It's a real thing. And apparently impossible to avoid. Even when it's the most beautiful fall weather all week. And even though I still get at least 7 hours of sleep the weekend before the exam because otherwise I am an incoherent zombie for 2 weeks. It's just mental exhaustion.
When tests were every 3 weeks (like for our last class, IHR), it was no big deal to slack off the week after the exam. You sleep in Tuesday, run all your errands on Wednesday, stress about how behind you are on Thursday, actually see your friends and family over the weekend. And then you feel refreshed for the next week and spend it catching up, and then you still have ANOTHER whole week after you catch up to enter serious-I-mean-business study mode.
fall is so pretty, why am i so grumpy?
Now that tests are every other week, we don't have that buffer week, and you really can't afford to take a whole week off from the serious studying. Or really more than a day. I tried so hard not to let myself get in a downer mood this past week - I went to the gym the day after the exam, watched the lectures, went grocery shopping... and then the next day I just gave up. I stayed on top of school work for the week, but everything else sort of fell by the wayside. I don't think I've responded to an email since the last exam. I don't know about everyone else, but I seriously need mental breaks after exams, and I'm going to have to figure out how to work those into my schedule because otherwise this is unsustainable for the next 5 months.
The Global Health Alliance, a club which has only been around for two years, put on a great event this week! The event was called Around the World in 80 Minutes. Members of the Global Health Alliance chose a country and presented a poster on that country's healthcare system, and bought or cooked food that was representative of the country.
The event was open to everyone (and over 100 people came, most likely because of the free food!) and we asked for donations at the door. People could mingle, taste food from all over the world, and learn a little about the healthcare systems and issues from other countries (I hope that at least someone learned at least something and didn't just eat and run).
Each country prepared 3 multiple choice questions from the information on the poster, and the guest who answered the most correct questions got a $50 gift card to Amazon! That's either half a textbook or a whole review book - an excellent prize. The event was co-sponsored by lots of other student groups (which is how everyone could pay for their country's food) which allows ALL the donations to go to Partners In Health.
Here are pictures from some of the tables. Of course, the pictures were taken towards the end of the night, so there's not much food left, but you'll just have to trust me when I say everything was delicious.
Does the Henderson-Hasselbach equation EVER go away?
I think I have learned it almost once a year starting with freshman year of high school in Biology - and then again in AP Biology senior year, and then in both Intro to Biology and Intro to Chemistry in college, probably in Physics, again for the MCATs, again in Biochem in med school, definitely again in Physiology, again to teach the MCATs, and now again in Pathology.
I think I actually understood it for real for the first time last year in Biochemistry. The seventh time's the charm, that's what they* say!
Even though I get it now, pKa still gives me nightmares sometimes.
*by they, I mean me, when it takes me seven times to learn something
"How is this relevant to anything?" you ask. Well, it's not really. But I'm pretty sure NJMS is trying to trick us again in the same way they tried to with Mind, Brain, and Behavior (get it, get it? we won't get fooled again?).
Remember how our schedule is supposed to be a block schedule? One science-y class plus one how-to-be-a-good-doctor-and-learn-social-skills class at a time? They're doing a bad job that. The science class we're in right now is DPPT - Disease Process, Prevention, and Treatment. This class goes from last week until mid-March. March! That is like a 5-month course which is very un-block schedule-like. Plus it incorporates both pathology and pharmacology, basically the two biggest subjects ever in med school. So uh, no big deal putting them together, because neither is really that intense right?
All my complaining aside, it does soooorta make sense to lump the two together because the course is organized in a systems-based way.
What does that mean? Well, we have a cardiology unit where we learn about all the things that can go wrong with the heart and then we learn about all the ways we can fix those things. Then we have a pulmonary unit where we learn about all the things that can go wrong with the lungs and how to fix them, and etc. for the other organ systems in our body.
But don't pretend this is a block schedule. Come on now.
Aren't new versions of things supposed to have more features than the old versions? Apparently not always. I have a Macbook Pro which came with Quicktime X already installed. OK, great. Haven't really used it. But I recently discovered the joy of not going to lecture. Our lectures are all recorded and put onto ITunes which is SO NICE. Since I like to get things done in the morning, I would rather wake up and get it all done, and then watch the lectures on my own time. If I went to lecture, then by the time I get home I'm exhausted and don't do anything the rest of the day. Plus I usually ended up re-watching lectures at home anyway because I wold inevitably miss something the lecturer said. Blah blah no one is ever going to want to lecture for med school again, I'm ruining medical education blah blah blah. I like watching lectures in my bed. Sorry.
Quicktime X: Bad News Bears
But everyone since MGM - remember biochem? - (ok not everyone, but a lot of people) have been watching their lectures in Quicktime instead of Itunes on 1.5 speed, or 2 speed so that the lectures go faster. I had not jumped on that bandwagon. "No, no, you get more out of it if you watch it at the normal speed." Wrong. Recently there was finally one lecturer who spoke soooo slowlyyyy that I decided to try watching the lecture on 1.5x. AND I COULDN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO IT. I asked my roommate who gave me very explicit instructions. But the menu options simply did not exist.
Quicktime VII (just kidding, 7)
So what does someone of my generation do when we have a problem? Google it and see how other people fixed it. "Where are A/V controls in Quicktime X?" GUESS WHAT. THAT FEATURE DOESN'T EXIST IN QUICKTIME X. What version does my roommate have? 7 (although I think it should be written as Version VII). So I had to download version 7 even though I have a newer version so that I could listen to my lectures faster. And this is not such an easy feat - if you try and download quicktime, it (it = the internet) tries to give you version X obviously because that is the newer one, and why wouldn't someone want the newest version of something?
But all the trouble has changed my life for the better! One of the other perks of watching the lectures at home is pausing them so that you can make sure you write down every word the lecturer says, but that often turns a 50 minute lecture into an hour and 20 minute lecture. But when I watch it at 1.5 speed, even with pausing, it only takes about an hour to watch the 50 minute lecture. Time Saver!
Here's the poster we made that's hanging in the school and in the hospital to advertise some of our events. I just wanted to share it with you all because I'm weirdly really proud of it. And I spent the whole morning printing it.
But here are some of the things I'm involved in that are coming up, and that you can look forward to (some only if you go to NJMS and some only if you're in my family, sorrrrrry):
My review (on this very blog!) of Dr. Tony Youn's book "In Stitches," a humorous take on his journey through med school
Lecture by Dr. Jaime Torres, regional director of Human Health Services on the future of US Healthcare (Mon, 10/24)
Primary Care Careers Dinner Banquet (Wed, 11/16) to celebrate National Primary Care Week
LGBT and AMSA are sponsoring a panel on what it's like to be out and in medicine (Thurs, 11/3) in honor of National Coming Out Week
Global Health 101's major event of the year, Around the World in 80 Minutes, where students teach everyone about the healthcare system and health issues of different countries and serve food from that country (Wed, 11/2)
Our first test for our new class today (take-home, but closed book - I really wonder how many people in the class will actually be honest with that)
Some very fun family events this weekend! :)
Lastlyyyyy, I just started the third book in the Game of Thrones series and it has really been taking up a large portion of my non-studying time. In fact, had I not started it, I probably would have had time for a blog post, and to finish studying for my test already, and to run a marathon, and to learn how to play the guitar, and to learn a new language, and to....
To read excerpts and learn more about "In Stitches," check out Dr. Youn's website here
