Procrastination

OK I clearly haven't posted in awhile. There are many reasons that I could give for why I haven't posted, but it's really just that I'm excellent at procrastinating.

I spend more time procrastinating than I do doing ANYTHING else. I procrastinate for more time than I actually study. I even procrastinate going to bed sometimes. I'll be lying in bed, absolutely exhausted, and will sit there flipping through random facebook albums or just hitting "Stumble!" over and over again, not even letting the pages load before I stumble again. All I want to do is go to sleep, but I just can't make myself close the computer and shut my eyes. And it's never like I'm doing something interesting on the internet that's keeping me up.


My biggest form of procrastination is watching bad TV illegally on my computer (shh, don't tell the police). Anyone who knew me growing up knows that watching TV was never a big part of my life. I was always the one left out in conversations about any show that was on the night before. But I have become absolutely addicted to shows like Teen Mom and Real Housewives of Anywhere. I watch plenty of good shows too, don't get me wrong. I went through the entire series of How I Met Your Mother in about 2 weeks, and I watched the whole first season of Game of Thrones in a day and a half. I've rewatched all of Futurama, and am re-beginning season one of The Simpsons for like the fifth time. All unnecessary! And yet I can't tear myself away.



Through the help of a friend, I have discovered a really wonderful and amusing form of procrastination which does not take as long as a TV show and is much more entertaining. Last year while studying for an exam, this friend sent a few of us an amazing picture in which she made herself pretty close to identical to Justin Beiber. Why would anyone (who is not a 12 year old boy) want to make herself look like Justin Beiber? To avoid doing work of course.


While I could never ever look like Justin Beiber no matter how hard I try (my hair is way too curly), with the help of Photo Booth, I have managed to take some pretty ridiculous looking pictures of myself instead of studying. The ones below were taken on two separate procrastination sessions. Please enjoy them, and I hope I still have friends after this (although I won't be surprised if I don't).

my personal favorite:

and one kinda pretty one just so no one thinks i'm actually a hideous monster...

Gunner

Last week in my first MCAT class I may have accidentally called one of the students a gunner. That's a good way to get them to like and respect you, right? Make fun of them?

My non-med school friends are probably wondering why I would give a fake military rank to a student studying for the MCATs. But "gunner" has another definition in med school: it's a mean, super-competitive student who in theory would do whatever it takes to be the best, even including (or maybe especially) by sabotage of others.

not the kind of gunner I'm talking about

A gunner is that person you've heard stories about (but has this EVER actually happened to anyone? Ever?) who steals people's books from ungaurded desks in the library around finals time so that no one else can study, or rips the necessary pages out of the reference books in the library so no one else can access them.

A gunner is the person who thinks it's impressive to find the tiniest, most obscure study and in the last 5 minutes of lecture bring it up to refute a generalization the professor made during that lecture (so that the professor has to say, "Yes in that one very specific case under those exact conditions, that is true, but for the purposes of this class and for any practical purposes for the rest of your life, what you have to know is everything I just spent the last hour explaining to you").

A gunner is the person who spends all weekend holed away in their room, studying for the exam and hunting for aforementioned study, and then on test day breezily announces that they barely looked over the material, because come on, how easy was that test?



Gunner is a word we throw around a lot in medical school - "You're staying in to study tonight? What a gunner." But we rarely actually mean it.

In my head, anyone who studies more than me is clearly an overachieving gunner, while anyone who studies less than me just doesn't take med school seriously enough. Unfortunately (or maybe very fortunately), what happens in my head is not reality. In reality, I haven't met anyone yet who matches the above description. The people I see studying the most are the ones who answer all my questions when I don't understand something, and take time out of THEIR studying to help explain things to me. That, my friends, is definitely not a gunner.

however, this girl is SUCH a gunner - look how ahead she's trying to get! studying years before she even gets to med school

So why did I call this very nice and very not gunner-y student in my MCAT class a gunner? It was completely by accident. He asked a theoretical question about one of the topics we were covering - a question that not only would never show up on the MCAT, but one that I also had no idea how to answer. Instead of only saying that it's not worth precious class time to go over things not on the MCAT, I then just haaaad to add, "Have you guys ever heard of gunners? It's a word you'll need to learn for med school." In my head (which we already established is not the same as reality), I thought I was being funny and clever by merely explaining to them the concept of the gunner, but I totally was accidentally calling him a gunner for asking that question!

So for the rest of the class, they will probably be too scared to ask me any questions because I'll think they are gunners. Excellent start, Elena!



If you want another take on med school gunners, check out "A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor" - she explains it in PICTURE FORM!
gunner profile
how-to-guide

An Important Quotation

A quote from the MGM course director during our lecture on glycogen (please read in a British accent for full effect):

"I always think of the liver as a very altruistic organ. A lot of what it does is for the benefit of other tissues. The muscle is much more self centered."



I give you this quote because it has inspired the creation of my new favorite activity: assigning human emotions and motivations to organs and compounds in the body. It may not be productive, but it sure is a lot of fun. Let me give you some examples:

I like to imagine that when the heart beats, it's actually pounding on your rib cage shouting, "Help, let me out, I'm bleeeeeeeding," or when enzymes break down sugars, I imagine them as ChompChomp from Super Mario64 (and Mario Kart, Rainbow Road) happily saying "om nom nom" as they chow down.

Since we have our next test coming up next week, I will be alone in my room studying for the majority of the weekend (wooo, party time!). For those of you who might be worried that I would get bored, now that you know how I spend my alone time, you don't have to be worried anymore. :)