Oh, it's here

With considerably less holy crapping than the first... but time will tell.

I'm taking the Step 2 CK later today, so naturally that will be followed by probably very little helpful information since the USMLE wranglers have me so paranoid that if I say to a friend something like "Whew!! Should have studied more epidemiology!" (that's just an example; I swear I haven't taken it yet!! Don't kill me!), I'm convinced I'll hear the opening to Ride of the Valkyries and black helicopters will swoop down, whisk me away and strange men will waterboard me... or feed me okra or something. And the last thing anyone will ever hear of me will be an email from my clinical coordinator saying "You STILL haven't written your personal statement?"

Bored now...

The problem with being an intrinsic night owl the second you're deprived of an attending who would take you not showing up at a rotation until 3 PM somewhat amiss, is that you start studying late thus your study breaks come around... oh, say, now, rather than at a time where you can spend them doing anything fun.

So my Step 2 CK is in four days, and I'm trying to stay motivated, which is difficult because as noted above, I'm bored. I seem to have weaned myself off the crippling levels of stress that kept my blog so um... colorful... through my early med school days, but losing that overwhelming anxiety is also killing my drive to do things like study straight through for 48 hour blocks. That's probably a good thing. I also live in NYC with an awesome roommate, which means at any given time (even now), I *could* be forgoing this study thing entirely and replacing it with whatever the heck I want. Live music, transvestite burlesque shows, 2 AM cupcake delivery, microbrewery sampling.

But whine whine, that all ends on Tuesday and then I have some relaxation. By relaxation I mean, do a case write up in the hopes of squeezing a last minute publication under the wire, write my personal statement, and upload all my crap to ERAS because I'm a horrendous procrastinator that can only focus on one task at a time. Sometimes not even one.

Oh, though speaking of awesome NYC stuff plus night owl stuff, I'm actually taking my exam starting at 1 PM, because holy crap, that was an option. That means instead of spending the first three hours of the exam feeling shaky, exhausted, and smelling of Red Bull and fear, I can sleep until my normal hour, stroll to the testing site grabbing some tasty lunch treat along the way and be at my best when I'm actually at my best. Granted this will leave me strolling Brooklyn after dark, but for the luxury of sleeping in on board exams day, I will gladly sacrifice a maxed credit card or three to the urban jungle.

What else... I'm still in maximum amounts of love with my phone and it's letting me play with Wikipedia with enough speed and dexterity that I can study in places that aren't "in front of my computer where I'm getting foot drop from having plastic-chair ass".

That seems like a good place to end.

My silly song for the USMLE

I'm gonna try to get this one in my head even though I don't speak French. But I can sympathize

Almost over!!!

Exam... 7 hours... all is well... all is well. Back to sleep. This is the first time I've gone to bed before midnight since I was 8!

Broad spectrum WTF

Okay, so it's been a mood swingy sort of day for me for no increasing reason other than the whole taking the step 1 in a week thing.

So I get my mood leveled off to "could be mistaken for catatonic schizophrenia instead of paranoid schizophrenia and I can only differentiate between the two now because I'm anal retentive and went on a snipe hunt on Wikipedia after seeing it in the book" and so in a full state of passive anhedonia, decided to take the NBME 2, which alleviated my stress by having my frigging internet flip out in the middle of it several times, including having it do "loading next question" for like 10 minutes, and then bringing it to a "can not be viewed" page. That helps the stress out, like hugely. Because nothing calms your nerves like trying to take a mock practical and having the computer bug out.

The Suddenlink people advertise that they have the "most improved" customer service. They never say "best".

So come out post exam having finally gotten the internet to cooperate after 4 hours of chewing cinnamon gum until it dissolves and that cat starts yowling at me because she thinks it'd be awesome to pick now to go into heat.

I had a little breakdown on that because my moods weren't unstable enough, so I get on a whole "I hate my life; I miss the Rock; I need a paying job, dammit" thing for a while, and that improves, so I'm back. For now.

So then on the broad spectrum WTF and speaking of animals in heat (and a tie in to my other WTF article on the weird upswing in bestiality spam mails), I see this article attached to my Yahoo mail, because since I'm studying, it only likes to tell me about the really important news stories.

Now, instead of trying to figure out which of 17 billion cephalosporins I would use for a self-limited infection, I'm stuck trying to figure out what the most fucked up part of this story is, because it's a toss up; it is.

TV Update

I pretty much have two strategies for USMLE relaxation since I can't be trusted out of the house, out in daylight, or anything else that would remove me from the list of impending symptoms of a psychotic breakdown, and they are: Watching Red Dwarf and Watching Scrubs.

Ooh, the excitement. My other "break" consists of the constant rollercoaster of emotion that is USMLE World, which is a high yield question bank that has an extremely steady pimp hand.

What I'm learning from my tv habits (other than that I'm a loser) is that I really really love Red Dwarf... I know I've mentioned this, but I've watched it enough that it's actually comforting. Like in 2nd term (when I was also crazy), I'm freaking using it to go to sleep, like children would use a 1980s British sci fi themed blankie. I think it's the accents, and the wish fulfillment that is Lister, since he's an unwashed curry-stuffed space bum, which is kind of what I want to do with my life right now.

Other thing I'm learning... I know she's like the "smart sexy doctor type", but the more Scrubs I watch, the more I'm really really hating Elliot Reid. Like more than 13 from House, because unlike 13 she's often likable (and hasn't killed anyone's dog), and then mixes that up with being a female-stereotyped man-chewing bitch for no reason while remaining a 'heroine'. Gods. I don't try to be a self-hating female-doctor-archetype uh.. hater, but Scrubs and House make it very very difficult. I like *actual* female doctors just fine.

So that's my life. Oh, and Happy Saint Patrick's Day. Join me in a little over a week when I deliberately and systematically destroy every brain cell I've hypertrophied since January. Yeeeeahhh!

Oh yeah, doom date on March 27th. I'm so happy it's going to be over with, I'm forgetting to panic. Oh wait, I'm not... but I have a doctor bear Dave sent me as moral support, so it sits on my keyboard when I do USMLEWorld.

The dragon looks smaller from here

So on excellent advice, I did a run to the test center, since it's a little over an hour away, though I didn't time it on traffic yet, since my sleep schedule's been completely jacked up...

Basically, after two years of being told this is the most important test ever, and trying to memorize books and tests full of pages, I was picturing my prometric center as being a large, probably marble elevated Parthenon style temple up on a hill, no doubt guarded by various beasts, and before you got in the door, a huge sphinx with the face of the path director at SGU would force you to read a CBC in 15 seconds, and if you got a single value wrong, it would deny you entrance and then kick you in the stomach (or if you're male, the crotch) until you vomited blood.

This would then be followed by going into the facility, which would probably sport some type of thick vapor, where I'd be strip searched, rinsed off with a fire hose, and tossed into a room naked with 50 students, all of whom were straight A students at Harvard, but despite that, half of them would be huddled up in the fetal position crying, and the other half would have smuggled in ipods blasting audible soca music while flicking through the questions in an hour before sauntering out shouting "nailed it!"

I would log onto a system that would stream values matrix style, and then crash windows style, putting up a blue screen of death for 8 hours that no one would fix, and then at the end, it would bring up a giant flashing "you failed, ha ha, loser" sign.

Ya know, or something like that. If I made it past the sphinx.

What I was not expecting was a tiny unassuming little office space that looks exactly like the office of Kelly Services where I took my typing test so I could qualify as a secretary. Well, not a real secretary. A temp secretary. And a single janitor that just gave me a half nod and a smile while I peered in the windows looking for the Rottweilers. And it looks like there's very little space in there, so conceivably I won't be taking the exam with a bunch of people. At the very least, I'd assumed I'd be crammed into a high school desk with a ton of shuffling people like I did for the MCAT. Now my main concern (besides the whole failing and having to flee the country thing) is that someone will have their car alarm go off in the parking lot.

And then I got curry. Because facing fears with curry is a good way to overcome them. Next stop, the cockroach farm! Then the circus!

On the way home, a little path lecture on the ipod through the speakers (otherwise known as the most expensive part of my car, which has a Kelly bluebook of like, five dollars now, which caused me to scream *one* of the dorkiest things I've said, which is "A pox on the damned A-a gradient and all its manifestations".

Seriously, pulmonary phys? Hate you SO MUCH. SO much.

But now, I'm headed to bed so I can get a long day of reupping my blood pressure tomorrow. And for a change, before 9 am! Woohoo!

USMLE hypertensive crisis time...

Though probably not as much as in a couple of weeks.

Because I firmly believe that procrastination will cause all problems to eventually resolve themselves, I waited until now to schedule my appointment for the USMLE, which will commence on March 27th. As I discovered that my testing site is available at the right time AND that there's a site only an hour and a half from me rather than the three hours I was initially expecting, this all seems like good stuff, but somehow hitting the "Confirm" button made it all seem very very real.

So I'm torn between the relief that it's all going to be over with along with a more acute version of the stress I felt when I was about to take off for Grenada the first time, only that time, my entire future wasn't determined by how well I can perform for 8 hours.

Ulp.

Weird accomplishments

A lot of people measure accomplishment in terms of, like, saving kids, annual salary, number of prostitutes killed in Grand Theft Auto (okay, that was me when I was unemployed; don't judge me), etc, but my whole self worth lately has been tied up in A) How many USMLE World questions I can do without inciting a panic attack and B) How many pages of First Aid I can clear in a day.

So this leaves me feeling even dorkier than usual (and I've been to a science fiction convention, so I'm an expert) because at the end of the day, I will either say things like "No, I cannot possibly afford to take a shower tonight/tomorrow; I have to catch up. I only did 4 pages today" or "YEAH! 14 PAGES!!! Rock out!! I've earned myself a 15 minute break to grab some frigging Taco Bell!"

Yeah... but I'm also learning stuff... stuff I should have known a long time ago. Primary sclerosing cholangitis can cause secondary biliary cirrhosis. Everything that gives you cirrhosis can give you cancer. All the time in the world you lovingly spend memorizing tumors anywhere along the bile pathways is useless because they all kill you within 6 months and have obnoxiously long names terminal patients probably aren't going to be all that interested in. Cancer drugs, speaking of which, are still completely forgettable, even though I know I went over the Vincristine flashcard fifty billion times in pharm, I still don't remember that it stops cell division in uh... (checks notes) the M phase. Oh, and I REALLY should have cracked my First Aid in basic sciences rather than just occasionally during pathophys. That thing's actually useful.

Besides the whole "self worth as determined by numbers in First Aid" thing, I also am relearning that my mental state is based completely on how much sleep I do or don't get. I've also bypassed the phase of diagnosing myself and others with psych conditions (as is common third term and the psych part of pathophys) and have concluded that it doesn't matter so long as the voices aren't actively telling you to kill someone whose death would attract immediate police attention.

And so forth.

Oh, 50,000 hits! Rock on! And thank you!

What else?

Oh, I'm trying to figure out what song I want stuck in my head for the USMLE. I've figured out that second guessing myself and panic are my main foes on tests and that my subconscious, unlike my conscious, knows what it's doing, so my best scores in med school, looking back, were those for which I had songs stuck in my head, so was highly distracted. The tests I did the worst on (except nutrition) were those for which I'd built myself into such a panic that I just melted down at the first sign of Alpha Fetoprotein.

Highest score in path was accompanied by these songs (really profane language warning).

Best in pathophys accompanied by some help from the Amateur Transplants, though none of that medical stuff, since that would be way too relevant (really profane language warning; seriously, "C" word and everything). Weirdly, since I've only been to London once, I don't even have a reason to be mad at the tube, but there ya go.

Seriously, during those tests, I was literally "la la la ing" in my head even though the tests were extremely freaking difficult, to a point where my main focus had to be on NOT singing the stuff out loud. For so many reasons.

I'd been suspecting, based on a few of these experiences, that my active mind shares a few characteristics while my subconscious does all the real work. I've been confirming this on USMLE World, which is a question database whose 'easy' questions read like "Unified Field Theory will rely on _____". When I'm distracted and hit first guess, it usually goes well. However, if a question is stressful and I feel like I SHOULD know it, rather than going with the option that my subconscious picked after 10 seconds, my active mind will attack it with the violence of a sci fi geek nitpicking the physics of the Death Star, go over the entire lexicon of medical knowledge I've ever been exposed to in all permutations and, without fail, spend 6 minutes picking the wrong answer.

Then, harried by all the fuss of subconsciously knowing I chose the wrong answer, that active mind will hang out and panic for the rest of whatever test I'm taking, count seconds, and gradually mess everything up for the rest including stuff I've known since the 7th grade, leaving me in a shame spiral.

There's an upside. This focused supposedly "smart" mind is REALLY REALLY easily distracted by goofy music and profanity. Cartoons optional but bonus. So if I sing to it, it'll leave my subconscious alone to do what it does.

So now I need to find something basic, profane, hopefully animated, and capable of occupying me for 7 hours. Search is on.

More specialty choices

This pains me to say, but the more I study it, the more I like pathology. Like a lot. Like view the slide review sessions like I'm playing frigging jeopardy and get inappropriately excited over getting stuff right. Because there are few things dorkier than pumping my fist in the air yelling "Reed Steinberg cells!! Who is your f'ing daddy?" And no, it doesn't make sense. I've mentioned I'm cooped up, right? And wasn't really stable to begin with? Cool.

On the study update, since I've moved onto systems, I finished off cardio and finally have a half-assed grasp of the drugs, even the classes of antiarrhythmics, which for some reason I need to differentiate despite most of them sharing the feature of "causes the problem they're supposed to treat along with some hideous bonus side effects". But I'm finally getting comfortable with the physiology of the heart, which I was really bad at a year and a half ago, and got so paranoid about it that I beat it to death in physio, path, and pathophys, and now again. I'm getting to where I can draw out Wiggers diagrams and length-tension curves and understand them fully, which is one of those cool skills that has very little practical application. Which is sort of a theme in my life. Seriously, ask me about Red Dwarf.

I reviewed endocrine because it's high yield, and I was in an eye chart kind of mood. Tacked reproduction onto the end of it, which despite focusing on nearly the same mechanisms, makes me want to claw my eyes out, and also features the one area of pathology I don't especially like due to the tendency of the ovary to get seventeen billion tumors that all present exactly the same way but derive from different cells that I need to know about, including what they look like when they're normal, which digs back into a deep and inexplicable dislike of the female reproductive system. Oh, and I finally know breast anatomy (thanks Netter!), which made breast pathology a whole hell of a lot easier, since by the time I got to that part of path, I was like "ductolobular..., screw it, I'm studying renal again". Which turned out to be a wise move for the exam. 1 breast question. 40 kidney questions. Booyah.

In re-review, I also finally learned that during kidney transplants, they leave the old defunct ones in and just shove the new one in the front because it's easier to get to. This falls under my description of awesome, right up there with one of the few things I do find interesting in female reproductive systems, which is that you can get ovarian tissue to still ovulate even if you stick it in someone's arm (a female someone). Something about putting organs where organs don't normally go steps up my interest. And it's pronounced "Franken-STEEN".

Oh, reviewing reproduction also reminded me of the fifteen thousand reasons not to have a kid unless you get it off Ebay. Pregnancy is frightening. The only things that make it more frightening are med school or reading "What to Expect when you're Expecting", which for some reason, they recommend to pregnant women, because being in abject terror for 9 months is good for you when your body is already maxed out.

And now... uh, since I'm the only one on the east coast not getting snow, here's a picture of Grenada.

High WTF levels

Okay, I realize that waxing on about getting spam on web-based emails is a sort of late 90s complaint that's getting as dated as comedians referencing crappy airline food, but lately, my spam filters have been failing spectacularly, because I've somehow wound up on someone's "paraphilias for people that have become bored by the internet's normal range of WTF" mailing list.

I'm guessing/hoping that googling "zoonotic microbial infections" is the way that I've ended up on the radar of someone who would send me an email with a subject heading "extreme cat rape" (I swear to Random Chance I'm not making that up), and it is not an actual website depicting such (my faith in humanity requires me to believe that) and instead is a helpful person's one line answer to the question "how in the world would you ever contract *that* disease?" which, when you're studying for the USMLE, is a question that comes up more than you'd think.

Anyway, that's my random topic update since this predominance of disgusting subject headings is sullying the normal joy I receive at checking my email 600 times a day to see if there's any Facebook updates that could delay returning to my books by 17 seconds.

Speaking of studying, I've moved on from zoonotic infections onto the entire physiology, pathology, and pharmacology of the heart. Basically, there's tons and tons of channels, a lot of lines that move around, and if those lines move too much, you die suddenly and violently. The end.

Happy belated Jason Voorhies Day

And no, haven't seen the remake yet.

I drove to Catawba yesterday to see my good friend Krash and get some much needed study materials. Sadly what would have turned out to be a nice lunch of Chinese food was turned on its head when I decided to unexpectedly get ill, a steady state which continues, so I'm going to be passively studying videos while lying on my bed feeling sorry for myself.

That state also carried over to dropping by Winston Salem to see my dad, whom I'd promised a nice dinner at Nawab's Indian cuisine. The thought of stuffing my fatigued, overdriven, congested body full of delicious curry; however, wasn't to be, so we headed to Wendy's so I could bring some nice safe chicken nuggets back to his place. But he did get to see my pretty artwork of the HIV virus, since I've taken to drawing stuff that's confused me since first term, so I have quite the notebook put together.

Then it was a drive home coupled with a massive crackdown, giant police wagon and lane shut down and full of police cards drunk check. Thank goodness I finally found my driver's license (in my wallet where it has been glued to the back of my insurance card, thus I didn't find it for six freaking months, figured I'd dropped it in Europe, and only found it when I was pulling out my insurance card to see if they'd cover my physical).

Then I got home and discovered my awesome boyfriend, despite being in Grenada, had arranged to have flowers and a card sent to me for J-VD, oh, okay, just VDay. I generally hate this Hallmark-contrived holiday (yes, and Thanksgiving; I'm a grinch), so why did the sight of flowers and a card make me go all croonie and cooey? What can I say? It was thoughtful; they're pretty, and I miss the guy like crazy. Sniff. Naturally being a complete emotional cripple, I sent him a facebook hockey mask for Friday the 13th...

Day 133: Today, Nothing Happened

It's hard to blog about studying. It's hard to blog about being locked inside studying.

Um... I had my favorite teacher like, ever, die, so that's sucktastic.

I took my day off cleaning out the storeroom and losing at mini golf. So that was cool.

I've been studying immunology and finally feel like I have a grasp on it, since it's one of the less tangible subjects taught in SGU and the classes for it are really what kicked off my "never attend lecture again" rule. Hooray Chediak Higashi syndrome.

Now, I'm doing preliminary pathology, which is cool since I actually like the subject. I'm trying to work out how exactly I'm going to work in anatomy since I've let it go so many times that now it's a "needs work" area, but it's also somewhat low yield for the boards, so I'm trying to find a happy medium.

So... fascinating? Not really...

Steampunk Taxidermy

Hallo all!

After my brain imploded from an hour and a half of reviewing antivirals. "Reviewing" means "seeing for the first time ever because you skipped those lectures in both micro and pharm because the names had a minimum of five syllables, a mishmash of Qs and Zs, and all end in 'vir'. Damn you, drug companies!), I got to Stumbling as my break, which like all random-find internet engines, introduces you to a subsubniche of weird just when you thought you'd grown jaded from every bizarre fetish Japan had to offer. And there's a lot of them!

As a result of my newfound tour into sub-subcultures, I discovered my new "if I wash out of medicine career": steampunk taxidermist!

I mentally ventured into being an Alaskan crab fisherwoman because I like the ocean and they make serious bank, but the last election left me less enamored with Alaska, plus I get seasick and am a giant chicken. Plus, living in the Caribbean has destroyed my years of nerve-numbing ice skating talent, so now I shiver when there's a cool breeze. I'm told all of these traits would affect my earning potential as an Alaskan crabfisherwoman. So that's out.

I've also played with being a Tahitian pearl diver, but I've kind of had my fill of living on small islands for a while, and see above about being a green-gill coward. So probably not. Oh, and I'm not wild about pearls.

But with steampunk taxidermy, using only the family dog and parts from a rusted out car engine, you can be a master.

I was uncertain about what "steampunk" was, since Grenada doesn't exactly have a huge variety of subcultures, I'm guessing due to the small population, huge price of importing anything, and the climate's proclivity to make wearing anything more interesting than "shorts and a t-shirt, possibly not the t-shirt" ill advised.

Fortunately, google prevailed:



For some reason, probably due to intense bouts of cabin fever wrapped insomnia, I find this all absolutely fascinating.

So what's new? Uhhh... let's see... I started having sleep problems again, though fortunately not psycho ones, which have been alleviated by a nice doctor in Aurora as a bonus to my mandatory physical/titers/TB test/anal probe (just kidding, or AM I?? yeah, I am... maybe)/questionnaire that the school makes us do so they won't be releasing foam-dripping consumptive suicidal typhoid marys on the unsuspecting patient population. Nope, just scared, book-smart, experience-dumb twelve-thumbed medical students. Mwa ha ha ha.

Anyway, Aurora is a town which is dropped in the middle of scenic nothingness, thus I was confused as to *why* there is a town there, until the phlebotomist informed me that there's a phosphorus mine where they dig up tons and tons of fossils.

So my dork-radar fully turned on, and as I jabbered about bones, she directed me back to the nurse who had done my vitals who has an extremely extensive fossil collection, which she gently explained to me in idiot mode because as an anthro major, I am to her what archeologists are to physical anthro people. "Oh... you like NEW stuff. Well...", and she showed me all the pictures and a few of the real deal that she has at work, AND gave me a sand tiger shark tooth to make into a necklace.

Yeah, so I'll definitely be going back to Aurora. Nice! Oh, and they were all very colleague professional cool, with the doc (who had actually taken the USMLE versus the one I went to before who apparently got certed back in the days of state boards, and genuinely asked "well, why would you be stressed about taking that?"), who gave me the time honored advice: "After you take the test, you'll feel like you failed, so try to stay away from sharp objects".

Hmm, expert medical care, short wait times, fossil museum adjacent, and appreciative of irony? Oh, Aurora.

Oh, but speaking of that whole make you or break you test, what have I been doing? I'm still embedded in micro, but on the last night of it, FINALLY, which has honestly been hanging on me for so long that I'm looking forward to immuno. I've been doing USMLE World practice questions, and am finally getting good at the micro area, since apparently phoning it in during fourth term to focus on path didn't really score me a lot on the "long term recall" scale. Whoda thought?

That, and of course, googling "steampunk". Cuz you gotta prioritize.

Remember kids, if I don't pass the boards, come right back here for your own modded out family pet. The longtime readers will get a half off special.

Comedic hiatus

Woo hoo! Day off! Due to skipping last week's day off and being really really industrious studying my ass off, this puts me (drumroll) only a week behind schedule! Yee ha!!

So as I'm off to bed at this delicate hour, I leave you with this hilarious description someone wrote who was apparently spying on me while I was in college, which carries over some of its nasty habits to USMLE study:

Enjoy.

Finally!

Finished my first pass at biochem!



As many of you may know, biochem has been the beast that's haunted me since I got into medical school and snapped on my alpha 1 receptors so completely that I thought I was going to have a stroke. After sacrificing all of embryo and half of anatomy to it in first term, plus the entirety of my first summer, I figured it'd just be a few days to get it all back into my head since I'd gone over it so thoroughly, leaving me more time for pharm, which I didn't bother to be too freaked out about since it was last term and I had senioritis, which translates to me knowing way less about drugs than a run-of-the-mill crackhead

So twelve days later...

In my defense, we had that whole country-changing, finally got an articulate man in office, tear-up, comin' back to America, history-making presidential thing, so after promising myself I'd only watch the meat of it as a compromise (similar to what I promised myself on election night with similar consequences) and instead stayed glued to the tv for two days and made up for my truancy by doing about twenty-five minutes of videos.

Wedged around that though, I've actually been studying my ass off, glued to my desk, recreation consisting of an episode of Scrubs in the evening to help me as I go to sleep, a once-a-week House episode (both count as studying) and occasional Daily Shows when I'm willing to watch them while on a fitness glider thing.

All this productivity makes me feel ill... no beach, no sangria, no boyfriend, no walks to the point.

Oh, though it freaking snowed on inauguration day. Which is completely awesome, particularly since I'm in an area that never gets snow.

In celebration of the end of biochem, and a gradual discomfort that I was avoiding taking the first NBME practice exam because I was worried about my study methods so far, since I'm kind of piecing together study techniques out of spare parts, I coughed up 45$ of money I don't have to take the NMBE, which bought me four hours of realizing I really need to learn what theophylline does (four questions! Something to do with asthma), and that for the time being, it projects me as being okay.

And I apparently overkilled in biochem. I got an asterisk and no bar in that one, which put me off the charts, yet dipped down to borderline in nutrition, a class I generally write off, don't study, and then predictably do badly in, yet remain surprised every time it happens. Probably because I still think arachidonic acid is a horror movie about spiders. That shoot acid out of their... uh... I'm not too up on spider anatomy either. Eyes. Let's go with eyes.

So now I'm onto embryo (after a post-NBME celebratory Warcraft hit; since I don't know anyone in New Bern, I drown my sorrows by murdering helpless cartoon animals), complete with finally breaking out the colored pencils and markers and doing a full scale mock up of the damned fetal circulation because I never really bothered to learn it and just decided to keep getting ductus venosus questions wrong since I figured no one in their right mind would ever trust me with a baby anyway. But now I know what a ductus venosus does!

They're really getting specific these days

"in bed"

Don't sue me

Sigh... yeah I will.

Back to the books...

Since I'm kind of flying blind on this whole USMLE thing, and don't have the crutch of having SGU notes to direct me toward a loose idea of the exam questions, and don't have the history of lecture attendance to make a review course feasible, I'm starting off by borrowing EXTREMELY heavily from Topher's suggestions (anyone who wants to go to SGU, do well in school, ace the USMLE, and transfer out of SGU should head right over there, by the way) at least in the beginning.

I'm on day one, but I'm feeling WAY better for having a tentative plan. I guess that's why 99% of people that have passed it, written books on it, or have heard of it, recommend having a schedule. Hey, never too late to start, right? I'm using the First Aid as a guide to what else to review, and am starting off with behavioral, epidemiology, and statistics so I can be eased into the meat with not only the beginning of the First Aid, but also with the mindset I had in third term, which was "whew, that's way less suicide-inducing than the last year". I'm using the BRS Behavioral Science book to supplement this study, and so far, it seems pretty good, and is adding in a few points the First Aid left out that still seemed important.

I'm also going to try to follow the First Aid book's format of being system oriented since I think it'll help me link key ideas, as I started to do in pathophysiology. It also may be the only chance in hell I have of learning any concept related to dermatology, since I've been steadfastly avoiding it as filler in every class where it came up, therefore the only thing I know about the skin is that it tends to hurt a lot when it's removed.

In the meantime, I'm trying to augment my studying with exercise and a healthier diet, since this long haul is going to require my not feeling like crap for the duration so that I have a hope of focusing my attention for longer than three seconds.

In short, I figure I've got close to 9 weeks to remake myself into a completely different person: specifically one that's not a cynical cheese-fed ADD slacker. anyone want to play odds on my chances?

A scary new year

But an exciting one.

Winding down to when I stop my shameless recreating, playstation 2ing, warcrafting, beading, and so forth, dive headfirst into a slew of books, notes, advice, mp3s, and videos, and cram like I've never crammed before.

Krash and I had a conversation about whether medical school can be crammed, and the answer is yes... kind of. Cramming, as she pointed out, starts earlier in medical school, so what was a 36 hour coffee-addled stress fest in college, in medical school, lasts two weeks. But does that mean it's not crammable? Ask most of the people who passed micro whether medical school is crammable. Sometimes. Kind of. If you plan it right.

So the USMLE kind of proves the ultimate cram session for terminal procrastinators like me. 7-9 weeks in which I must recapitulate the entirety of my basic sciences, and then be tested on them against a national scale, meaning if the school dropped the teaching ball on genetics one year, gotta fix it. If I decided biochem was way more important than embryology and as such, COMPLETELY blew off the later for the entirety of the final exam, counting on my anatomy to coast me through, now's the time to pay in blood by having to learn, pretty much for the first time, the entire formation of the human nervous system. Didn't read the antivirals in pharmacology because you didn't get to that packet in time, and it was only 5 questions on the second midterm in a curved class? Ha ha sucka, time to learn it now. Only the stakes are higher.

So how am I going to study... uhhh... videos, Goljan lectures, a mishmash of review books, particularly those from which I could not be separated during basic sciences (BRS physio and Lippincott biochem, I'm looking in your direction), and a possibly misguided dependence on the First Aid. Hopefully that'll work out since I decided that given my attendance history in lecture over basic sciences, signing up for a 4000 dollar class in the hopes I would resurrect as a completely different person and cheerfully skip off to 8 hours of high yield lecture beginning at the crack of Starbucks opening was a complete pipe dream.

Time will tell.

On the plus side, I'm in a quiet pretty town with some good walking areas, which will facilitate being jumpy by allowing me to listen to lectures on my ipod, I have my own room with a set up study center, and even my own printer! After two years in Grenada, I've come to view having my own printer like most people view getting their first car.

My room has a view of the river from one side, and city hall from the other, which is one of those old class small town brick models with colored lights on the clock tower. It's very nice.

And since it's America, it's also got a Walmart (fortunately NOT in view of my window) where I can buy more printer cartridges, paper, and chex mix at 11 PM. Or grab fast food at 3 AM. Awesome.

Sooo, my Dad's been here since right near Christmas, and surprisingly, has enjoyed watching me play God of War while taking out my frustrations for having it take 90 minutes for me to kill a hydra by having my avatar destroy inanimate objects. And yes, I'm immature.

I spent New Year's in Carolina Beach, since I refused to spend the evening glued to the Times Square feed again, and I'm hoping to be IN Times Square (for the first, and probably last, time) next year. Carolina Beach was a pretty cool time though. We watched the lighted beach ball drop from the ladder on a fire engine (small town), a surprisingly impressive display of fireworks over the pier, and best yet, found a honky tonk bar right near the water that even featured the requisite jukebox featuring a disproportionate ratio of Journey and old time Aerosmith. Don't ask. Oh, and I'll say it, to anyone who complains about Grenadian brews, Budweiser is still 10 times worse than Carib.

Drove dad back over to Winston Salem yesterday, stopping by Greensboro to retrieve some of my textbooks from Krash, who magnanimously took about 20 pounds of them into her luggage when I realized that my estimations of my bag weight was hideously optimistic. So I've been reunited with my Netters, and there was much rejoicing. It was also weird/cool to see someone from the Rock in the real world, since I still am carrying this sort of sadness about wondering which people from Grenada I'm going to get to ever see again.

Needed a Nawab's curry fix in Winston Salem. Holy crap, that stuff is good. I thought Grenada had ruined my taste for anything remotely resembling Indian food, but I was wrong. Now I have to spend the next three months not only studying, but getting rid of the results of my beer, meat, wine, ethnic food, fast food vaccum impression. Gods.

Good luck to all you other exam takers, and good luck to all you SGUers heading back soon!