For you optimists out there :)

Ok, so Laci called us out on being too negative, so I felt like posting a relatively upbeat post on  thursday night before an exam should really throw some serious weight on the "+" side of the scale :)  Tomorrow morning is our PID exam (aka principles of infectious disease, aka microbiology, aka bacteria and the infections they cause).  Test is at 8:30, as I think all of them are this semester (much better than last semester when they were all in the afternoon  - which I hated… I like to wake up, take the test, and be done for the day!!!).  So this class is notoriously difficult  largely because they write very tricky questions that aren't very straightforward.  Some of them are actually decently good at making you really think through the material and take it to the next level of understanding, others are really just like trick questions (this is based on past tests we've been shown).  People have been freaking out all week about it because apparently the class average on the exams is very, very low (passing is 70% and class average is usually in the 80's, but in this class apparently the average falls very low 70's).  We shall see I suppose… Really my motto about med school exams (which we have every single friday as I'm sure you all recall) is "All you can do is all you can do".  I still have my stress and freak out moments, but by and large you do just come back to doing what you can with the time you have.  I will say one of the really good things about med school is that it teaches you there isn't enough time for a lot of things, which is good and bad.  It's bad when you realize you haven't sent birthday cards or gifts to anyone in the last year - even for 1st birthdays (Jaim, I promise I'll make it up to Gretta when she's old enough to care about presents!), or that you don’t return emails, texts, phone calls, don't go see people, kids freaking grow up and start walking, talking, going to school between visits, and that stuff sucks, and it's sad that you don't have time for that (it's also sad when you don't even have time to go to the bathroom w/o bringing notes with you to study on the walk).  But then there are things like stressing and worrying that you also don't have time for, and that, that is actually good.  I really don't have time to get that worked up about much of anything.  granted I hardly interact with the world, so the annoyances are greatly decreased, but still.  I don’t worry about what people think of me much at all, don't really care what they have to say about what I choose to do, don't care what other people choose to do with their lives (as long as they're happy with it of course).  So anyway, that's the good side of this.  And every now and then we do get to still enjoy the stuff we're learning or what we're doing… we also REALLY get to enjoy the time we take off from studying.  Work hard, play hard.  So tomorrow night, that will be fun!  Us girls are going out to eat at the Atlas for my bday and then we're meeting the boys out downtown.  Sadly the rest of the weekend will be filled with school stuff - I have at least 10hrs worth to catch up on from this week, but first we get to have tomorrow.  And then I get to sleep in on saturday.  Right now, that's all I want to do.  Ok, well I need every remaining second of the next 4-5hrs of study time, so I better get back to my good friends the Staphylococci.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!!! (and hopefully I'll still be this upbeat at 10:30 tomorrow after the test is over!) Love Andrea