The year is not over yet, but I have to say that this year has been filled with moments of things just being "right."
I am in New York as I write/type. I'm taking a break. It's been great checking things out. One of my favorite themes of writing about usually has to do with community - whether it be the kids, families, various affinity groups, etc.
I'm moving to yvonnechung.wordpress.com!
Dear Vox,
You were my first and will always have a special place in my heart. Who knows? If things with WordPress turn south, maybe we'll find each other again. Goodness knows how many times I've stayed away from you for some time, only to be lured back with memories of the good times we shared.
But until then, au revoir!
Love,
Yvonne
Essay 1: Professionalism in Medicine
Status: Submitted , October 2, 2009 4:59 PM
Sometimes little things can trigger mighty powerful memories.
I just had a flashback of my entire junior and senior years of college from pushing the "Submit" button at 4:59pm. The last-minute blood-pumping, adrenaline-rushing, heart-thumping paper-writing action never gets old. ("Does this sentence even make sense? Oh crap, 3 minutes left! It's gonna have to stay the way it is. What is this paragraph originally about? No time to re-read it! Hopefully this last idea fits in. etc.") Procrastination really isn't for the faint of heart. And don't worry, I did the same for papers in English as well as en Français, because I believe in diversity and don't discriminate.
As you might have guessed, the paper was due at 5pm. I will chalk this one up as a victory for procrastinators of the world. I wish I could show you people's faces when I told them I hadn't even started at 11am today. Is it really that shocking? I mean, there were still 6 hours before it was due...
Everyday I realize more and more that I don't fit in the med school crowd and that my life is a study in mediocrity. This was no more obvious than today, when a few of us were discussing grades on the past mid-term exam. I commented that as long as one passes the exams, it's all peachy. However, my casual remark apparently rocked someone's world as they duly informed me that "some residency programs, like ENT (ear nose throat, or otorhinolaryngology), will look at every one of your grades and see how many honors you had!" Good thing I'm not gunning for an ENT residency.
As promised, I did not attend the 8am lecture this morning. Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm for skipping class, I ended up moseying into class at 9:07, at which point the lecture, part 2, was well on its way. In a sad attempt to maneuver stealthily and quickly to my usual spot as a fire hazard on the side stairs, the Brain failed to notify the Leg that a short wall was much closer than Leg had calculated for. Leg went straight for the first step of the stairs, only to be caught by Wall's sharp corner. Now Leg is sporting a really attractive gash.
Payback from the medical school gods? Perhaps, but it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than this to get me to an 8am class. It's the principle, damn it.
Once upon a time, my college roommate H and I tried a self-improvement experiment in which we woke up around 5am every weekday. The idea came from a book she was reading for class written by a guy who's done the same thing for decades. In his line of logic, waking up at some ungodly hour lets him feel less rushed in the morning (well, yeah, if I have an extra 4 hours to get ready...), have a more productive day (again, the extra 4 hours not spent in sweet slumber...), and have more "me" time before everyone else wakes up (everyone else is also having their "me" time; it's called "sleeping".). Despite the apparently madness, we did it, or rather, I spent most mornings quietly fiddling around, noting H's many ways of ignoring/snoozing the alarm clock. Admittedly, I did enjoy the hours of quietness that preceded the circus that was everyday life.
That was then. I've come a long way since my 5am days.
Today I made a very responsible decision - I will no longer be going to 8am lectures. It's just not happenin'. From the last 4 weeks of class, I've realized that 2 things always result from my attendance of 8am lectures:
- At 8:05, I casually stroll into class, and the lecture's already started. I can't find a seat since the auditorium is already full of eager, highly motivated (EHM) med students, so I plant myself as a fire hazard on the side stairs, along with other latecomers. I feel the judging eyes of said EHM med students in their soft, plush seats which they took to at 7:45, possibly earlier.
- Even while sitting on a step with the edge of the next higher step jabbing at my lower back, I can't keep my eyes open. The next 45 minutes is a complete haze as I struggle to stay awake and process the information being dumped on us. I fail at both tasks and emerge at the end of class groggy and still clueless about the lecture material.
So long, 8am lectures! Don't mind me; I'm just getting some "me" time.
p.s. In case you're wondering how I will get the information given at these 8am lectures, all our lectures are recorded and posted online minutes after they take place. Makes you wonder why anyone goes to lectures at all...
Yesterday, on the 19th day of school, I took my first med school exam.
There's a Chinese idiom that my mom has always used to describe how I do things. It translates roughly to "hugging Buddha's legs at the last minute" and means something along the lines of "Waiting until the last minute on every damn thing before you make a half-ass attempt at it, but still having the balls to hope for the best". Poetic, no? Basically, my biggest vice in life is procrastination. Now, before you blow off that statement with complete nonchalance, thinking to yourself that 95% of the world's population are procrastinators, I will have you know that my ability to put things off will, quite frankly, boggle the mind and make you question your place in the universe. Okay, it probably won't send you into an existential crisis, but it can demonstrate procrastination taken to a whole new level. This is my gift; this is my curse.
For brevity's sake, I'll save the tales of my procrastination for another day. Suffice to say, the exam, or rather the preparation leading up to it, was yet another exercise in last-minute scrambling. My dear mother called me and told me to "stop hugging Buddha's leg; he's tired of you after all these years." Always such wise, loving words.
As I sat down in the auditorium, waiting to be led to the anatomy lab where rows of cadavers lie with various anatomical minutiae tagged to be identified, this exchange went down.
Classmate T: Man, can you imagine if someone waited until the last couple of days to study for this exam? They'd be so screwed.
Yours truly: (thinking) Now would be a bad time to bring up the fact that I waited until the last days to study. Aw screw it; I hardly know this guy. (aloud) Yeeaaah, not gonna lie; I kinda did the bulk of my studying this last week. (thinking) At least I saved a little face by saying "week" instead of the truth, which would be "30 hours."
T: Oh........ But it's not like college though, right? You can't really wait til the last day.
Y: (thinking) Wow, this guy is insistent. How do I break the news to him? Oh forget it. (aloud) Yeah, you're right; they'd definitely be screwed...
Self-fulfilling prophecies be damned!
Dear Essential Clinical Anatomy*,
After spending a couple weeks with you, I gotta say this: you're a terrible lunch buddy. Like just now, we were having such a nice time - you telling me about pelvic bone structures and me eating my lunch. Then all the sudden, you dropped the bomb and started talking about rectal exams. Reallly? You had to bring that up right now? You left me with no choice but to close you up, walk away, and finish my lunch in peace. I was totally planning on having a Skinny Cow fudge bar for dessert, but I guess I can just forget about that.
I really would like to spend more time with you, since I have an exam in less than a week. So c'mon, help me out here. Please find a more appropriate time to bring up those unsavory topics that you like to surprise me with.
Love,
Yvonne
*My anatomy textbook
In animal behavioral sciences, there's a well-known experiment by a guy named Pavlov and his hungry dogs. Basically, you can elicit a certain response (salivation) with a completely unrelated stimulus (ringing bells) through conditioning. The experiment was repeated again in a particularly delightful opening of The Office involving Jim, Dwight, some Altoids, and the Microsoft bell sound. [Alas, the Youtube video has been removed. Copyright laws be damned!]
Today, I realized that I've also performed the experiment in my life.... to myself. I am Pavlov, and I'm also a hungry pup. Through years of conditioning, the stimulus of studying (even the mere thought of it) now brings about a response of sleepiness.
I had high hopes of fully learning the muscles and nerves of the forearm/hand this afternoon. 2.5 hours later, I woke up. I still maintain it was time well-spent.
4 for 4.
That's the torrential downpour that's occurred 4 out of 4 school days this week.
It's also the 4 lectures I've napped through out of 4 days.
I don't believe in numerology, but 4 out of 4? 100-frickin'-percent? That's something special right there. I'm feeling pretty extreme, like I'm living my life to the max right now. So extreme and to-the-max, in fact, that after skipping my last lecture of the day (which came after the lecture that I slept through), I came home and ate lunch. An extreme lunch. A Skinny Cow low fat fudge bar, a wedge of Laughing Cow Swiss cheese, and too much grapes later, I resolved to go shopping for rain boots. (I never thought that skinny, laughing cows would figure so significantly in my diet.) Alas, it started raining cats, dogs, and other mid-sized mammals again.
Now I have to content myself with writing an extreme blog post. Coincidentally, the song playing on my Last.fm radio right now is called "Cannot Contain This". So wild.
With the way my school works, we have an exam every 4 weeks. Since two weeks have come and gone, I'm officially half-way to my first med school exam (a day which I refer to as "Day of Reckoning"). DoR wouldn't normally have all its implications of doom and despair, except that I've come to realize that I know squat. In the review session yesterday, the tutor asked us questions similar to those we would see on the exam over what we've learned so far. "If a person can't perform the opposable thumb action, what is the condition called and what nerve is damaged?"
Yvonne's mind: <a vast void>
The answer: "ape hand", and there is injury to the recurrent branch of the median nerve (from the almighty brachial plexus), which innervates 6 and 1/2 muscles of the forearm.
Yvonne's mind (in the exact order these thoughts raced through): 1. I bet apes would be unhappy to know that they're associated with a physical ailment that marks man's superior opposable thumb action. 2. It would really simplify everyone's lives easier if they would just round up and say 7 muscles. 3. Wait, I should know this?! Shiiiiiiiit.
Here's to a decidedly un-extreme weekend of hitting the books.
