Runner's Log

46'42" 4.50 miles 436 calories burned.

Now it's off to watch Marley & Me!

{zombie}

I've now completed my last ever all-nighter, can't believe I pulled 2 this week. Very, very bad student. Future med students, if you're out there reading, don't be like me.

Planning on stopping by CUPS for a shot-in-the-dark (dark coffee + a shot of espresso) before the test at 9. Here's to hoping I don't fall asleep halfway through the danged thing. This one's 100 questions, of course...

You Know What's Weird?

When you pull an all-nighter or stay up longer than 24 hrs and then try to take a nap. Well, that's not weird, but the feeling when you wake up is. One of my study buddies and I have both experienced this. We feel almost "drugged." Anybody else with us on this?
The other day I woke up from my 4 hour post-test nap and proceeded to stumble around the house for a good 15 minutes before I was good and awake. I couldn't hear very well, making Kris repeat things several times before they finally got through to me. What can I say? Residency is gonna be FUN :)

T minus 7 hours until the last UMC test.

Taking Bets

Who wants to bet we get our Pathology grade back before any of our other grades?

For those not in the class: (Path test is on Friday. We had all the others Mon-Wed)

No, Really

Today this question was on our Preventive Medicine cumulative final:

What is the percentage today (2007) of VRNG (vancomycin resistant Neisseria gonorrhea) in Mississippi?

a)6%
b)12%
c)18%
d)32%
e)50%

This would be a perfectly valid question if we'd had a lecture that stressed this. I don't ever remember seeing a slide on this, though I'm pretty sure if I had, I would have forgotten it. This whole class was full of lectures that were full of slides with percentages on them. They really think I'm going to remember some measly percentage like one of those? Those aren't even impressive. Whatever though. When in doubt I've learned to go to one extreme or the other on the answer, so I went with 50%. It's probably wrong.

It reminded me of some advice the M3s gave us the other day at a lunch meeting regarding the attending surgeons:

"If you keep answering their questions correctly, they'll just keep asking questions until you eventually get one wrong. One time they asked me how much sodium was in the bag of saline."

Can't Wait

After our 2nd test of the day I'm going to go home, take a nice long nap, then wake up and take a nice long run (as long as the sun's still up). Hurry up and get here 1:30!!!

Cuteness Overload

That's my little cousin at Easter holding Penelope. He barely let her out of his sight the whole afternoon! He was very careful with her and I was impressed.

That's your happy for the day. I'm off to Biostats land.

You Know It's Bad When...

in the middle of the test, on the bottom corner of a page, you average all your test grades so far in order to calculate the how many you need to get right in order to just pass the class, not the test.

0%

The chances that I'll sleep >3hrs tonight. LAST all-nighter ever though!!! Wahoo!!!

p.s. i HATE pharm and don't understand how it takes me >12 hours to go over 6 tests when it doesn't even take me that long to take them!!!

Busy Friday

I did end up playing tennis last night. I can't believe it didn't rain after all the forecasts said it was going to be a torrential downpour! The good part is the lady I played was really nice and easy to play with. I won 6-2, 6-2. I even aced her a few times! I really think it was due to the wind helping me out though so I can't take full credit for it.

Anyway, on to today. This morning I woke up late - surprise... (R, I think I need to borrow your clocky) I was supposed to be in lab at 8:00 and didn't get to school until 8:20, but I had yummy treats for the Pathology department :) I made cow piles. (I'm sure you've all had these - they're just those chocolate, oatmeal, and PB drop cookies) They looked so authentic since I used chunky peanut butter - ha ha ha. Pretty gross, but appropriate for Pathology. Anyway, went to the 9:00 session, no big deal.

I also left my phone at home this morning in the rush. My preceptor partner and I are supposed to meet with our preceptor and have our last H&P (history & physical) today. It's witnessed and we do it all ourselves. Should be interesting. I'm not sure if my partner even knows to show up. I've e-mailed him a few times but he usually doesn't check that and without my phone to text him, who knows.

After I get finished with that at 5-ish I get to drive to Durant for my uncle's retirement celebration dinner. He's worked for Rowan for a long time. They were about to move his rig to Mexico and he decided it was time to call it quits. I'm planning on taking champagne - half for the celebration and half to see the look on my mother and grandmother's face when I show up with it. (Love y'all - ha ha) After that I need to come home and get serious about some work! We've got so many little projects and online things to get done, not to mention studying for tests and oh yeah, STEP... So I need to get cooking on all that. Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Warning, rant ahead.

I just woke up from a "nap." What time did I go to sleep this morning? Oh, about 11:00. I guess I've taken naps longer than 4 hours before, but the funny part is I didn't even realize I was that sleepy. Oh well, today wasn't completely useless. After our STUPID psych test I came home and made blueberry waffles, eggs, and cheese grits. Yum.

Now, for that test... I'm stupid and actually tried to review the powerpoints last night. Since they were all about 60 slides each and just had paragraphs copied straight out of the DSM-IV I managed to get through 1 lecture last night. Ha. Then this morning before the test I breezed through all those old quiz questions. Not a good idea. I should have spent about 2 hours breezing through those old quiz questions. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

The test started like this. We walk in, sit down, and the secretary passes out the scantrons. Just one thing about this secretary - she always wears this really strange thing on her head and I can't take her seriously because of it. She wears one black headband - the stretchy, cloth kind and then on top of it a plastic, gold, braided sort of headband. That's not the problem. She wears them RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HER FOREHEAD. It is BIZZARE. It makes me think of Star Trek. We had half of this class last year and she wore the exact same getup then. Noone else seems to notice or have a problem with it, but it really disturbs me. Does she have some sort of scar she's trying to cover up? Is she schizotypal? She was also wearing a flowy leopard print top and black skirt with some bright red Nike tennis shoes so maybe she is schizotypal after all. I'll have to ask her if she has magical powers. I know one magical power she doesn't have. She doesn't have the gift of speed or efficiency. After she had passed out our scantrons she announced into the microphone:

Secretary: "Spring Break is coming up. It's not just for you guys. When y'all leave Friday, I'll be going too. You might not see your test grades until after the break, but check Blackboard."

Class: Screeches, BOO, HISS!!! *sarcastic comments and snickers abound*

Secretary: "Oh, do you want to see your grades before we return from Spring Break?"

Class: 118 students scream a resounding "YES!"

(Who does she think she's dealing with?)

Secretary: "So you want me to miss a whole day of my Spring Break?"

#1 You're a 40 year old secretary. You don't deserve Spring Break.
#2 We just want you to do your job in a timely manner. It's not like we're asking you to spend 30 hours taking online quizzes. Oh right - that's what we had to do...

Now what makes this so funny is that we take our tests with scantrons. You know, the kind you SCAN into a computer and it grades them for you. Then you simply enter the grades into Blackboard on the computer. I'm thinking this whole process would take me 1 hour if I took the time to make coffee and paint my nails while I was doing it. You know how I know it doesn't take an entire day? Because the secretary of the Pathology department is fabulous. She sends us weekly e-mails to keep us informed of what is going on, where to be, what to bring, etc... Our path test was Monday at 9:00. By 5:00 that day we had an e-mail stating that our grades were posted on Blackboard. Assuming the last person finished at 11:00, then she took a lunch break, she got the job done within 5 hours. I think our class needs to get her a gift before the year is over. If they don't, I might. Just a little plant to keep on her desk or something. Anyway, that's enough ranting.

Our ICM test is tomorrow. We have not 1, but 2 incompetent secretaries running that show. They're both about 21, wear stilleto boots and dresses to every test they give us and then huff and puff when we make unreasonable requests for things like scantrons. I'm not kidding. This happened 2 test blocks ago and they were like - "What's the big deal?!? We can just bubble them in for you or grade them by hand!" Do they really think we'd trust them to bubble in our answers for us? Are they BONKERS??? We are the most anal, OCD group of control freaks I've ever been around. We're not trusting 2 girls who can't even manage to count out enough scantrons to be in charge of one of our grades. I'm SURE those grades won't be in until after Spring Break. They're probably already in Destin drinking margaritas and auditioning for Girls Gone Wild and will have someone else proctor the exam tomorrow. The good thing for them is that they've already set the precedent so low for themselves. None of us expect those grades to be up for a while.

Okay, that's enough ranting. This test week has been the worst one so far. It's not because the material is harder. It's actually the easiest material we've ever had. It's just the level of burn out and unpreparedness that I went into it with. My bad! Maybe after Spring Break I'll be back on my game and pull up all these crappy grades next block. One can dream...

Spring Break

Even though we still have 2 more tests this week I'm already on Spring Break. After the pharm test this morning I came home and made a beeline for the bed. I slept until about 2:00 this afternoon. Then Kris and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings for a little lunch. Yum.

He went to run some errands after that and I proceeded to lay in bed for 3 straight hours watching episodes of Desperate Housewives and Medium that I've missed for the last 2 weeks. Then I decided I should get off my lazy butt and do something. I still didn't want to study so I went running instead.

That's about it. Now I'm settling in to finish reviewing psychiatry for the test tomorrow. I was trying to review it earlier, but I was on the couch and Kris was watching some movie called Death Sentence which was pretty good so I ended up watching it instead. Ha ha. Oh well. I should know some of this stuff since I've spent about 20 hours working on 4 quizzes for the class.

On an unrelated note, every time I hear or say the word "psychiatry" or "psychiatrist" I think of Desi Arnez screaming "fee-see-kee-uh-trist!"

I LOVE test week

It's 2:55 AM. I'm going to bed. I will be up in 2 hours. Test week ROCKS - or makes me want to throw things and scream. Pick one.

Today in a Nutshell

It's only 2:30 and already I:

*was up before the sun was (not cool)

*panicked over 1 test, then another

*realized I hadn't seen Meery Bob (the cat) since last night

*took a test requiring a calculator at 9:00 (very rare)

*had some yummy lunch with some fun ladies (hooray!)

*took another test at 1:00

*picked up my taxes - (let's just say it's like I won the lottery. SCORE!!!)

*let Woodrow find the cat (she was outside under our deck, very shellshocked. She ran inside to her favorite chair and started grooming herself)


On an ideal day at 2:30 I would just be making breakfast. This is why I don't like test week. Now it's off to pharm study land. 3 tests down, 3 to go.

Wahoo!!!

Our path grades are up and I just got a pleasant surprise!!! I didn't make an A or anything, but it's my 2nd highest test grade in there. What the heck?!? I really didn't think I had done well at all when I walked out of there. I guesstimated somewhere in the 65-80 range. Hence the pessimistic, if not true, note written on here earlier. Yay for good things. That's just the motivation I needed to study harder this week. (I'm weird and work on a positive feedback mechanism instead of the traditional negative feedback mechanism.) 1 down, 5 to go. Spring Break is calling my name already.

Slacker

Well, I'm back home after an exhilarating weekend. I actually got home at about 2:00 this afternoon, but I've been attempting to study since then. So far all I've managed to do is finish up some online quizzes and go through all the old path tests. I still need to run back through some of my path notes because apparently I don't know too much about urinalysis or body fluids. The test I'm dreading the most this block is by far pharm. It's never been my strong suit, but I'm dreadfully aware of the lack of effort I've put forth this block. Now - for the interesting stuff...

Kris and I made it to Oxford Thursday night and split up - him with his guy friends, me with my girl friend. That sounds funny. Anyway, I picked up my friend Julz from Volta and then we swung by the drive-through coffee place and went back to her house. I had my computer in front of me, but didn't get too much studying done.

Friday afternoon we went to a relatively new place in Oxford called Honeybee's (Bakery or Cafe? I can't remember) for lunch. We both had the pork tenderloin sandwich with caramelized onions, spiced apples, brown sugar rum sauce, spinach, and cheese. It was A-MAZ-ING. I managed to resist all their pretty little cupcakes, pecan tarts, and brownies. Then we went to Belk to pick up a wedding gift. Julz found some jeans. I found a precious black brocade skirt straight out of the 1950s but it was a size too big. Darn... Not sure if I would have worn it that much anyway. We then went to the coffee shop for a while. I actually got a little studying done. Julz read through a case or two. Then we noticed Buffalo Peak was having a sidewalk sale. I really needed a new fleece. It's not that mine is falling apart. I'm pretty sure they're indestructible. I've just had the same black fleece since 2006 or so and now that I have a white dog that sheds a lot it doesn't really work out well. So I got a green Mountain Hardware jacket that's fleecy on the inside and water-resistant (and I'm pretty sure dog fur resistant) on the outside. Exciting!

Then we did our nails, went to Newk's and had dinner with Kris and 2 of his friends, went to the concert, then Chicken-on-a-Stick, then home. The concert was great. I saw an M1 there and we were both like - "What are we doing here?!?! We have tests next week!!!" It made me feel a little better about playing hooky. Kris managed to get 2 records at the concert. Our collection (mostly his) is really growing!

Saturday I rode to Kosciusko with Julz for a wedding shower. I got a little studying done in the car on the way there. The shower was fun and the food was soooo yummy. I'm probably going straight to hell for eating chicken on a stick at 1:00 in the morning and then oreo cheesecake at 2:00pm on the same day. That's just not right. I had some oatmeal in between, so they cancel each other out, right? If that wasn't enough we went to the pre-bachelorette party dinner at 5:30 and had pizza. Yikes. It was fun though. Then it was back to Oxford (with a feeble attempt to study on the way). I got a little more studying done that night and then rode back to Jackson with Kris this morning.

The poor cat missed us so much she made herself sick - literally. I got to clean up 2 piles of something that came out of her. I'm not sure what it was. Now I must quit typing and attempt to cram some more info in before 9:00 tomorrow morning. Here's our schedule for the week if you're interested:

Monday - 9:00am - Pathology Test #5 (of 6 total) 18hrs of lecture covered

Tuesday - 9:00am - Biostats Test #1 (of 2) 11 lectures; 1:00pm - Preventive Medicine Test #1 20 hours of lecture/readings

Wednesday - 9:00am - Pharmacology Test #5 20 hrs of lecture

Thursday - 9:00am - Psychiatry Test #1 4 hrs lecture/1000000hrs of ridiculous quizzes

Friday - 9:00am - ICM Test #5 12 hrs of lecture

3 MORE WEEKS OF CLASS EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So Ready

So ready for this test to be over. It starts at 1:30. I'll probably finish around 3:00-ish. I've already made big plans in my head. They include but are not limited to:

1. Going to J. Crew because they are having an INSANE sale right now.
2. Going to Michael's/T.J. Maxx to look for cute things to decorate my house.
3. Stopping by BOPS for a Snappy Turtle - because I have a free coupon. You don't really have to justify BOPS though.
4. Taking a long nap.
5. Exercise of some sort and perhaps cooking dinner.


I should start studying for the rest of the tests that are next week, but we don't have tests again 'til Tuesday and my brain is already FRIED!!!