Yup, I'm still alive

And no, am not going through the slow process of blog abandonment... not until rotations!

What I am doing is preparing for the unmitigated hell that is the upcoming midterm/finals season with the notoriously worst path exam on Tuesday, PD lab midterm on Wednesday, microbio final on Friday, and PD written midterm the following Monday, while the 1st, 2nd, and 5/6th termers are also taking all their final exams.

So if you're asking whether this turns campus into a rampaging boiling mass of stressed out, unwashed, scrubs-clad joyless drones, of which I am one, the answer is "yes". Oh, though I frequently do my stressed out unwashed scrubs-clad joyless drone-essness (it's a word now) in my apartment, since the spontaneous resurrection of my computer despite my dumping milk on it, led to a steady migration back from the library, as did the necessity to study group path.

You can also tell it's exam season from the increasing dreariness of collective skype and facebook away messages as they devolve from quirky status updates to various forms of either the more optimistic forms of "We can do this; good luck everyone; only a little more time now" to the less happy varieties of "Please do not attempt to resuscitate my fetid corpse if you find me because it will be the first peace I've gotten since embarking on this misbegotten career choice" and every variant in between. Ah, spring.

It's also telling that now, virtually my only form of social interaction involves debating over which cytokines are involved in which disease pathologies, and my alone time consists of pacing my apartment with micro flashcards like a caged jaguar... if jaguars did flashcards, I mean.

But despite all this, I'm actually feeling okay right now. I'm not sure if it's exam-optimism (if only) or if I'm finally learning to adapt to the general exam stress and adopt a more live and let scantron approach to life. Or maybe it's because I'm heavily in denial. Or it's that for my study session tonight, I randomly ended up dressed like a pirate by accidentally combining a t-shirt with a skull on it with my "crap, my bangs are too long" bandanna, and pirates make me smile, even if my study buddies probably did think I was about to abandon medical school to pillage swag and drink rum.

Come to think of it...