anna in med school

A few of my med school buddies recently started up Stylus, an artistic and literary journal.  I would really like to submit something, but I’m at a loss.  I have a desktop full of page-long starts but they are all, to put it mildly, boring.  Most of the topics I’ve been trying out are also too broad, like the stuff of longer essays and such, and I would prefer to turn in something short and crisp, not something to which a reader would have to make a commitment, ya know?

So…are there any entries you’ve seen that you’ve particularly liked?  Any that you would like to see me expand upon or clean up?  Or do you have any questions or suggestions?

I welcome any ideas!  And thank you in advance.

I am lobster red.

My logic: I was making up for the months of January and February in terms of vitamin D3 production by the skin, just looking out for my bone density.

John’s logic: I’m an idiot.

While “training” coworker Ben and my replacements at Dana-Farber last June, we were taking a coffee break, shooting the shit like you do, and one of the replacements asked about the lifestyle change, going from that of an English grad student to a premed/soon-to-be med student.  I listed off some of my canned interview-ish answers, and then concluded:

I actually think the new lifestyle kind of suits me.  It’s a lot of stress, but in some ways it’s healthier.  I can pull streams of all-nighters writing papers because, in the end, you have to turn something in and meet the page requirement…it doesn’t really matter if you’re brain-dead at 4am, you just keep writing and revising until the deadline.  That doesn’t really work for science.  If your brain is no longer absorbing the material, you’re done.  Go to sleep.  There’s no point.  Plus, there’s no better feeling than the happiness that rushes over you when you turn in an exam, and you don’t have jack to do over the weekend.  What a gratifying rush!”

(This little rationalization was, of course, before I sat through a med school exam, during a time when I could go to sleep at a reasonable hour the night before an exam feeling prepared, and come out of the exam feeling confident.)

Anyway, my replacement responded gently, “I think you might be misidentifying feelings of relief for those of happiness.  You feel relief after an exam.  Do you really feel happiness?”

Hunh.  Fair point.

Well, whatever it was, it felt pretty damn fantastic after the five-hour Brain & Behavior exam this past Friday.  In the 26 hours preceding, Eric and I pulled a near-all-nighter (so much for the healthier lifestyle), during which we laughed, we cried (I cried…just a little), we made horribly offensive substitutive names for those tricksy parasol cells (of course, “conveniently” named M-cells, whereas their counterparts, midget cells are P-cells), and we ingested copious amounts of broccoli and hummus.

And now, spring break.  So so happy.

She laughs like the Pillsbury Doughboy, sips Scotch and sodas, has a mean hook shot, and still puts my brothers in their place.  Thanks for a wonderful weekend, Mimi!

We’re in the final push before our first brain & behavior exam on Friday.  This afternoon’s practice practical left me a bit disheartened.  As Eric put it: “I went from feeling not confident going in, to terrified.” Yeah, that pretty well sums it up…

Anyway, I likely will not be blogging for the next 48 hours, but I wanted to leave you with this article that my friend Karthik shared and said we should blog about.  Stop by his place sometime: www.karthikm.com.  He’s a pretty impressive kid.

And, oh do I ever have the brain on the mind.  I’m sitting across a biomed library table from Nathalie, and she just said, “I’m just reading about Libya,” but I couldn’t quite hear her.  Me: “Oh my God, what part of the central nervous system is THAT?!”