Whine whine...

and whine... I'm having one of those days that isn't a bad day, but where I just feel a little bit miffed for no reason in particular, but may also be related to a condition I won't mention, but it rhymes with "temale fubbles". This may also be why, despite my newly acquired in room "reliable" internet connection, I'm typing this from the library since I'm getting the distinct impression I'm driving my roommate crazy, which may or may not be my paranoia due to said above condition.

So first the whining, then the more overwhelmingly good, because I need to get it out of my system and I have a captive audience! Mwa ha! Enjoy it friends, family, and strangers desperately trying to find out relevant information about the school!

This computer's a bit slow... let's call that whine... 3? Oh, who's counting?

We got an announcement in hour 1 of 3 in anatomy today that we'd have anatomy "small group" discussions. We'll also be adding a biochem small group somewhere down the line, AND I have to attend a professional development group as part of clinical skills with a homework assignment the week after to deliver a personal statement (didn't I already send the school one of these babies???) and a CV, which to the best of my knowledge has "dead end jobs" written all over it.

Guys, medical school is hard. There is a buttload of information we have to cram into our pointy, overworked, longing for the beach, just let me get a tan so my relatives believe I was in the Caribbean minds, and you are filling ALL our study time with *your* interpretation of how we should best study.

I'm hoping anatomy will be useful. Mainly, I'm still bitter about the WEEKLY clinical skills discussion groups. I'm ethical; I know about ethics; I can spit ethics back at the people forcing me to attend even if I disagree with their answers (which is, in itself, unethical, right?). What I DON'T know is biochemistry, and talking about my feelings on ethics is two hours that I'm not talking to my BRAIN about biochemistry.

This also causes me to be a less than enthusiastic participant in group because it makes it hard to suppress my cynicism and I don't wanna fail. None of you guys are reading this, right?

Oh well, I've heard the course development gets useful in later months. It's just in the first weeks, when you're TRYING to learn how to study that they throw the most *useless* crap at you. And in such a patronizing fashion. Now kids, you will make mistakes as doctors (really? I was planning to be perfect), but you have to TRY to keep an error record (damn, I thought I had license to kill). But you have a moral obligation to TELL people about those errors (thus losing your license).

Blah blah blah.

Annnnnyhoo, we only had three hours of lecture today, which felt like too much because I was a bit tired. I couldn't sleep last night, and without wanting to offend my roommate who had an early lab, wandered up to the study room to review my oh-so-wonderful Netter flashcards (no really, dudes, expensive as getout, but invest; they rock). Also discovered, since no one had announced it, that while the weekly anatomy quiz hadn't posted, the HISTOLOGY quiz had! Ack! My friend Joie (I hope I spelled that right) was kind enough to let me use her laptop to do a 2 am quiz quest.

Due to the intensive levels of terminology in embryo to learn, and my utter ignorance of biochem, histology has been sadly neglected short of my attending lab and lectures, so I was a bit concerned and... ONE HUNDRED percent, baby!!! Ah, the wonders of an excellent lecturer. The epithelium and I are like THIS (picture me crossing my fingers excitedly, since I'm not on my personal computer, thus can't upload images).

Other than the aforementioned pissiness diagnosis (damn you, womanhood!), I think it's the first I've felt a bit homesick. It comes in little bits. There isn't any big "oh no!" or anything of the sort, nor really a US thing... let me try to explain. Last night, I was thinking about how many times I went to the grocery store from my own apartment. Over the course of seven years, I took the same route, thus, in my head, like a more clear version of Google Earth, I was doing the video game traveling the route in my head as it occurred to me that I wouldn't be taking that exact route ever again.

Do I mourn the loss of a grocery route (Well... when the bus is late)? No. It's just an odd thing, a moving on thing. Waxing poetic now, I suppose. I'm not sure why this is more tangible than the people or my critters. Maybe I'm deliberately not letting it get to me so its slipping through in subtle ways.

It's far later now, and I still can't determine whether my roommate is simply stressed, quiet, or plotting my death. Being overly sensitive is causing me to be enormously insecure. Or maybe it's the biochem.

But enough wallowing... the more important thing is...

I have beef! And chicken! And ice cream! And, not coincidentally, had a morning free of lab and a loan check wonderfully posted. Ah, sweet sweet bad for you food. I woke up this morning as a woman on a mission and promptly set about stopping mooching off my roommate while making occasional contributions grabbed from the student store, headed to Spiceland Mall on a wing and a prayer, as it were, and got myself hooked up with a Digicell cell phone as well as groceries! Wahoo! Prepared for such a large shopping, I brought my laptop backpag, a rolling bag, and STILL had bags to carry! Booyah! The store was out of milk (it happens), but I did manage to secure the eggs that had been in short supply the last time I was there.

This preceded lecture by about forty-five minutes so all through my restless lecture, I was, in my head (and during breaks, in the aisles), doing the "I got beef" dance, so if you read this blog and are in first term, now you know who I am. I'm the "I got beef" dance girl. It's a bit like the twist. I have an "I got chicken" dance as well which has little wings.

For context, I'm a born carnivore, generally eat meat at least once a day, and red meat, probably three times a week. I love meat! Since I've arrived on Grenada, I had essentially, kissed beloved beef farewell (thus imagine my shock when I found it) as well as many other forms of protein, and have now, after cooking my bounty, eaten beef precisely once since I got here and chicken four times, mostly in roti form. It's sad. I've been working on coating the inside of my arteries for YEARS, and in a scant four months, this island is going to undo ALL my hard work, even allowing my heart to build up the necessary anastamoses (sp?) to create my *own* bypasses! No fair! I'm going to have to continue killing myself with a high sodium uptake instead. Sigh.