Drew and I had a nice, too-short trip to Missouri this past weekend. Got to see lots of family I haven't seen since Thanksgiving. Got to relax a bit, although I also had to do quite a lot of studying.

Grandpa forgot to renew his driver's license and the license bureau said he had to retake both the written and the driving tests. He took the written with minimal studying and failed it. When we were there, he was trying to study for it but failed again a couple days ago. I don't know that he'll try a third time. I think if you fail it three times the state forces you to sign up for some kind of course.

I feel bad for him. He's 81 this year, and although his memory isn't what it used to be and he's not, ahem, the best driver on the road I know he doesn't want to give up that freedom. Plus they live on a farm in the middle of nowhere and if he can't drive to get his newspaper every morning his quality of life will suffer. He loves reading the St Louis Post Dispatch (which can't be delivered directly to the house).

I suggested to Mom and Aimee that Amanda move back to Missouri and take care of them. I haven't mentioned this to Amanda yet. Aimee said she'd chip in for a chauffeur's hat. Olivia suggested Amanda could get a part-time job at the Dairy Queen. I'm offering debt forgiveness (from Mom, who hasn't actually agreed to that) and a scholarship to the community college of her choice.

I'm studying for my final now. I was in a panic last night, but today I feel a bit better because I started reviewing old material so I don't feel quite as overwhelmed. It's going to be near-impossible for me to thoroughly review every lecture before Tuesday which is really depressing since only a few days ago I was sure I'd be done with that at least 48 hours before the test. I'm not very realistic with my studying goals, sometimes. Most of the time.

Drew's Johnson & Johnson boss invited him to drinks last night and floated the idea of him working full-time in New York. Which would require him getting an apartment there and us being separated most of every week. He's going to think about it for a few weeks. I'm trying to be supportive because he's been so supportive of me this year. Also, I think it could be really good for him and might perhaps someday lead to us both relocating to Manhattan permanently. Which would be amazing. It's still, I think, pretty unlikely that he'll take the job just because of logistics.

I hate making life decisions purely based on practical considerations. It's so hard figuring out what you want to do with your life and there's never less than a million reasons not to do something once you get an idea going. So I say "screw it." If he decides he wants to try to work there and has specific goals and reasons he knows it will be good for him then I'm sure we could pull it off. We can't stay in this apartment just because this is where our furniture is. Although I think the fact that our relocation from Los Angeles is so fresh in our minds is a huge reason both of us are so sickened by the idea of finding something else.

 

'How do you know that?"

"I just know it."

I hate it when people say that. It's very hard to get people to talk about their learning process. Maybe they actually don't know how they learned the names of dozens of trees or the plot of every opera or how a microprocessor works. But people don't say "I'm not sure how I learned that" -- they pretend that it's just hardwired into their brains. They were just born knowing it.

For anyone who reads this blog, you know that the last five years have brought a lot of anxiety into my life and much of it revolves around facing my own voluminous ignorance. I don't know much about much, it seems. I started the "Why Don't I Know This?" section (to the right) as a way to help me remember things I've researched. Otherwise I'll forget them faster than I learn them.

It just takes so much repetition. That's all med school has been for me so far: learning something and then forgetting and relearning it over and over again until it sticks. Then a few months later it's gone again, but at least it's easier to retrieve with a little stimulation. I study with flashcards so I can review material quickly and repeatedly, and so that as I begin to understand things I can weed out the cards I no longer need. That's a time-consuming process, but it's so far been the only one that works for me.

(Maybe I should try that with trees. I could paste a leaf to a card and then... eh, nevermind. I would like to be able to say, when it comes to things like ID'ing trees, that I "just know it." But I don't actually want to take the time to study it. Not that I have any free time anyway.)

At school classmates will ask me how I study and I'm very open about it. A lot of people don't want to admit that hearing it once in lecture isn't enough, but I really don't care. I'm doing well in school not because I'm so smart but because I make hundreds of flashcards for every block and I'm fine with that. (I could end this with another lame comparison to Hillary and her work ethic, but that's not panning out for her so much so I think I'll skip it.)

 

I studied at home all day today. Drew and I had a meeting with our relationship counselor at 1:00. We're both so stressed with work that neither of us wanted to take two hours out of the middle of the day to trudge across the city. Plus it was raining outside. But we went anyway. We walked/ran through the rain, stopped at Starbuck's to grab sandwiches for lunch, and then walked/ran to the subway.

We're going to take a break from the counselor. We haven't had any major problems lately so the three of us decided that we would schedule appointments "as needed."

I did 8 hours of work today and ran for an hour once the skies cleared up. So I feel pretty good about my day, although I'm still freaked out about the amount of material I'm expected to master before the monster exam on June 3rd. It's worth 90% of our grade for the class. 150 questions in 3 hours. Boooo. That's also the day Hillary will officially not be the democratic nominee.

I have to go to sleep now.

In other news:
I'm going to Missouri this weekend to visit my family.
Drew and I have decided to go to the Greek islands after school is over (June 8-18).
Molly started a blog!
That's it, I think.

 

I'm modeling my study habits for these last days of my first year of medical school on the Hillary Clinton campaign.

It's over. Anything that happens now won't really change the overall performance for the year, but I refuse to coast to the finish.

I studied all weekend last weekend and I'm determined to do it again. Although it's 10:30 and I still haven't started.

[Update:] 1:14pm. I'm working. I'm not killing myself or anything. It's kind of slow-going. At this pace I'll be sitting here late into the night. I'm thinking about this and wondering if I like it or not. Hmmm....

 

I woke up late this morning. I hate that. I couldn't walk Madeline because I had an 8am lab and you can't be late for those.

I missed the express subway and had to take the local. I hate taking the local. Then once I got off the train I ended up walking behind a med student who smokes. As I walked along her trail of stink I gave her some pretty stern lectures in my head about how ridiculous it is for medical students to smoke cigarettes. I fought the urge to scowl at her at the crosswalk.

I got to lab and my normal group wasn't there. I sat down next to some friends and asked what they were doing there. "Were you in this room last time?"

"You have lab on Friday, Andy. You're group B."

This block is pretty poorly organized. I didn't even realize we were divided into two groups. It's not on our syllabus. I asked Mai how she knew this, and she said "Because someone else made fun of me for not knowing it."

I'm beyond thrilled not to have a 2-hour lab this morning. They tried to get me to stay so I wouldn't have to go on Friday but I thought I'd probably be better off studying in the library until the 10:00 lecture.

Truthfully I'm kind of shocked that I'm not angry; I could have slept two more hours. But I'm not mad. I'm ecstatic. I'll only be pissed if I spend the next 100 minutes reading The Drudgereport instead of studying.

 

Satisfied in my new glasses:



Whiney in my new glasses:



Angry in my new glasses:



Bemused in my new glasses:

 

 

I finished neuroanatomy. Minimal pain, although I wish the final had been harder so that I could have distinguished myself a bit more. I put a lot of work into those last two weeks and I'm afraid that the final on Friday didn't really reflect that. Whatever happens, gradewise, I'll have to be okay with, though. I really didn't start studying, really studying, until halfway through week #2 and you just can't do that in these classes and expect to get honors. I think I'll get high pass, though, and that will be fanTAStic.

But I'm moving on. We started a 5-week block today that's an intro to pharmacology, immunology and pathology. Today's lectures were, thank God, just a very basic introduction with no real testable information. So I'm not behind yet, despite not having done any work today.

Drew took me to Monticello after the exam. We drove down to Charlottesville Saturday morning and spent the night, toured Jefferson's house Sunday morning and then drove back.



I am a complete Jefferson devotee now. There aren't a lot of things in life I'm unashamedly enthusiastic about, but stuff like this definitely does it. That house is amazing: the setting, the light, the idiosyncratic touches... and just the overall sense that it reflected the mind of the person who lived there. That inspired me. I want a home like that. Or, rather, I want a life that's big enough to support that kind of display. I could go on and on about the house and the gardens and the things we learned, but I did that most of the day today to whoever would listen so I'll spare you. But it was a pretty great weekend.

Last night when we got back Drew was in a bit of a funk so we walked down to get cheesesteaks for dinner. On our way there and back we had a total of three people call us faggots. Specifically, the comments were....

"Faggots take it up the ass!" -- yelled from a drunk girl hanging out of the passenger side of a passing car.
"These faggots just walk around the city" -- some guy.
"Faggots." -- some other guy.

Drew was upset. I didn't react to his reaction very well. I was basically like "Suck it up and get over it." I mean, we are faggots. And we do just walk around the city. And that first statement is also factually correct. And these people are clearly not the brightest, so I think we should just ignore it. I should have been more sensitive, but it just makes me really angry and I don't want us to allow that kind of stuff to upset us. Ugh. Stupid people.