three more semesters..forward and onward!

I'm trying to think of what I could possibly say about this past semester, and really the year of 2008 in general, as time draws to a close.
My times in school I have enjoyed for the most part. Like everyone has said time and time again, the material is not difficult, it is the amount of material. But I suppose you really don't understand what it's like in the middle of the deluge, breaking your face against that proverbial firehose, until you are waist-deep in that sh*t.
I think the thing that affected me the most has been location. Western University, while a competitive, challenging, supportive school, is located in...well...crap. Pomona is not all that safe, and in addition to that, Western does not have a traditional campus, with the rolling greens and tall dorm rooms and brick and ivy. Coming from a more urban surrounding, I felt that that would be cakewalk. In all honesty, I felt that location really would not bother me. In fact, I was excited that it seemed so similar to where I lived and worked before. I am a pretty adaptable person, and for the most part I made do, spending lots of time in the small library, spending more time in Starbucks and at home.
Come finals time, I discovered that I had lost the ability to focus at all these locations (although...home, really. what was i thinking) and was desperate. My roommate Linda turned me on to the Honnold-Mudd Library at the Claremont colleges, which were literally down the street from our house. The change in locale made an astounding change in my self-esteem as a student. At this point, I was really struggling, and was becoming depressed. The library was absolutely beautiful, spacious, well lit, and had a really old, historied feel. It was like, you couldn't help but feel proud to be a student again while studying there. It was sort of a case of "too little too late," but it made my last few weeks almost enjoyable.

While you're in medical school, it becomes your whole life. Some people don't understand why I can't drive all the way to LA to hang out, drive all the way to Irvine and Torrance to dance; but it literally consumes you. Every waking minute becomes all about studying. Perhaps save for those few who are either really quick at memorizing, or actually taught the subject material before in a previous career and thus don't have to study as hard for that course. Those who are trying to handle marriages, families, and even jobs while simultaneously doing this -- I hold them in even higher regard than I did previously. This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. ...And rightly so. I would never want to be treated by a physician who had it easy during their medical training.

I am quite eager to go to back to school at this point. I've analyzed myself to the point of nausea, I feel like I've finally hit my stride (though too little too late) as a student. Come to think of it, I've had very little experience in academics at this level. I took mostly liberal arts classes at Cal, and in addition, was cripplingly depressed for most of that time. This whole semester has been a learning experience in more ways than one. But I've meditated, and for the first time I feel like I've broken this twisted destructive cycle I fall into, and in addition, I did it all by myself. So...I am a little glad for that.

Still, there's a lot to do, and I am praying to all the energies of the universe that this next year will be even more different, challenging, and joyful than the last, and that throughout all the journeying, the spark is never lost.

They should make this a holiday

My favorite day of the year! Daylight savings.

I spent my extra hour catching up on House. Wow, that last episode where House and Cuddy....just, whoa, hello!

Merry daylight savings to one and all.

farewell, cadaver #1

Anatomy dissection was one of those things where you are so afraid of what it means, and when you are actually doing it, the blinders go on and you push it all away to do what needs to be done. And then in the end, you get a second to breathe again and you realize, you will never get an opportunity like that again in your life.

They gave us a body, so that we might learn, so that we might uncover the mysteries of the human form. This body yielded to us so much more.

We called him Bruce, as in Bruce Banner, because his musculature was so pronounced and hefty. His muscles shined pink and robust with formaldehyde like Christmas ham. He hardly smelled at all. When we arrive at his lower abdomen, he yielded us a great treasure of a massive direct hernia. We found a spleen bordering on splenomegaly, and gold teeth. I called him a pirate, a swashbuckler, an adventurer, climber of mountains, sailer of ships. He must have died in a short amount of time, because next to the emaciated, wasted bodies elsewhere in the dissecting room, his crevasses were overflowing with slippery fat, his body toned. When we got to his face, we marveled at how much he resembled Danny Devito. We were proud of our Bruce. He was good to us.

Though it may seem morbid to the outsider, it seemed only natural to derive our own narrative. Here were so many clues to where he came from and how he died. We would make up stories to try to fill in the crazy mad-libs of his body. How could we not wonder about what lay beyond, backwards into the time-space continuum? With so many secrets yielded, how could we not be curious about his story?

Some say there is a danger here, of objectifying the body, forgetting its human roots, disrespecting it by operating with a lack of gravitas, being too cavalier. In practice I found that the contrary was true: dissection only whet our appetites for the stories of our "patient," and for our future patients -- the narratives of human lives.

And in that I believe was Bruce's greatest gift to us. That despite the stress and deadlines and quizzes and tests, we never lose our sense of wonder.

Thank you, cadaver #1.

gchat is ruining my life

things aren't so bad.

kpeng127: so.... how many genitals will we see in our life time?

so embarassing.

me: oh wow

i never thought of it that way before

that's insane

kpeng127: yup.

yay doctors.

Adam: haha

THATs a cool roomy

i was just watching a buffy episode (yeah yeah), about her roommate who is actually a demon

so i think youre doing ok

if the Hadron Collider creates a black hole and the universe as we know it ends today,

what would you do with your last few hours?

i would eat a butt-load of ice cream and dim sum and fatty foods.
i would call anyone special who was not in my life anymore and tell them i miss them and that i'm sorry.
i would would lay face-down in the grass to hug the earth and listen to the insects and worms and plants one last time.

hm.

i could do all these things...today.

....mm. donuts.

famous last words

week 4.

our first major test as a class has come and gone. it feels like it has already been 6 months. it feels like my entire life is anatomy. i don't hate anatomy, but it's freakin dry and boring.

it seems like the extracurriculars are getting under way. we're constantly having our classroom occupied by informational sessions (well it comes with free lunch often so i'm not complaining). but there's hardly any room in the brain to think about them, much less plan on doing them.

i am pretty adamant in my decision to not devote my entire goddamn life to getting that 100% in anatomy. even though it's crucial to what i want to do later on as a physician, i feel as though i have such a tenuous hold on myself as a person that i refuse to alter some of my older habits in order to accommodate my studies, including making sure i read every article (title at the very least) of the front page of the news, finding stuff online that makes me laugh, and dancing. so no, i'm not studying as hard as my peers right now. but these are things that i really need to do.

i mean, i'm passing so far. it should be do-able. right?


(...the shadows under my eyes are twice as big as they were 4 weeks ago.)

open heart surgery

this past week, one of my roommates and i agreed: it didn't really feel like medical school. the gravitas somehow got lost in the beginning.

it is coming upon the end of my first week of class and i think i am finally, maybe, 80% there. it is just hard to believe that someone like me could be inducted into such a sacred profession, and as i sat through Essentials of Clinical Medicine, i was overcome by memories of times i went above and beyond for a patient in clinic. of times i sold a patient short. of guilt and remorse for everything leading up to the person i am now, of pride and hope for the person i might become, of fear that i will end up failing out of school, or perhaps, failing later on. worry for those times i didn't cover my ass just out of plain laziness, and inspiration, that it may never happen again. fear of future lawsuits and M&Ms, hope for lives saved and jobs accomplished as best as humanly possible. powerpoint slide by slide flashed before the class, giving us a glimpse of the physician we would hopefully be trained to be, and it sunk in deeper and deeper -- my life from now on will never be the same.

to get to medical school, you need a concrete sense of who you are, your values and boundaries, your own lines drawn in the sand. they don't tell you that once you get there, you are still apt to change - nay, provided you aren't a completely insane hack, you WILL change.
you must.