Break

Winter break is in full swing, and I have spent the last several days doing (almost) nothing! Normally, that would sound less than spectacular, but in this case, it is great. Not to sound like I'm bragging, but I've been working pretty hard, and its real nice to get a break.
We've had a pretty big snowstorm here, and there's a lot of snow around. Nathan's school had a snow day on Monday, and there's a lot of snow around. (Oh yeah, I'm at the lake right now, not South Bend) I've been back in Merry Lea a couple of times, and it was a really a whole different experience back there when there's a foot of snow on the ground.
Other than that, there isn't that much to tell. I'm just enjoying the break.

1/8

That's how much of medical school I have done. With the semester over, I thought it would be a good idea to finally write some more on here. Mostly, I've just been studying, which doesn't translate into anything cool to write about. But supposedly I learned all of histology in 3 and a half weeks... I took the NBME shelf exam today, so I guess when I get the results back, I'll find out if I really did learn what I needed to know.
Anyway, I now have about 2 weeks off of school.
So I guess that about covers it.

I couldn't think of a good title...

If you had asked me today "How are you doing?", I would have said (like Joyce of Wengatz hall cleaning fame): "Doin' pretty good for a Monday...!" Actually, it was a pretty good day. Probably the best thing to happen was that I found out I pretty much rocked my histology test's world. So that had me feeling pretty smart...
However, tonight I went to this talk "they" had at the school about blood clotting and deep vein thrombosis (prophylactic thrombolytics to be more specific...). It was really geared for the orthopedic surgeons in the audience, of which I am clearly not one. After that, I no longer felt smart at all. In fact I felt pretty dumb. Most of the time, I had about a 10% idea what they were talking about. But on the positive side, I got to watch some people argue with the presenters during the Q&A time. So that was interesting. But again, they were mostly arguing about stuff I didn't quite understand.
Anyway, I enjoyed it on some level, mostly on the level of: 'wow, look how much you don't know--now go study!' Which isn't all bad.

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?