Goljan

Obviously he is my hero. I was listening to his heme lectures this morning, and he had a Huntington Station shout-out. This made me supremely happy.

You know you're a medical student...

So to pretty much everyone I knew before starting medical school, this list pretty accurately explains my life right now. I offer it as an apology for losing the ability to be a normal person, and offer this for no other reason than to at least say that I stole this from someone else, and its not just me.

• When drinking, you and your friends think that the increase in your AST/ALT tomorrow is going to be hilarious!
• You still do drugs, but at least you know what they do to you. And never fail to inform those you're doing them with.
• You blame neurotransmitters for anything going wrong in your life.
• You can have a conversation about the abscess you drained today while eating cream of broccoli soup without any problem at all. Or for that matter, over any kind of meal.
• You amuse yourself by hiding anatomy and trauma pictures about the apartment for your non-medical roommate to find at awkward moments.
• You chuckle whenever you see "fork" or "penis" labeled in a Netter's diagram.
• You still attempt to explain to your family what's going on in med school.
• You have named a dead person ... and talked to them about your stresses while finding their lumbar plexus.
• When you go out with non-medical students, you're abnormally quiet, because you don't know what to talk about besides med school.
• You know that specialties are pre-defined by personality type.
• The drama in your life now is worse than it ever was in high school.
• You refer to the semesters you took organic chemistry as "The Good Old Days."
• You've ever heard the phrase "You must be smart, you're in med school!" and wanted to vehemently disagree.
• You can't remember the last time you did anything spontaneous.
• You consistently tell people that they just don't understand how bad it really is.
• You know that, in theory, you have a family and friends, but you can't place the last time you saw them.
• You don't bother dating because the divorce rate is 70% for physicians.
• You constantly find yourself saying things like "I just have to get to spring break" or "I just have to get through Step 1."
• You question every day if you should drop out and open a coffee shop, then realize that as soon as you were two semesters into med school, you were too far in debt to be anything but a doctor.
• You can name the four people in your class who are the question-asker, the arguer, the bigshot doctor's son/daughter and the stoner/alkie/druggie who's never IN class.
• You know countless dirty mnemonics for parts of the body, but couldn't tell anyone what the front-page headline today is.
• Your life consists of three parts: studying, drinking, and sleeping.
• You're not really sure which professional organizations you're actually a member of, but you never joined the AMA.
• You've compared your friends to various immune system components, or some other enzyme.
• You notice your friends ask you how schools going, then realize they immediately regret it when you actually answer.
• People assume you know something when you tell them you're in med school, but you know that you haven't learned anything.
• You've dissected a penis and can explain the way Viagra works.
• There are still drugs, body parts, slides, cell types, or diseases you don't know the morning of your exam.
• You know that there is such a thing as studying too much and that after a certain peak, your grade starts going down with increased studying.
• You know that even with residency hour restrictions, you're still making less than the secretary.
• People constantly ask what med school is like, and all you can think of to say is "It really sucks."
• You've never had problems before, but 6 months into med school you're on birth control, an anti-depressant, an anti-anxiolytic and sleep medication.
• You can name 3 specialties you're interested in, then immediately rule two of them out because they don't pay well enough to pay off your debt.
• Half your class is Asian of some sort. The other half is Jewish. All of you are completely nuts.
• A "study group" is you, your syllabus, and your Red Bull.
• You assess beverages for amount of caffeine before buying only those with more caffeine than coffee. Then you explain to the cashier how caffeine works for you.
• You've done physical exams on your roommate, boyfriend, girlfriend, and any close friends.
• You think "AWESOME!" if someone keels over in front of you.
• You're pretty sure you used to be a normal social person, but now you can completely stop conversations by talking about the time that guy peed and bled all over you during a code.
• You meet someone and have to put off a date for months because you're crazy busy.
• Advisors tell you that you have to balance your life with med school, and then are baffled when you ask them how to do it.
• You've thought something like "what's another $10,000 in loans?"
• You're really frightened by the thought of some of your classmates becoming doctors.
• You go a week without sleeping with no problem at all.
• Grey's Anatomy, House, Scrubs, Dr. 90210, Nip/Tuck and ER are your favorite shows, but you point out all the wrong things in them all the time.
• You have diagnosed yourself or others with at least 5 rare diseases (PML, Kaposi's sarcoma, Measles, Rheumatic Heart Disease, etc.)
• People talking to you for longer than 10 minutes start to get a glazed-over look while you wax poetic about kidney function. And you don't even notice.
• You keep trying to "catch" the kidney, because Bates says you can. Nevermind that every doctor you know says you can't.
• You create Facebook groups instead of studying for exams.
• The word "holiday" indicates the weekend after exams to you.
• You have a non-medical student in your life who either elbows you when you say inappropriate things or says "forgive him/her, s/he's a med student."
• You have mastered the art of only remembering things for a few hours (specifically, the 12 hours up to and including the exam.)
• You remember mnemonics from anatomy, but don't actually remember what they stand for.
• You have at some point had a yelling, screaming, throwing things, breaking down and crying incident in the last month.
• Your parents ask what you want for Christmas and you say "to be done with this semester."
• Your sibling calls you crying or upset, but in the middle of their hysterics, asks you if you're studying or if you can take time to talk, concerned that they're bothering you.
• You've thought something along the lines of "Couldn't my cousin/grandfather/brother have waited to get married/die/come visit until exams were over?"
• You've read, heard, or wrote a poem, performed or choreographed a dance, or drawn pictures of anatomy, anatomy lab or med school in general.
• You lose something like your license or cell phone a week before exams and don't even realize it's gone til afterwards.
• You have heard classmates say "I'm going to fail" before the exam, many who then told you they got over a 90% on the exam ... and many who really did fail and got a 9%.
• You see or hear about some disease or medically-related thing and instantly think "am I supposed to know that?"
• You still think that patients actually will fit right into symptom parameters set by textbooks.
• You've read House of God, don't totally get it, but know that you will when you're an intern.
• You're anti-war, nonconformist, and dislike structure - yet still considered doing the Army/Navy/Air Force Health Programs in order to have them pay off your debt.
• You find yourself becoming more like House and Dr. Cox as time goes on.
• You watch medicine on TV shows and think "HA! As IF!"
• When you talk about school to friends and family and every sentence is followed by "...is that good?"
• You celebrate a 70 on a test.
• You've purposely sacrificed two tests in order to get an 80 on the third ... because there's absolutely no way to ace 8 subjects at the same time.
• You see neurons in soap suds in your shower.

Another Alternate Career?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/nyregion/13braunstein.html?th&emc=th

I think that I would really enjoy following trials like this. Its very Dominick Dunne.

My Life Blows

God this sucks. Yesterday, after having spent the previous three days studying my ass off for pharm, I did a QBank quiz, and scored ridiculously low. To make myself feel better I decided to give myself a study break and watch some Law and Order. I turned on the TV, only to discover that somehow my DVR box had reset and everything on it had been erased. This morning I had to take that ridiculous pharm shelf exam, which was just absurd. Now, just a few minutes ago, I opened up the Nintendo that I had ordered off of eBay a few weeks ago, hooked it up to my tv and tried it out. The first time I turned it on it worked, but it was kind of staticy. I turned everything off, checked the connections, took the game out, blew on it, blew in the box... and now nothing. I press power, nothing happens. No menu screen, no black screen, just absolutely nothing. Once I pull myself out of this funk I suppose I'll try it out on the other TV, but right now I'm just thoroughly broken.