What are books?

Well, the Thanksgiving holiday is over, and am totally back into school. With a whole histology class to fit into just three and a half weeks, I don't really have a choice but to hit the books with a vengeance. Which is hard to do after a four day weekend. But I guess it happened today.
I say I guess it happened, because I got the the end of my studying tonight (about 15 minutes ago), and come to think of it, I can't really say one thing that I know for sure that I learned today. So in some respects it feels like a wasted day. Of course, I'm pretty sure that studying was still worthwhile, but it just didn't feel as productive as it could have been. But that's how it goes I guess. As long as I learn what I need to know, everything will be fine.

I don't have a whole lot to write, but I did take a walk in Merry Lea while I was at the lake, and I took these pictures.

Well, the results are in! I was just checking out the "Compare People" application on Facebook (Shut up, you know you've looked at it too, OR you're about to), and I am ranked 74th in the "rather hang out with for a day" category. However, I'm ranked 6th in the "rather get stuck in handcuffs with" category. So what you're saying is, you wouldn't want to be with me of your own accord, BUT if you were HANDCUFFED to me, that would be ok. I suppose that makes sense.
Of course, its not all bad news. I got the silver in being "more well-mannered", and "braver".

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and also, my family has left for California. I am still here at the lake until tomorrow though. Last night, me, Brad, and Chris were on our way to go bowling when someone remembered that our friend Andrew (A. Riddy if you're in the know. Except I think now we have to just call him "Riddy") was in Fort Wayne for the weekend. So we gave him a call, and he came with us. I hadn't seen that guy in a few years. It seems like he's doing pretty well, at least, he's doing what he wants to be doing I guess.
So obviously the weekend has been a welcome break from studying. Not having class and also not having pages and pages of text to read is a weird feeling. But, not a bad thing, at least for a few days.

Tranquilo...

So, in regards to my last posting on here (just a few hours ago)...

I was clearly overreacting a little bit... I'm not sure what came over me. But, after talking to some of my calmer classmates (who remarked that several in our class were kind of being ridiculous), I think I have come to see that, hey, its not that big of deal. So what if we don't have EVERYTHING spelled out right away. It's gonna be fine, and also, the school brought in this professor all the way from Fort Wayne because he's supposed to be good at what he does. He probably doesn't really WANT to be here (i.e. did he have a choice?), so we should probably cut him a little bit of slack.

Even if none of that was true, we should probably cut him a little slack, or at least be a little bit more respectful, just because he's our teacher, and he knows more than us. Even for selfish reasons: he's gonna be giving us our grades...

So yeah, I think I've learned a life lesson today. And that is, RELAX. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? I fail one test? Already happened, but I'm still here, and I don't even have bad grades. And even if I did, how bad would that be? (As long as I'm doing my best, that is).

Just in case you were wondering, no drugs were taken during the writing of this post... all natural "seeing the light". Can I count tranquility as part of my Self-Care Competency #4?

Transition

So, a lot has happened since my last post. Most notably is the fact that today was the first day of another 'block'. What that means is that another class is over! Which is great. I'm pretty sure that I passed, cause I think I would have had to get about a 20 percent on the final to fail. I guess that is a possibility, but really only if all of biochemistry got revised overnight. And since I think they would have bothered to tell us that (or maybe I would have seen something about it on the internet), I don't think that that happened.
Anyway, I started histology today. For those who don't know, histology is the study of tissues. And it is EXCITING! Just kidding, its really not that exciting. It involves looking a microscope slides, pictures of microscope slides, and theoretically it involves making microscope slides. But we don't get to make any microscope slides. Because this is medical school so ^obviously^ we don't need to know how to do that...
The teacher for the class is not from South Bend. They had to bring in somebody from Fort Wayne because for some reason (that nobody will talk about...I wonder why?) the old histology teacher "resigned" last year. Anyway, so far the class is kind of ridiculous. The guy came in, didn't tell us his name, didn't give us a syllabus or anything like that, started talking about his "laser disc" that has all of these pictures on it, and then launches right into lecture. So, at that point, I didn't know his name, what we were doing, or really anything that you might want to know before you start a class. So, great day... We did finally find out what book we're using, and that we do, in fact need it. I guess I should amend that. I finally found out what book we're using. Our class representatives found out awhile ago, and went over to the Notre Dame bookstore to make sure that they would order it so they had it when we were all looking for it.
Guess what? They didn't have it. So we have ordered it off of Amazon.com, and supposedly it will be here tomorrow. We'll see.
Good times. On the positive side of life, this is only a 3 day week, we have our first intramural basketball game tonight, and we had this speaker come in at noon today who is a general trauma surgeon, and got me convinced that I want to be a general trauma surgeon (of course I have thought that after every speaker they've have come in...)

Down, Set, Hike!

I had a big test today. Actually, I don't know how big it was. It was one of 4 for my class. I don't know, maybe it actually was a big deal. I guess its possible I'm just rationalizing because I didn't do all that great on it... Maybe. But of course, I studied like crazy for it. In fact, I don't know what I would have done differently to try to learn the material in the time that I was given. There was just a lot there. Who knows.
But hopefully I did "good enough". I don't know if you all have heard of it or not, but Positive Psychologists talk about something called "satisficing", which means doing "good enough" instead of "maximizing"--doing as good as is humanly possible. They will tell you that you will probably be happier if you try to just do good enough more of the time than if you try to do the absolute best all of the time. Of course that just means lowering your standards, but who cares. If it's good enough, its good enough. And if you really need to do something REALLY well, then do it. Just don't do it out of habit. Because "good enough" is, in fact, good enough. If it wasn't you would call it NOT GOOD ENOUGH. But you don't.
Anyway, earlier today, we had a short demonstration on how to deliver babies by the St. Joseph residency program. Which basically amounted to free lunch, and residents trying to show all 30 of us at the medical school how to do it using 2 mannequins all at the same time. I guess you just catch. Actually, all I learned from that was "O-A = Okay!". Which kind of sounds cool if you say it, even if you had no idea what it meant... Anyway, it was pretty crazy. But you can't argue with free lunch and sweet mnemonics.

Well, that's about all I got. Enjoy Wednesday, the Day of Wednes. Possibly the Day of Wetness if it rains again. Or the Day of Witness of the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your house.

Just to be up front, this is me procrastinating. I have a test tomorrow morning, and I really should be studying. I will, I'm just taking a break.
As it turns out, I don't know what I need to for the test. We had a "TBL" today, which means a Team Based Learning session, over some of the stuff that we're gonna be tested over. Wow. That was hard. I guess I didn't realize just how much I hadn't learned yet. A TBL basically goes like this: we take a quiz by ourselves. Then we take the same quiz in our "TBL Group". After that, we do "Application" questions. We have questions that we have to answer, and then we have to tell the whole class what our group got for an answer.
It probably sounds like a great idea. Its not. Basically, we get asked questions that are pretty open ended, and have to pick a multiple choice answer. Then, we have to hold up a little card saying what answer we chose, and then (like pretty much always happens) when my group picks the answer that no one else chose, the rest of the class (who at this point is convinced they're better than us) laughs at us, and we have to explain why we chose the answer we did. Well, we aren't always wrong. But we are usually the team with the "different" answer. Well, today, we had a different answer from all the other groups, and my group was all like "aw, we got it wrong" before we knew what the real answer was. So I said, "hey, that doesn't mean we necessarily got the wrong answer." Which is true. Regardless somebody from the other group was like, "yes it does". That really got me.
Good times.

Another day in the life...

Where to begin? Friday was a decent day. I realize that now it is actually Saturday, but close enough. Let me give you just a snapshot of today, and realize that this is pretty much the story for the past couple of weeks. It goes like this: Thursday night, I set ALL 3 of my alarms to go off at 7am (phone), 7:15 (radio), and 7:30 (more phone). This was at about 1:30am. So it was a short night. I woke up to my first alarm. Went back to sleep until the second one. Changed the third on to go off at 7:40. finally get up at 7:40. Now realize that class starts at 8. So I had 20 minutes to get up, get ready, find everything, get out to the car, scrape the ice off of it, and drive to school before class started. But, lo and behold I made it there just at 8:00. I looked at my clock, and it said exactly 8. So yeah, the point is, I was tired.
I got through the lecture time for the day (4 hours), and then it was time for lunch, and more studies afterwards. Ironically, I actually tried to take a nap when I cam home for lunch, but I couldn't sleep. Possibly all of the coffee that got me thru lecture had something to do with it.
So I spent the majority of the afternoon and evening and night at school reading about biochemistry. I also was introduced to some drink from Starbuck's called, say, Cafe Americano or Late Americano, or something "Americano". Supposedly it had a lot of caffeine in it. I believe it. But it helped me study for a while. They say that caffeine stimulates your brain in a similar way to drugs like Ritalin, and that helps you focus. Well, I think they're right, cause I was FOCUSED. Seriously, I was on a roll, until it wore off. Although come to think of it, maybe it hasn't totally worn off yet. I'm kind of on a roll right now.
Actually, I did have a really productive day, after I finally go up. Tomorrow, though, I'm not setting an alarm (let alone three). And I'll probably try to be productive, but Notre Dame plays Navy, and I have a ticket, and I'm probably going. Actually I am going. So there goes being productive tomorrow.


A closing story: Two micelles were dropped in a bucket of cream. The first micelle did nothing. But that second micelle got stirred around, and around, and around, until it engulfed the first micelle. I AM that second micelle!