Hmm... feeling better...

Nothing like the pity party that accompanies the approach of exams. With a little less than two weeks to go!

Turns out, surfing the internet, blogging, and watching internet tv is far more gratifying when you use it to reward yourself for studying rather than using it as an excuse not to... at least for me.

Also, when apparently the fifth or sixth person links anxiety/depression to a potential inability to leave my computer chair, couch, or apartment, one starts to think "Hey, maybe I should do that exercise thing everyone talks so much about."

Problem being, gymming it isn't all that fun and tends to require a fight for the cardio machines plus the innate sensation that I should be, in some way, trying to study on ellipticals, stationary bikes, or most laughably, treadmills. I think I saw that video..., which, by the way, is awesome.

Results? You tend to do a half-assed workout and a half-assed study session. Two self esteem lowerers for the price of one.

So instead? I'll do what every other person to ever move off campus does: powerwalk/jog/run at dusk, when it's not so horrendously hot. Granted, this does increase your chances of death-by-reggae-bus by 600%, but I'll stick where there are kinda sidewalks. There's also the trick of remembering which direction "faces traffic" in this country.

Helps too. Sunset is a pretty time to be out, it's not as hot, I get my endorphins moving, and I don't feel like an anti-social lazy slug that is gradually losing weight just by moving so infrequently that I've decreased my calorie requirement to a cup of tea in the morning. Cheaper on the food budget though.

Funny thing is that you get so accustomed to either studying or pretending to study (aka surfing the internet), that just the promise of taking a walk in two hours was sufficient to motivate me to DO stuff, and then post walk/shower/dinner, motivated me to feel refreshed, and as such actually managed to ACCOMPLISH things today, which increases that anti-anxiety, which increases the tendency of it to happen more often.

Whoda thought? Everyone, really. Pre-docs and docs take the worst care of themselves, and the worst thing, they KNOW THEY'RE DOING IT!

I'm learning to love physio in that at least for the heart, the instructor just keeps repeating herself in different ways until all those little letters are rammed into my head, and I have the beginning (gasp) of perception. Add some memorization to that with what receptors do what (again, repeated five thousand times), and I *think* I'm okay.

Neuro is a bit different. Physio really seems to require that understanding while neuro, independently, doesn't *tend* to be conceptually difficult, with some rather stunning exceptions, but just has lots and lots of stuff rammed into a small area. And I dislike tracts. I'm wondering if there's a correlation between getting lost easily and being unable to read maps, whether they're of places or organs.

But it's all good. And I got my neuro small group assignment done, and actually around 2 PM, so not even as a last minute effort, though it did emphasize my woefully inadequate knowledge of the brainstem and cerebellum.

So thanks be to the well-wishers and self-pity-snappers-outters... little clumsy that... time will tell, but the tide is turning up.