Still not really sinking in

Pharm exam tomorrow. That's my last exam of basic sciences.

Then I go home to the USA, study for the biggest exam ever dreamed up in the nightmares of mankind, and then, go to Brooklyn to be a 'real' med student, in that I get to touch patients... like litigious US patients. Grenadian patients have been oddly unconcerned with the whole thing, and at most, seem amused by us. "Sure, go ahead, crowd of 8 frightened inexperienced students. Auscultate my scrotum even though you really obviously don't know what you're doing, and since there's a loop of bowel IN my scrotum, it's probably going to be uncomfortable. Not like I'm doing anything else."

But I digress...

Last exam of basic sciences. Then US. No more Grenada. No more Bananas. No more Grand Anse. No more "Hey beautiful!! Wanna take a ride?" No more sunset point. No more Carib. No more wandering onto campus and knowing half the people around with the view of the sea on both sides. No more "Hello Dear!!" from Mrs. Patel. No more gut-crushing guilt by cheating on Mrs. Patel by buying Indian food from the couple across the bus stop from her because they have meat dishes. No more any of that.

It's very very odd. People's reactions are weird. I keep getting congratulated for stuff... on 'getting out', on 'making it through', on 'going home', on getting Brooklyn. On taking the second to last exam, on finishing pathophys... and I keep feeling like "any second now, this is going to sink in".

But it isn't. I sold my crock pot and my blender. I can't go to Angel Falls right now because they can get me TO Venezuela, but not back, and while what I've seen of the country, I love, spending Christmas there instead of with my family isn't on my to-do list, so I'm slating it for next year (fingers crossed, no embargo!).

So I take the exam tomorrow, and then I have a week to pack everything up, take down the sheets and aluminum foil protecting my room from any form of UV radiation, and hang at the beach, and say goodbye, as about half the people I know leave the island forever, and I have to leave the other half behind. But then I go to New Bern, which is beautiful, and I get to see my family, and winter, and all that. No more administration for a while.

I get moments where the excitement starts to seep through. I went to the point with Lori yesterday because we were both procrastinating, and we were talking about places we were going to go in Brooklyn, and there was this rising excited fluttering. I started talking to her about google-earthing New Bern, and how the apartment is across from a bed and breakfast and down the street from a lobster deli, and you can see the river from the window, and it's in walking distance to the beautiful old city center, and I was talking faster and got excited again.

And then we lay on our backs at the point as the sun set and the stars came out (I know it's cheesy, but it's awesome in real life) and just chatted, and the occasional sailboat shadow would pass by. She and I talked about getting all our diving in after exams, the champagne sendoff Sej arranged and how excited we are about all of it, and I felt a fluttering of excitement about that too, of doing those things, not of leaving it.

Thus the utter ambivalence I've been facing this term, which has extended to almost every area (such as liking pathophys, hating how it's run, though to their credit after the whole showdown thing, everything improved dramatically, and hating pharm but liking how it's run), so arrrggghhhh.

Oh, speaking of pathophys. I was unable to work up a suitable amount of stress for the final exam, largely because this term and this week, I'm continuing the senioritis trend to an extreme, but while I can't comment on the fairness of the dermatology section since I did virtually *nothing* to prepare for it, including reading the lecture notes, it was actually a pretty fair exam.

More to the point, it went with a more "first order/second order question" approach. While I'm not saying 5th-10th order questions are unfair, and that'll certainly be the board questions, thinking through those sorts of questions also tend to break my brain pathways and leave me so exhausted for the remainder that I can't do much, which usually spells bad news for whatever exam is second.

Now granted, I've been using the spare brain cells allowed by the last exam to then subsequently kill them with television and facebook, but at least now I have no excuse for my utter ignorance of pharm.

So somewhere around a week and change before I'm gone...