Curves

I am constantly amazed at the curve balls that happen in life. Usually, they couldn't happen at a worse time. They inevitably happen either when things are going really well or when life is so busy there is no time to deal with them. I NEVER remember this many curves in my life before I was in med school. And now, naturally, I don't have the time or energy to deal with them. The really, really scary thing is that my life is going to get exponentially busier and busier probably until I retire, but for the next 10 years for sure.

What a freakin' trip.

Parties and Moving and Tests, Oh My!

Man, these next 10 days or so are B-U-S-Y!

First off, there are a ton of going-away, last-time-the-class-will-be-together-til-graduation parties. I haven't really gotten out there and done things outside of school with a lot of my classmates over the last 2 years, and I'm apparently trying to make up for that in the next week! There are just so many people to see and so many fun things to do.

Next, I have to pack up most of my apartment by May 3rd, which is when I will be going up to Phoenix to live with my parents and study for boards and when an incoming first year will take over my apartment for the next 8 weeks. There is a lot of packing to do and really nowhere to put my stuff at my parents'. It will be interesting to see where I cram it all in.

Oh yea, and I have a final on May 1st. It might be a bad thing, but school is really the last thing on my mind right now. I think the test will be very straightforward, but that doesn't really make up for the fact that I have done NO studying since this class started at the beginning of the month. But with all these other things going on, who has time to study!?!

Med School's Got Talent!

Last night was the 3rd Annual American Medical Students Association (AMSA) Talent Show. Being an exec member for AMSA, my job was to coordinate the dress rehearsals and tech/lights stuff. While 100% of ticket sales went to a great cause (the Commitment to Underserved People, or CUP, program), and it turned out GREAT, the show was WAY more of a hassle than it should have been! From having a hard time recruiting acts, to having acts drop out, to getting last minute acts to fill in (myself included...played the flute with 1 days notice after not playing for 5 years. Whoa!) to people not showing up for rehearsals to hidden fees for renting the auditorium, the pre-show drama was huge. The day of, again people were late, acts were changed last minute, the show started late, SO many people showed up we had to print more programs (a good thing!)...the little hits just didn't change! However, now that it is all over and done with, I definately think it was a success. We raised over $500 for CUP...more than they raised last year! All the people that performed were seriously talented (singing, belly dancing, harp playing, a musical skit spoofing some of our professors) and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. But I sure am glad it's over! Now onto planning my next event...a sorority luncheon in 2 weeks!

Scheduling

So I've found out most of my schedule for next year! I don't know which hospitals I will be at yet, but here is what I know:

June-August: Internal Medicine (inpatient and outpatient)
September-October: Family & Community Medicine
November-December: Pediatrics
January-March: Psychiatry/Neurology
April: Elective
May-June: Surgery/OB/Gyn

I will find out more specifics later (if I start with Psychiatry in January or with Neurology in January; same idea for Surgery and OB/Gyn in May), but I'm excited to even have this! This was not my first choice of schedule, but there are a lot of good things about it. I don't have Medicine and Surgery back to back (all the other scheduling options did; they are the 2 most difficult and time-consuming), I have Medicine and Surgery in the summer (so when I have to be awake at 4 or 5am the sun might be up), I have Family in the fall (I'm thinking of going out of town for that session and it won't be too cold in the fall), etc. I can't wait to find out what hospitals I will be at...I find out in about 3 weeks! Yay!

Easter!

I really like Easter...I don't really feel like it's Spring until Easter! I love going to church and getting dressed up in pretty pastels/Spring-y colors and seeing all the little kids running around! Today I saw something that I do not EVER remember seeing on Easter before. Probably 1/4 of all the people in church were wearing BLACK (maybe an exaggeration, but it was a LOT)! And not just black shoes or a black sweater, but head-to-toe black! You should wear black on Good Friday, not on Easter! It really took the Easter mood right out of me. So if you're reading this, don't wear black on Easter...it makes people sad!

Next year, my mom and I have resolved to wear hats on Easter, like the ladies in the South do (thanks, Southern Living magazine, for reminding me that doing that is traditional by running a whole article about Easter bonnets!). We saw a couple people wearing hats today, and I just think they're so fun, and there is no more appropriate time to wear them than Easter. Hey, now that our whole family is too old for Easter Egg Hunts, we need to do something to make the holiday more fun!

I feel like I'm in elementary school...

...because the power went out this morning in the middle of my first lecture! Literally one second I was writing what the lecturer was saying on my notes, and the next it was completely dark in the classroom, in the hall, etc. I'm not clear if the power outage was in just the medical school area of the hospital or the whole hospital (they're connected), but either way it was awesome. After a few minutes a generator kicked in and turned on one light in the hallway, but that didn't do too much good. So our lecturer (who is also the block director, thankfully) cancelled all of our morning classes so we weren't just standing around waiting for something to happen.

Another great thing happened yesterday in our Cancer grades being released (finally!). I have a system while I'm taking a test of trying to guess what my final score will be. I put a star next to questions I am TOTALLY guessing on, and a little dot next to questions that I'm not 100% positive about, but I made an educated guess. I figure if I miss all of the questions I starred that would be the highest my score will be, and if I miss all of the stars and all of the dots that the lowest my score could be. Based on this system, I was worried about this last exam...I had a lot of dots and stars. However, when the grades came out, I did better than my best guess. That is a first, usually I am pretty good at judging my performance, but it was a very pleasant surprise.

I feel like all I talk about is school, so I will try to post about something else next time...

Back to it...

Ok, so I'm back. Long last two weeks, that's for sure.

I had my Cancer final on March 27th...and the grades are still not posted! This is longest we have ever had to wait for grades to go up. The test was computerized, and they release the grades to our online profiles, so you'd think it would take about 2 seconds. Sometimes it takes 2 days or so because they actually evaluate every question (if a certain percentage of the class missed the question, it is thrown out as a bad question) to calculate our actual grade, but 10 days is ridiculous!

Then it was spring break...yay! I spent the first few days in Phoenix hanging out with my family, and then I came back to Tucson to be in my friend Amanda's wedding on April 3rd. It was a VERY busy Thursday and Friday, getting everything set up and navigating some tempers, but the wedding was beautiful, the bride looked amazing, and I am really glad that I got to be a part of it and help out (because honestly, I'm not sure it would have gone off without my help!). I can't wait to see the pictures.

Lastly, I went to Las Vegas for the weekend to see my brother play baseball and again hang with the rest of the fam. He pitched GREAT (I wish he would have stayed in the game longer...maybe then they would have won! It was a heartbreaking 4-3 loss after extra innings), and I was SO glad to get to see him play; it had been too long. We stayed at Wynn (we got a great deal), and I gambled for the first time. Just slots, but it was fun! My mom and I played with a $200 credit the hotel had given us, and we turned $0 real dollars into $130. So I guess technically we lost $70, but as far as I'm concerned we started out with nothing, so it was a good day! It was hard to be in Las Vegas (I hadn't been there in a while, and it brought up some tough memories), but the baseball games were a nice distraction.

I am starting Advanced Topics, which is basically a class that puts together a lot of what we learned in the past 2 years in clinical pictures and also includes board reviews. It will be tough and probably discouraging when I realize how much I have forgotten, but I hope it's helpful in the end! Only 4 weeks left! Whoa!