Listening to: Arrows - Fences & Danzon no. 2 - Marquez
It's week two. I am tired. I'm consistently concerned that if I tilt my head too far either way all of the information I have carefully and meticulously crammed into my brain will fall out. I would say I'm kidding but... I'm not.
Backtracking! White coat ceremony was this weekend. It was pretty nifty and pretty dull all at once. It's 214 kids putting on a jacket after a million speeches, what do you expect? Dr. Nwosu, our anatomy professor for Block 1, "coated" me and happily, I was able to get both arms in on the first try and didn't have to stand on stage fumbling like I anticipated. The whole process felt incredible, kind of like an acknowledgment of how hard I have worked and will have to work but more so that they decided I was capable- pretty cool. Except there is so much work to do. So much. It's week two and I honestly think I've studied more in the past 7 days than I have in all 23 years of my life. I mean, I was fortunate to be able to do fine by doing literally nothing in high school but I studied in undergrad! Or at least I thought I did. I'm fairing better than the majority of my class because luckily Loyola's biology curriculum is extensive and complex. I've covered most everything we're covering now at some point in my undergraduate education but it's much, much, much more complicated now. Maybe not more complicated but it definitely hits you at a much swifter pace. For example: in anatomy we've covered the vertebrae, spinal cord, spinal nerves, brain, ventral system, nervous system, ribs, pelvis, muscles, muscle layers, innervation, blood vessels, molecular components, clinical applications of all of the above, and today we started the heart. All in four 50 minute lectures. All of that material would have been covered in a semester of undergraduate Anatomy. Now you understand my irrational fear of everything falling out of my ears- that's just one class!
I act like I don't like it but we all know I'm loving it because I'm a nerd. Anatomy is the most overwhelming, well it should be, Histology actually is because of our visiting professor (....) but that class is supposed to be the easiest. Our tutors today told us that they had about 200 slides total for block 1 and thus far we have about 600 slides with 2 weeks to go. I don't want to talk about it.
I promise this whole post won't be about classes! That isn't my whole life, only like 99.99% of it! Coincidentally, that's how much DNA each human being has in common with each other human. Cool, huh? Only .01% of your DNA makes you unique. I'll stop!
In other news: We have cockroaches. We as in the island and have as in they're everywhere. More importantly: DID YOU KNOW THEY CAN FLY? That just seems unfair! They're already basically little (ha, little) tank bugs, why do they need flight too? Talk about winning the evolutionary lottery. Thus when Marisa and I rented a car this weekend my top priority was buying an economy size of these little cockroach huts filled with poison that apparently smells delicious to them. I set them up everywhere but I will never check them because denial is the key to happiness when it comes to cockroaches. Whoever said I wasn't full of wisdom? Another wisdom nugget from the bowels of my cerebrum popped out in histology review today: "Histology is like a crunchy taco, you bite into it all excited for it to be the best, and then it all falls to shit." I'm sleep deprived, just go with it. Be glad you don't share the .01% that makes me say weird things with me.
I did get out a little bit this weekend. Quelle surprise! Saturday Marisa and I rented the afore mentioned car and took it to ACE (not the American ace, basically like target minus all the fun stuff) and the grocery store. But since all of the gas stations sell in liter increments we accidentally filled the tank completely to the brim, (liter to gallon conversions weren't on the MCAT, ok?) and thus drove around the island literally 3 times but made very little dent. Damn fuel efficiency. But! We did get a good idea of what's here. It's still ridiculously pretty. Most of our time was spent on the French side because that's where my favorite European store, Promod, is. No mom, I didn't buy anything. Not because I didn't want to but because I am literally using every single hanger I own. Whatever works, right? Fortunately for me this island has approximately 2 main roads and you can take them around the whole island and back to our town- Cupecoy. We thought we were completely lost but came across campus and in a moment of genius questioned whether or not AUC had a campus on the French side. (One day we'll be your doctors boys and girls).
The rest of the weekend was spent in air conditioning napping, studying, and watching Chopped. It was ideal.
Last thing- I found an apartment! It's magical and I love it. The landlord is very French and let me try to negotiate in frenglish but it was too ridiculous so he switched back to English. I did not. Who says I'm stubborn?
No comments:
Post a Comment