics Test
Tuesday 12/16/08: Pathology Test (liver, gallbladder, pancreas, dermatopath, heart, all GI)
Wednesday 12/17/08: Introduction to Clinical Medicine Test (mostly heart)
Thursday 12/18/08: Microbiology Laboratory Practical (every bacteria)
Friday 12/19/08: Microbiology Test (mostly gram negative bacteria, worms, and fungi)

Every one of these tests is over material from the last 7 weeks + a 10-25% cumulative component. Oh joy :) Those of you who are in close contact with the BMU (Big Man Upstairs) need to send some love my way.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why is it that everyone wants my time when I have so very precious little of it to give? Now, back to learning drugs...

Monday, December 8, 2008

The Art of Saying No

Today I said no when I was asked to play a make-up tennis match for someone else. It felt pretty good, seeing as how I already got suckered into playing 1 for someone else and I'm probably much busier and will do more in the next 2 weeks than any of the other people that play. That's all.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Hilarious

Watching Meery Bob "milk" Woodrow. She just doesn't understand why he doesn't have any milk for her!