Waiting around

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Fall semester completed!

Yeah yeah yeah. It's been a month or so. All I can say is... well like normal, I have no excuse. But I'll dive into where I've been.

So for the past month, I've been in medical school. And that should be explanation enough. But, I will go into it a bit further. As of last Friday, I completed my first semester of medical school, and did so with flying colors. I managed to do very well in Neurobiology, and the grades for Gross Anatomy have not come out yet. I expect them in a couple days and seeing as I needed something ridiculous to pass the class (like a 22% on the final or something) I have a pretty good feeling that I passed the class and thus am not really worried about that.

On Friday we took the Gross Anatomy final which was on the Head and Neck, and the pelvis. Two amazing areas to be studying out in public. I was definitely at a Starbucks once or twice and took a step back at the pictures that I was looking at and realized that I was either looking at a genitalia or pictures of a face with the skin taken off. Not exactly what you would expect to see when walking into a Starbucks a couple weeks before Christmas. Something hit me about a week before the final and that was the fact that I had dissected an entire human body over the previous 4 months. Only once in my life will I ever dissect a body to the extent that all of us just had completed. Most people in the world never have that oppurtunity and I have just complted it. I also feel like this course is the one course that every doctor has had and knows that every other doctor has had. Sort of a weird bonding experience, if you will. This just brought me pause in that I was now through that course.

That being said, I am officially 1/8th of a doctor. I know I know, that still means I have a ton of stuff left to do, but baby steps here, baby steps. I ended up writing "1/8th Doctor" on a T-Shirt and wore that under my lucky sweatshirt to my last final and upon handing in the exam, I took off the sweatshirt and stretched in front of the class... it was cool. I laughed, the professor laughed, and so did the couple people who saw laughed. I also wore it out on Friday night (under the Polo shirt) and people laughed more then as they saw it. I ended up having a fun time after the exam, hanging out at a friends apartment (this friend got his PhD in Japan and he is an associate professor over there -- which means he needs to teach 2 lectures all year, which would be how he can also be in medical school in Washington D.C.) and then we all went out to Dupont Circle (Front Page then Rumors).

I woke up at 11:30 on Saturday morning and I opened my email and one of my emails was the Google Calendar reminders of my agenda which I get every morning at precisely 4:56 A.M. The great thing about this email was that it said "You have no events scheduled for today." That brought a smile to my face because for the first time since August I woke up with absolutely nothing to study. It felt pretty awesome.

One of the highlights of exam week was that this was the week that Senator Johnson was admitted to the George Washington Hospital and so there was a ton of press and security was pretty tight. I just thought it was kind of cool. I say it's a highlight because let's be honest: studying for a gagillion hours a day isn't exactly "fun." I do like the material we are learning - I find everything pretty cool -- it's just pretty daunting when you realize that you are being tested on every single muscle, nerve, artery and vein in the head and neck. And in case you didn't know, there's a lot there.

Right now I am sitting on my porch in Ft. Lauderdale. I flew down here yesterday by way of Columbus, Ohio. (I started in D.C., so that made no sense whatsoever). I'll be here for a couple of weeks, shifting into neutral and recharing the batteries. (point to who can point out what movie that comes from). It's a nice 70 degrees with the breeze flowing through my hair that is way too long.

Well that's all I got for now. I think it might be my New Year's Resolution to post more. We'll see.....

still waiting,
-wait