I make negative money

While it's definitely hard to forget how much debt we're going into over here, nothing quite hits it home like filing your "income taxes", just to make sure the IRS doesn't make some stunning oversight and hit you as having not filed just because, you know, you don't have a job.

Now, I did my taxes last year from Grenada and grabbed a neat little return from the previous year's labor. This year?

Ishie's income for 2007, as reported to the IRS: -$69.

Yowch. Yup, I made negative thanks to student loan interest before everything was deferred. What's the poverty line?

I suppose it's strange because though I don't have a job, medical school is *way* more work than almost any job I would be in, thus I feel like, even though intellectually, I know I'm going into so much debt it makes my neocortex ache, it doesn't quite hit home that *I'm* paying to do this (eventually) until I file that 1040. Nor did the fact that I live out of the country. That should be obvious every time I walk outside and forget which way I'm supposed to look before crossing the street AND making sure there aren't any cows in it, but it's when that question came up of "Have you spent more than half of 2007 outside the US?" "Yup." And will spend even more of 2008.

Crazytown! Speaking of "outside the US", I'm starting to lock in that schedule for this summer, with probably deciding on flying into Berlin, staying for a couple of days, taking the train to Prague, doing the selective, and then flying out of London. Now, all I have to do is learn German, Czech, Italian, French, and English. By English, I mean "English", not the "like, dude" varietal that I speak. I've got my work cut out for me.

But school... first exam was on Monday, and I'm pleased with the result. I thought it was pretty fair, and it's strange to have a statistics exam so short on numbers. The wonders of the "no calculator" rule.

Now, we're going into more neuro-based psychiatry, as well as some math-based epidemiology, so I'm making damn sure I keep up on those and don't get too complacent. But so far, third term is pretty much going as promised. I'm also LOVING the afternoon small groups, like I did in second term. Not necessarily loving them as in "loving the content at all times", but loving it as in "opposite of first term's bright/early labs where I was NEVER awake for anything". I am so not a morning person. If they had exams start at 1 am, I'd have straight A's in medical school. I wonder if that counts as a learning disability...

Well, speaking of such, back to psych, a class that gives you so many disorders to remember, you can't help but diagnose yourself with 6 or 7 of them.

And now, a random Grenada photo:



Addendum: In the "Analogies that don't work" category:

Comparing the lack of ambient neurotransmitters in the brain to the amount of gas in a carburetor. I can honestly say I know more about brains than I do about cars, since I usually attribute the functioning of the latter to leprechauns living under the hood.