October?

It appears I haven't posted since the end of September. OOPS!

Let's recap the months.
October
We did limbs in anatomy. I LOVED that block. Most people hated it. The lowest averages for both the practical exam and the written were achieved for the extremities block, but I got my highest grades of the year for that block. Yey.

I have my google calendar opened so I can see what I did. ha.

I went on a CMDA retreat! The greater NYC area chapter of CMDA had a retreat up in the Adirondacks and they sent out a request for people to work in childcare while the parents went to the retreat. So I don't really have any great love for watching large numbers of children at once, but I figured it would be nice to get away and see the Adirondacks at the height of fall leaves changing and meet some doctors and help give them a break to have some relaxed adult time.

It was overall a really great experience. I drove up with 2 young doctors who were both 5 years out of residency. It was incredibly interesting listening to their stories and perspectives on things...I felt like I was a little kid listening in on my parents' adult conversation. I didn't have anything productive to add but I was like "ooh, so this is what real doctors' conversations sound like!" Ha. I ended up rooming with a girl who is a 3rd year medical student who was on her surgery rotation at the time. (everyone who found this out was incredulous that she managed to get away for the weekend, including her) So that was nice, because I got to pick her brain a little bit about what it was like.

I felt really bad for the kids because we had the 0-4 year olds, in a room that had skee ball and 2 air hockey and 2 foosball tables ...which would have been super fun for 10 year olds, but these kids couldn't even see over the air hockey table. So it was interesting trying to entertain them, but somehow we managed.

The speaker for the weekend is (was?) a missionary surgeon. Unfortunately since I was watching the kids I didn't get t hear him, but I went and bought a couple of the books he wrote...I have yet to read them though.

Other things happened...but either I can't remember them or I can't remember when they happened so I'm not going to write about it in the October post. :-P

La de dumm

Well.

I'm procrastinating.

Today has officially been labeled a non-productive day, and I guess my brain has a hard time becoming productive in the afternoon/evening if it hasn't been so during the day.

This morning I woke up at 1:00pm, because...I could.

I got up, read this case study about cholera outbreaks during the victorian era and went to class to talk about said case study...where the TA gave us all the answers off her answer sheet, basically. So...I don't know why we have to bother doing it now, since they know that we all know the answers.

but whatever.

Then I came home and was mildly productive and cooked dinner...I had chicken francese (store-bought...mine is several times better!!) and made green beans roasted with garlic and bread crumbs in a little bit of olive oil. YUM.

Then I really didn't feel like doing any work so I washed a large amount of the caked-on goop off the various removable parts of the stove top.

Then I went to the first CMDA (christian medical dental association) meeting, which was about 15 people. It was good...they put this huge emphasis on being short and not making people feel pressured to spend more than 45 minutes there because we're all busy, etc etc.....but I didn't really like that because the whole point of me going there is to sort of relax and hang out with people and have a Bible study...and as soon as they finished today everyone sort of got up and left within 1 minute.

so i hope that as people get to know each other better, or on a day we do an actual Bible study instead of just mostly introductory stuff, that people hang out more.

We had our first exam on Tuesday, and I was stressing out because my cousins were here all weekend and I had to figure out how to do the family time and do the study time...enough study time to do well but not so much that I missed out on family time.

I guess it worked out because I got 1.5 standard deviations above the mean. Wahoo!

I haven't been going to anatomy lectures recently because of the histo test, and they've been stuff that's relatively uninteresting to me...but starting next week they're getting back into things like (My heart literally skipped a beat when I saw this) "Clinical Correlations of Blunt and Penetrating Trauma"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!! I CANNOT WAIT FOR THAT!!

and then they get into anatomy of the limbs and the musculature of the back and all that sort of stuff that I L-O-V-E.

Yesterday we had out first flag football game...I'm on a team called the rectus abdominators ( as in, rectus abdominus + dominators- love it!) and we played against this team of 2nd years that had two sets of people...they actually had a defensive and offensive team. And a girl who could throw ( = you get double points if a girl throws or catches a pass that scores a touchdown, or the extra points). My team had never played together before...so needless to say we lost, but not as bad as we could have.

PLUS it was POURING rain the whole time and everyone was sliding all over the place and soaked and muddy but it was a lot of fun.

Now I am sore and we've got another game tomorrow...probably also in the rain. So that's exciting.

ok. That is all. I am going to read about "Formation of Blood Cells (Hemopoiesis)(Hematopoiesis)"

(personally, I'm partial to "hematopoiesis", I think I just like words with more syllables.)