Just another manic monday...

ok, so it wasn't so manic. It was long though. 5hrs of sitting in the same lecture hall will do that to you. I'm lucky though because the 2hr small group i have after that is pretty great. Our facilitator is so energetic and a wonderful teacher - I actually feel like i'm learning pathology by being there (but learning the actual, practical stuff). Got done with that at 4:30, so didn't get started with studying till 6 by the time i came home to eat and did some other school stuff (emails, etc). I'm super duper tired today because i was up until 2 last night doing homework stuff. That was an accident because i meant to go to bed early. I'm hoping to get a good night of sleep tonight though because i can't keep going w/o being caught up from last week or i'll never make it through studying micro this week!

So, as with many things in life i'm sure, this whole med school thing has it's ups and downs. they can be minute to minute, lecture to lecture, week to week. Today is one of the days where it feels very, very loooong and exhausting. The whole path that is. Somedays it is very exciting, other days you look ahead of you and see week after week of non-stop studying followed by years of non-stop working until the "light" at the end of residency, which is still about 7yrs away. And even then you have chosen a field that requires call, and an average work week that is well above 40hrs (we'll just say it's only around 50 bc the truth might make me sadder!). Anyhow, like i said, some days that feels really, really exhaustingly far away. Luckily day to day things go quickly and in theory at the end you have a great job that (at least most days) hopefully i'll enjoy. Still, 7yrs, with the worst of it still ahead=exhausting. Perhaps it's because today we had a class meeting about USMLE Step One. We will take that in June 2010, but have to start thinking about registering, etc, the end of this semester. Probably good they bring it up because i wouldn't have thought about things like requesting a "Person Items Exemption" so I can bring my insulin pump into the exam... yeah, they make you empty pockets and such, which is good because you don't want your future doctors to cheat their way through these things. Anyway, thinking about that exam is pretty terrifying because it is over everything from years 1 and 2 of med school. I'll tell ya there is a lot of things I didn't learn from year 1, so the idea of relearning it in the context of everything else will be a joy. Oh well, like everything else to this point, I think you just rise to the occasion. It is more terrifying for those who want to go into a competitive field (plastic surgery, dermatology, ear/nose/throat, and radiology topped the list of highest avg board scores from last year), but nonetheless, the better you do, the more doors are unlocked for you, so even with the desire to go into a non-competitive field (read ob/gyn), the better you do, the more choices you have/the better your chances to go where you want. Plus it just makes you feel better about yourself. That'd be nice every now and then! i'm looking forward to that point, though, because it marks the end of your lecture/test and beginning of clinical stuff, which personable Andrea should find more fun than this. Alright, well i dont' think my point was to whine, but either way i should stop. Haven't started studying for friday's test yet, and I have at least a few more hours of non-studying school stuff to finish before I can, so I'm starting to stress even though it's only monday! This semester is going to be brutal through and through... hope everyone had a good monday! Love, Andrea