To Kinirey: I bet you wish you were me right now

This blog entry is aimed at one person, so if you're initials are not DK, stop reading right now. Thank you.

So Bianca got me the BEST Christmas gift EVER... that's right, all black, super fancy, Littmann stethoscope. I love it sooooooo much.... and no Kinirey, you cannot borrow it.

My girlfriend rocks.

My transcript looks awesome right now

Grades just came out for the term and I am really happy! I got all A's. I am also really happy for my roommates. They both did really well, too. We all studied soooooooooooo much this term. I'm glad it paid off.

I'm having a blast right now

I can't even believe it. The past few days have been sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fun. It is a crazy feeling, not having to study right now. It is AMAZING. So we had our last final yesterday (biochemistry) and people have been drinking/partying/goofing off/ watching hulu since then. I think we are all just trying to make up for all of the down time that we never had over the semester... I don't know. It has been REALLY fun, though.

The last 24 hours for me:

9:00 AM yesterday: biochemistry final: It was really hard, I thought, but I think I got an "A" in the class... More to come on that.
I pretty much just goofed off and watched hulu videos the rest of the day.
Instead of sleeping, we decided to go out partying last night... "undergrad, it's time for your cameo."
Got home at the wee hours of the morning.
Woke up around 1:00 PM.
Now: might go to the beach. Might do nothing. Might watch more hulu videos. Will probably go for a run.

Life is sweet right now.

Oh, and one more funny thing. When I woke up today, I was so freaked out. I jumped out of bed and thought, "Oh my gosh, I have to study! I can't believe it's 1:00! I wasted the entire day!" and then I realized, "Wait, I'm done with this semester.... and I'm in paradise.... AND I have nothing to do... This is awesome."

Shout out!

What's up RACHEL L. !!!

Histology is EASY!

Wow, studying so much histology this semester is REALLY REALLY paying off. I have been flying through the review sessions and making A's on all of the online quizes. I can't believe it! So this semester I have probably spent more time-per-credit on histo than any other class. For example, histology is 4 or 5 credits while anatomy is like 8 credits. If all things were equal, I should have theoretically spent half as much time this semester studying for histo as I did for anatomy. This is not what I did. I spent WAY more time on histology. I don't really know why. It just seemed like I needed more time to learn it. (On a side note: I probably spent the LEAST time/credit on biochemistry)

So this is paying off in a HUGE way, this week. I am kicking butt reviewing histology. It is taking me no time at all! Ka-chunk.

Final Stretch

So finals start in about a week. This is the home stretch. Here is how I am favored in my exams: pretty good, as it seems. I need to get an 80% in biochem and histology to get an A and I need about a 85% in Anatomy to get an A. I think it is in the bag, however I am going to study my butt off. I got As on the midterms, but I was REALLY tired when I took them all. I think if I am well rested, I should be able to get a perfect or close to perfect score in anatomy. Biochem... I still need to review a little bit. If I can manage to get through all of the practice questions I have set out to finish (a butt-load), I should be able to get a really high score. Histology: okay, so I haven't started reviewing for histology, so this week should be a histo cram-fest. I'll let you know how I think I'm going to do in a week.

The things I am going to do as soon as I step foot on American soil:
1. Give Bianca a GIANT hug
2. Drink a Blue Moon... preferably before I even get out of the airport. It would be even greater if I can combine 1 and 2 simultaneously.
3. Repeat #2
4. Smell Christmas trees
5. Watch Harry Potter!!!!!!!
6. Drink egg nogg
7. Lay on the couch (with Bianca)
8. Combine 4, 6, and 7

Yeah. That sounds awesome.

Shout out!

What's up BIANCA!!!!

Frank Netter, will you marry me?

Ok... Here is the deal. The only thing you REALLY need in first term medical school are the following: Netter's Atlas of Anatomy and Wikipedia! That's it. If I had to choose THE MOST IMPORTANT study aids for first term, those would be my recommendations. The rest of the books that they give you are just fluff. AND it is way easier to just type in a few words into wikipedia and find an answer in about 2 seconds rather than skimming a text book for 15 minutes to maybe come up with an answer.

If Frank Netter were still alive, I would ask him to marry me. His text is soooooooooooo key. Most of the anatomy pictures on wikipedia are from Gray's Anatomy, i.e. "Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical" by Henry Gray, (published in 1858, as Wikipedia just told me) and the images are really not that good.

So, in summary, if you don't have Netter's Atlas of Anatomy, go buy it. You can look it up on wikipedia to see how much it costs.

Constantly the weekday

You know, when you're on vacation, and you have to ask someone what day it is because you don't even know if it's the weekend or weekday, because it all feels like the weekend? Ya, in medical school, it's the opposite: It constantly feels like the weekday. I realized this on Friday when one of the lecturing professors made a mistake and said, "sorry, you'll have to forgive me, I guess my brain has already left for the weekend." For a moment after she said this, I was like "what is she talking about?" I had forgotten that normal people have down time on the weekend. We don't really have that here. In a way, you actually do more work on the weekend than the weekdays because there is no class to "take up your study time." It is an odd sense. Not necessarily a bad one, just odd.

Videos!!!

So I just went for a run to the top of this mountain/hill and here is the view from it with the school in the background. It is kind of windy.

Longest Word

I was just sitting here studying biochemistry and I think I have come across the longest word I have ever seen:

5-Hydroperoxyeicosatetraenoate.

I don't want to brag, but I've seen quite a few long words in my day. hehe. But come on, seriously, how do you even say this? Most words in chemistry are usually hyphenated, which really discredits them as words. But I think 5-HPETE, as it is abreviated, would count as a completely bonified word, in my opinion, due to the lack of hyphenations. This is a 28 letter word, I mean come on, if you were playing scrabble you wouldn't even be able to play this word because the scrabble board is only 15 by 15, not to mention you only have 8 or so letters to work with at a time. If you think you can beat this 28 letter word, post it below.

This just in: I checked wikipedia and found a 71 letter word:

Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun. MMMmm that sounds good right now. Is there a 24 hour McDonalds in Grenada that I can get to via cab right now? Probably.

P.S. 5-HPETE is a intermediate to leukotrienes, inflamatory molecules in the body.

Ewwwwwwww

The ONE THING that has made me cringe in medical school so far: Dead old woman's rotten, festering, external genitalia - it's just not right, man....

Oh, and an update on my midterms: I got an A in all of them.... Boo-ya

Specialties I'm supposed to do

So after taking a "pathway evaluation program," half way through my first semester in medical school. Here are my "specialty compatibilities," (whatever that means) according to http://medweb.usc.edu/pathways/interior.htm?self-assessment.htm.

1. Vascular Surgery
2. Neurological Surgery
3. Thoracic Surgery
4. Colon and Rectal Surgery
5. Neonatal - Perinatal Medicine
6. Pulmonary / Critical Care Medicine
7. Pediatric Surgery
8. General Surgery
9. Gastroenterology
10. Orthopedic Surgery

I wonder how these will change as I progress through med school, or at least get some clinical experience! Surgery does seem fun, though. Although I am looking forward to neurology and that ranked low on the list (22 of 42 specialties). Only time will tell, I suppose.

To people reading this: Take the survey (It takes about 5 minutes) then post your specialties in the response section. Although most of the people I know, I bet I could guess. :-)

P.S. I am REALLY REALLY good at killing mosquitos with my hands, as I just once again proved to myself... Even better than Obama, I'd say.

Don't percuss me, bro

Funniest quote I've heard in a while:

"Don't percuss me bro, I'll poop my pants!"
-Student at SGU school of medicine

I heart CTs

I just realized something. I love looking at CT scans! For some odd reason, I really like looking at pictures of CTs, MRIs and Radiographs. I just REALLY like finding the structures in them. I found this website with free CT and MRI images and I just realized that I've been staring at them for like and hour and a half. I could seriously stare at them all night; it is so weird. I can't stop.

They de-vain shrimp...

The best quote ever:

"What, they don't suction the poop out of the dead people???? Are you kidding? They de-vain shrimp; Why wouldn't they?"

-Bianca

Amendment to last post

Bianca made me think... as she always does...

I would like to amend my last post: Life does not suck right now. I am having fun studying and learning REALLY interesting things and I am living in paradise right now. All I have to worry about is studying. I don't have to worry about finances or work right now. I mean, we have a freakin maid in our dorm! Life is good. I am happy. I like learning.

Here's a good quote from Einstein:

“Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.”

I like that quote. I am very lucky. Life is good.

"Life sucks right now"

Back by popular demand, I have decided to finally write a second blog entry.

As my roommate just said: Life sucks right now. I would probably agree. So today was supposed to be a "day off." That is, we had our bioethics exam (basically, if you are going to perform physician-assisted-suicide, don't tell anyone; or just do it in Oregon or Washington) and did not have classes all day. Pretty much a "free day." Well, sir, in medical school, there are no free days.

Here's what I did, got up around 7:30 to study a little bit more for bioethics, went to the exam and somehow managed to decipher through all the legal craziness on the test (I really hated that class, but I think I managed an A), came home and studied the poop-shoot, as it is called in medical terminology, took a little nap because I was so tired from studying last night for bioethics, was woken up by my roomates to go to the gross anatomy lab, stuck my fingers and hands in the poop-shoot, flipped a couple dead people over to get a closer look at the poop-shoot from the inside out, came home and am now studying the surrounding area of the poop-shoot for lecture tomorrow.

Here's the deal: We're tiiiiired..... The semester is nearing it's halfway point and mid-terms are approaching. We all just got raped by the language and crazy verbose answers on the bioethics final, and we are just hanging on by the seat of our pants while the information just keeps coming at us.

Someone once described med school as eating a dozen pancakes a day, every day whether you like it or not. You just have to eat the pancakes, getting the material down any way possible. If you don't eat 10 pancakes today, you will have to eat 20 tomorrow. This is a pretty good analogy, but not quite right. A better analogy (spelling?) would be getting punched in the face everyday by your textbooks and trying to stay on your feet until the mid-term comes. If you fall down or get behind, you lose... big.

This is why I am writing the blog right now: We are tired and life sucks right now. I think what it comes down to is just that bioethics sucks and that final was really intellectually challenging and exhausting. I thought I was done with liberal arts classes? Please... no more!!! My brain is only programmed to handle science-related material right not... and forever.

On another note: I kicked butt on the Unified Quiz, which is just a quiz in all subjects to see if you are studying properly and how you are doing relative to your peers. Anatomy: 100%, Biochemistry: 100%, Histology: missed one question, but still got an A; Good news: I'll never forget what GFAP protein is ever again.

Well, I just realized that this entry is probably getting boring to read. It is getting boring to wright. Back to studying.

Also, I just realized I haven't put up any videos of the school or island. I'll get on that soon, I promise.

Nervous

So this is my first blog entry... ever! in my entire life. I hope everyone does not judge my spelling or grammer too harshly.

I am nervous. I am nervous about writing this blog. I am nervous about going to Grenada. And I am nervous about starting medical school. I know what to expect a little bit thanks to forums like valuemd[dot]com and researching SGU as much as anyone could ever research anything in the world, but I can't help but be nervous.

I leave for St. George's University in about a week and a half and I haven't even started packing. I have a pretty good idea about everything I am going to take, I just need to start putting it into a suitcase.

I hope that everyone is friendly. I hope that I do well in school. I hope that I don't do anything stupid that ends me in prison, at least for the first term.

What if I forget something incredibly important that I can't live without? I wind up in Grenada and the Dean says, oh you don't have this thing, the most important thing ever that I can't believe you forgot? I say, oops, I'm so sorry. He says, I can't believe you forgot this thing, you are officially kicked out of our school even though it hasn't even started yet. I say, oh come on, give me another shot. He says, you know what I really don't like your attitude, you can go to jail now. I say, this is not really fair. He says, too bad, I am also President and in charge of everything on this island. I say, ooooooo nooooooooo. He says, now you can stay in jail forever and we won't tell anyone where you are.... and you won't have access to a computer so you can't even blog about it.

Oh man. That would be bad. Maybe I should pack and that would make me less stressed.

I wonder if all of my entries will be this weak. I hope not. If they are, I will be sure to slowly and appologetically start to slowly write less and less entries until my last entry says something like: "I am so sorry I have not updated in about a year. I have been so busy. I have decided to update this thing like every week. I promise." That will be the last entry.

I don't know where this blog is headed, but hopefully it will be helpful to future SGU medical students and informative to my family and friends while I am away for a while.

First Post

Hello world.