Time for a random rant...

OK, for the most part, the last few days have been worlds better than last week...however there are a few things that have recently just (to quote a professor of mine) "chapped my butt." (I think the reason I like this phrase so much is that no matter how bad of a day you're having, the moment you say it, you can't help but laugh! :) OK, so this is all just to say that I'm going to rant and rave for a little bit just to get all this out, so feel free to just not read it! :)

1) Some of you know about this first one...about 6 years ago (this July) while I was in high school, I was in a car accident. I didn't get a ticket, the other guy was seemingly fine, blah, blah, blah...This last summer late in June I got a phone call from my dad informing me that I was being sued for $50,000 for "pain and suffering" from the guy that had been in the accident with me. Evidently he had found out that the statute of limitations was about to run out in 2 WEEKS and decided to see if he could sue me for something....seriously, suing a med student?? I'd be more than happy to give you my $100,000+ in loans! I just got the first of many questionnaires/legal things that I have to fill out and send back to the lawyer. This one included such fun questions as... "What time did you go to bed the night before the accident?" "What time did you get up the morning of the accident?" "What did you have for breakfast the morning of the accident?" "What did you eat?" "At what time did you eat?" and other inane questions that I wouldn't remember 2 months after the fact, let alone 5 1/2 years after the fact! Grrr....

2) Why do people think they can schedule something the day before and make it "mandatory" that the people who need to be there are there? Why do the people that do this always seem to be the same people that are going through the same things you are...the ones who should understand that in the semester before boards, last minute things just don't work!?!?! I have a meeting that was "called" for one of the clubs I'm an officer in for tomorrow night and I've spent a good portion of my night trying to re-shuffle things so I can show up at this "mandatory" meeting.

3) Why do people go 10 miles below the speed limit in the left lane? (I just had to throw this in there... )

OK...I guess I didn't have as much to rant about as I thought which is good. Since my mom always told me that if I was going to say something bad I'd have to say 2 good things for each bad thing I'll try to redeem this post now.

What currently makes me happy...
1) Follies (med school prom) is on Friday night; I love my dress and I'm so excited for a night to dress up and hang out and laugh/dance/eat with my friends all night!
2) I have great friends here at school who have supported me through some of the toughest times yet...
3) I got Bentley a new leash and collar tonight which make taking him on a walk and trying to leash train him SO much easier! :) No more purple hand from the circulation being cut off by the leash anymore!
4) My house is clean....I stayed up until 1am last night cleaning after studying last night, but for an anal retentive person like me it was worth it!
5) I get to see some of the most important people in the world to me (second only to my family) in just 2 weeks!
6) I wore flip flops today!!!

On a side note....Happy Birthday to my Brother today!! Unfortunately he's on a business trip in Boston this week, and even worse, he got food poisoning last night and has been REALLY sick today! Hopefully he starts feeling better, and we'll celebrate when he gets home this weekend!

OK...back to the books...

Thank you!

To any of you guys who prayed for me during my finals week for endocrinology last week, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I was really nervous and stressed out about this written final and I didn't even have time to get through all of the information...However, I got my grades back today and on the final, I got a VERY solid A and a higher grade than I've gotten in a while. Thanks so much!

I'd love to write more, but I've got to get back to catching up on some of that board studying I missed during the last two weeks of endocrine!

One of the many reasons my head hurts...

Now If I could just learn this and the countless other pathways and random endocrinology facts that have been thrown at me these past five weeks I'd be fine for tomorrow morning....Oy.

It's gonna be a long night folks!

I'll try to update some more on my life in general--things have actually been happening--sometime after all this insanity of endless endocrinology tests are over. Back to the books for the night...

Quote

"I can't think of a single reason why I should be a surgeon, but I can think of a thousand reasons why I should quit. They make it hard on purpose... there are lives in our hands. There comes a moment when it's more than just a game, and you either take that step forward or turn around and walk away. I could quit, but here's the thing; I love the playing field." -- Dr. Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy"

One of the many reasons I love this show, however unbelievable it is becoming. :)

Which by the way....can they still call it "Grey's Anatomy" if they kill off Meredith GREY??? :) Interested to see what happens this week....I'm sure they'll make it even more "believable" and have her come back after more than an hour of asystole.....but you don't want to get me started on that soapbox! :)

My Happiness

This is the forecast for this week...after several weeks of cold, I'm SO excited for this week. I don't even care that it's finals week for Endocrinology. Plus, check out Friday's temperature!! I'm supposed to go out that night to celebrate a friend's birthday too, so it will be nice that it's going to be so much warmer than last week! YAY!!

I'm hoping this means that spring is coming soon.

Life will never be the same

Uggh..I have been studying WAY too much lately. Today I was eating some candy I got for Valentine's day and I was eating the Bottle Caps candy....As I looked at the package, literally the first thought that came to mind was, "Those bottle cap guys look like Osteoclasts!"

I'm such a freaking dork....I need to get out more. Anyone free on June 6th? It looks like that will be the day that my pasty little self will crawl out from underneath the rock I've been living under for the past two years! :)

Ok, I've got yet another test on Monday (and Thursday, and Friday, and a ton more later on!) so I should get back to the books. I just thought this incredibly pathetic moment should be shared with the rest of the world...I'm pretty sure I'm never even going to come close to being "normal" ain.

I really need to stop procrastinating

OK, I'm so incredibly behind in my studying for this week's lectures because I was studying for the practical we had yesterday. However, instead of being motivated, I seem to be wasting more time! I created my own M and M while killing time (I shouldn't be allowed to be a med student! I procrastinate too much!) So...this is what I would look like as a little chocolate candy....OK, I'll go study now!

If you want to create yourself as an M&M go here!http://www.becomeanmm.com/

Note to self...

For my own future reference...Staying out partying with friends until 1:30am, and then getting up for class the next morning at 5:30 doesn't mix.....

I'm so incredibly tired today but last night was so much fun and so worth it!

OK, nothing much to say, but I just thought I'd share that thought so maybe in the future I'd think through things a little more beforehand! :) (yikes...at the age of 23 I'm already getting old and can't stay out that late anymore...at least not on a weeknight...how sad.)

Party girl...

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful day whether or not you have someone to celebrate it with and know that you're loved SO much! This will be quick, because I have to get ready to go out and celebrate the day with special people and friends and also celebrate yet another test being over with! (I was just oh so thrilled that the school decided to give us the lovely V-Day present of a test; one of our professors was referring to it as VD day and was even wearing his "Syphilis/spirochete tie....disturbing. Please don't let me turn into that!)

Anywho...here's a few pictures of things that made me smile..

The first is the awesome card I got from Mom and Dad Kagarise about 2 or 3 days ago in the mail....

Next, this was my valentine's shirt...I got it at Old Navy for only $4 on clearance! Yay for cheap things when you're dirt poor! One of the OMT fellows asked me if I wore it on purpose today and I proudly said "Yes!" :) Hehehe... (In case you can't read it it says, "In tennis love means zero."

OK, I'm off to go spend a little time with my special valentine and then try to fix myself up (yikes!) to go out and celebrate! Love to you all!

I'm going to get the black lung....

Today after OMT lab, I heard a few people talking and someone said something about an explosion. This immediately caught my interest (well, I was really bored at this point so talking about underwater basket-weaving would have probably piqued my interest at this point). As I asked them what was going on, they said there had been an explosion near school and there was a huge cloud of smoke coming up right behind school. I went out with a few friends to look and minus the fire (because our view was obscured by buildings) the picture above is what we saw.

Evidently, a chemical plant less than a mile from my school exploded today and was still having explosions going on when I left school. There were also three railroad cars right by the plant that were filled w/ an "unknown flammable substance" that were likely to catch fire soon too. They evacuated the immediate area (which eventually included our school) and shut down highway 35 (which is a HUGE highway) going north and south bound. Thankfully I was able to get out of the city before traffic got too ugly, but it was interesting to see. We were all joking around at school about it (before we were all told to leave)....We're all pretty sure that any children we have some day are going to have horns or something weird from whatever chemicals we just inhaled...

So see...interesting things really do happen in Kansas City....like fires, gang wars, and chemical plant explosions....ah, I love the city life. :)

Updates

OK, so you all don't think I'm completely suicidal after my last post, I thought I'd just update on the past few days.

I'll warn you now, there really wasn't a lot that went on or is going on right now in my life that doesn't include studying, so there's not really a whole lot to update!

Friday night was pretty good...I decided that I was taking the night off after getting home from school and the gym. I just didn't feel like studying and I knew that's exactly what I would be doing. So, I rented a few movies, got some chinese food and settled in for a good night. I watched "The Devil Wears Prada" which was a fun chick-flick to just veg out and not have to think. I rented another movie, but by the time I through the first movie, I was tired so I headed to bed. All day Saturday and Sunday (about 11hrs a piece) were spent studying for the first endocrine test on Monday morning.

We've had a lot of biochemistry so far in this section; it's probably my weakest of all the subjects here so a lot of studying had to go into this test. I still felt completely unprepared, but we'll see how it all went when the grades come back.

Saturday night, my brother and I watched the Illusionist...this is hands down one of the best movies I've seen in a really long time. I really liked it. My key for judging that it was a good movie was that I was incredibly exhausted from studying all day and I didn't even come close to falling asleep during it! :) It was a great movie and Edward Norton is a fantastic actor, so I would definitely recommend it. It's always nice to be able to spend time with my brother too so that was fun as well.

Sunday night I kind of half watched the super bowl, but I was trying to study during it, which wasn't working out so well. Oh well....

Monday we had the quiz (that the previous post talked about); it was just about all I was expecting, so no surprises there. Overall, I've been pretty productive in the past few days. I finally got a board studying schedule planned out, and if all goes as planned I should be able to get about 260 hours of studying in before the COMLEX (and if they cancel one of our sections, like it looks like they will that gives me an extra 1oo hours!! Sad that this is what excites me) so I'm hoping that's enough. I'm trying to study an extra two hours each weekday for boards and an extra four each weekend. We'll see how much I'm able to keep it all up! :)

Nothing else too exciting to report...my brain is too tired to think of anything profound or I would write about what I've been thinking about. Sadly, I've been so busy (and it looks like I will be for a little while) that I haven't really thought about (or had the energy to think about) anything not related to school, the boards, endocrinology, etc... I'm becoming VERY boring VERY fast! :)

Tomorrow night I'm going to see Matt Wertz in Laurence, KS so that should be fun. I've planned my studying around it so I should still get as much done as I need to! It will be a good little break...

Well, I've got to go study some more, so I'll catch you all later. I just wanted to let you know that things aren't always bad as I make them out to be the night before the test and that I'm surviving! (for the whole 2 people that read this!) Love you and miss you all...

Imagination....

Imagine with me for a second...

Imagine that the train in that picture is my first endocrinology test tomorrow....It's big and strong and packed with useless facts about biochemistry, hormones, diseases, and all sorts of things I just don't understand...it is packed with SO much information that it weighs a ton...It's gonna hurt when it hits.

Now imagine that I am the person on the bike....The bike is old, (at least it feels like it!), worn out...and has a flat tire....Oh yeah, and the person on the bike has spent the little time this weekend she wasn't studying (and should have been sleeping) dealing with the most wonderful food poisoning of all time (Chinese food's revenge!).....

I'm gonna get killed tomorrow....Oy.

Some days I just love med school....today is not one of them. :) Gotta love spending this much time studying only to feel LESS intelligent when it's all said and done.

I'm off to go give my tired brain at least a few hours of sleep. Adios.

Big Dates...

No, not of the fun kind...I finally got my scheduling permit for the USMLE-Step 1 and I was able to schedule my USMLE exam. So here are the two most important dates in my life for the next 4 months....

May 29th, 2007--COMLEX Step 1; 9am-4pm

June 5th, 2007--USMLE Step 1; 9am-4pm

Any and all thoughts and prayers on those dates are greatly appreciated! :)
Yikes...I have to get studying!

Happy Birthday Laura!

Ray of Sunshine...

Today has been a pretty fabulous day so far. It was just one of those days where so many things just made me smile or laugh that you can't help but love the day. It was definitely appreciated because I've been having a string of weeks it seems like now where I've been stressed, overwhelmed, and not knowing which end was up. Today it finally felt that at least for a little bit, things had turned around. Here's just a few things that are making me smile right now.

1) Our first batch of loan checks came in today!! While getting money is always an exciting thing, this was DESPERATELY needed. I have over a thousand dollars (board fees) on my credit card just waiting to be paid and I couldn't currently pay it with what I had in my account. I also had the countless bills that we all face waiting to be paid as well, so having this money takes a HUGE load off of my back.

2) I found out that they're most likely making our Integrative section in April optional with no tests and no required attendance. This is amazing for me because it gives me three more weeks of MUCH-NEEDED study time for the boards which will be wonderful!

3) I love that I have friends here that make me laugh on a daily basis. At one point this morning, Matt and I were laughing so hard at a conversation we had been having that we couldn't even look at each other during lecture because we'd start laughing again. Sigh...fun times...I'm going to miss these people next year when we all move!

4) Apparently I remind Justin of Elliot from Scrubs...I laughed at this. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, because she's such a wreck, but we were cracking jokes all morning and it was good to just let loose and laugh!

5) I woke up late this morning, but for the first time in a while I felt like I had actually slept. I've been too exhausted for too long, so to wake up mostly rested, in a good mood, and without a headache was a huge thing for me.

6) Jeanna put up new pictures from New Years which had me cracking up. I loved them!

7) In a little over four months all this craziness with boards should be over and I can head out for a weekend to Toledo to find a place to live.

8) Bentley's just too cute and making me smile...keeping me from studying, but making me smile!

9) It's just one of those days that I can feel that through it all, life is good....and I'm happy.