31 October, 2008

Addendum

On the plus side, my school is pass/fail (with the option of a high pass that doesn't really matter too much in the end) and I don't think I actually failed anything. Yet. Last time I managed to high pass three classes; I'm pretty sure I didn't pull that off this time. If I did, we better call hell, cause their pipes? Frozen. Fully completely. That's a good Tragically Hip song...

Post Block Two

They can't put all of us on the five year plan, right? Even if we royally tanked physio?

Suffice it to say that the second block didn't go as well as the first block. Last block, I knew that I had passed everything directly after the test. This block, there are four classes that I know I passed. The other three? Well, everyone thought that they would fail biochem. As far as histology and physiology go, they curve the heck out of histo because everyone fails it. Physio though, that's a new one. Apparently we are not meant to be cardiologists. At least 2/3 of the people that I spoke to today believe that they failed physio. This includes me.

This is in sharp contrast to last block, where I passed everything and high passed three things. This time? I'll be lucky if I pass everything.

On the plus side, there is beer and children trick-or-treating and a snuggly husband who believes that I'm awesome no matter what.

Also, I don't want to be something super duper. I just want to work with crazy people, little people, or old people (psych, peds, geriatrics).

21 October, 2008

Hello in there

Long time, no blog, I know. It's been busy. We're nearing our second block exam, and this time we have seven classes worth of material to manage. It's exciting. That's one word for it. Anyway, one of the classes I am taking right now is a medical humanities class. We learn how to use medical instruments, discuss ethics and philosophy, and generally have a good time. It's taught by a minister who happens to have a medical degree and a wicked sense of humor. All in all, it's an excellent respite from our other six classes. Anyway, tomorrow we have a reflection session. We're all supposed to write (or draw, sing, etc) something that expresses how our medical education has changed us, or how some life event has impacted us. Or something like that. It's all incredibly vague and as such, none of us had started until today. We're lame like that. I kind of liked what I wrote, though. It's a little disjointed, perhaps, but that's how I think and write.
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My medical education has been like facing an extremely well functioning fire hose and trying to drink all of the water in at once. It’s not going to work, clearly. My mouth is not big enough, stretchy enough, and even if it was, my body is not willing to accept such a volume of fluid in one sitting. Instead of water, though, I am faced with a seemingly endless stream of information. I am certain that I can never know all of it, but I’m going to try anyway. Every day, I go to class, open wide, and pray that I don’t miss anything too crucial (aorta? What’s an aorta?). In the end, there’s an awful lot of minutiae to sort through, very little of which is actually important. It is unlikely that I will need to remember the various stages of blood cell development. Here I am, though, cramming it into my head as if it were the meaning of life and I the only person who had gotten the message. If only my brain were big enough, stretchy enough. No, instead of being able to remember the types of adrenergic receptors, I am stuck with the theme song from “The Beverly Hillbillies.” At least it’s not the entire musical catalogue of Monty Python…oh wait. It is. Damn.

It is a precarious balance, this learning of information. We are taking seven classes, all of which are tested or graded in some manner. Some of them are easier than others, but in the end we need to pass them all. This is complicated by the fact that some classes are forgotten until the week before exams. I know I did this with Embryology last block. Unfortunately for me, it worked out really, really well. There are only so many times this will work. We’re going to see if it works with Biochemistry this time around. I am hopeful.

We don’t need to know every last little detail, but I would like to. Sometimes I joke that it would be neat to have a USB port in my head. I could simply stick in a little portable hard drive and download all of the applicable information. This isn’t so much a joke, though, as it is an honest to goodness desire. I want this USB port in my head. Until then, though, I’m going to have to face down this water hose.

06 October, 2008

Excitement

In other news, school is going and my parents are coming to visit for a week. I haven't seen them since June 13th. This is a long time for me.

How Myspace changed my life

At some point a few years ago, I got a MySpace profile. I think I was bored. I probably wanted to see if I could stalk some kids that I went to high school with. Seriously, that's about all the thought I put into it. I found a few people that I knew, and found plenty of others to mock. I never though that getting a MySpace profile would change my life in any appreciable way.

And then it did.

I'm adopted. I've got a biological family floating around out there. They are presumably doing the things that come along with living: eating dinner, making car payments, fighting with one another, and having good times together. Although I probably wasn't supposed to know anything about them, my foster mother slipped up and told my mother a bunch of identifying things about them. Y'know, things like names, occupation, home town. Things that i certainly wasn't supposed to know, given that my adoption was among the last closed adoptions to take place in Oregon. I've even got the amended birth certificate that lists my mom and dad as my birth parents, although they certainly had nothing to do with my actual genesis as a human being. My mom also told me that I could seek out my birth family when I turned 21. Maybe they'd want to see me, maybe they wouldn't. There was no harm in trying; the worst thing they could do was say "no." The age of 21 came and went without me doing anything of the kind. I changed my mind about what I wanted to be when I grew up, and eerily enough, I chose an occupation that many people in my birth family favored. Creepy.

Fast forward to this October. I was bored and poking around on MySpace. There wasn't much interesting to see. Most of the people I know from Ferndale are pretty boring (with the exception of you, Stef). I was so achingly bored that my mind was running around in circles, thinking of things to search for. I looked up one of Chris' ex-girlfriends. She had her profile set to "private." What fun is that? I searched for the girls that I had really hated in high school, only to discover that i still didn't like them. Finally, it dawned on me. I knew that I had a brother out there. I knew his name. Maybe he had a MySpace profile. I typed in his name, pressed "search" and was confronted with a male who could only be one person. Yes, he was my brother. I stared at his profile picture for hours. It was like I had seen him before. After a few days of obsessively looking at his profile picture, I took the plunge. I contacted him. Through MySpace. In the lamest way possible. I told him, via a comment on his comment page, that I liked his hat. Thus, an awkward relationship was born. We exchanged emails and instant messages for two months, getting to know each other better. Apparently, both he and his sister are in medical school. They both went to Ivy League schools. They both claimed to remember me. Creepy.

Finally, it happened. Last night, Chris and I drove down to Portland to have dinner with this guy. There are no words that can fully describe this experience, but it was sort of like a blind date with more baggage. We effectively didn't know each other, and yet we had quite a history. I disappeared from his life when he was seven years old. He remembers me coming home from the hospital as a new born. I have some really vague memories of him as a little boy. It was surreal.

And that is how MySpace changed my life.