Day 1- Study Break

Currently "studying" in a Caribou Coffee (a new favorite change of scenery- much better decor than Prior Health Sciences Library and not (yet) full of other stressed out med students). It's kind of funny what my life has come to this past month... After crossing the threshold that is the beginning of medical school, my life has been reduced to (in order of importance): when/from whom will I get my next meal, how much money I can spend on groceries a week, where the next new place to study will be (preferably that offers free wi-fi- after all, we are THAT broke), how to find a space in said study place that can accommodate the amount of people that are "studying" with me and our need to discuss out loud the origins, insertions, actions, and innervations of every skeletal muscle known to man, and how I can fit in a nap, a meal, and the recommended 6 hours of studying into one day, while still trying to get at least that much sleep a night. A pretty pathetic-sounding existence, compounded by the fact that just two days ago, I was asleep in bed by 9:30 PM... You think I'm kidding. I wish.... I've decided one of my new mantras is, "It will all be worth it in the end..." We'll see how long that carries me through this ridiculous pace of school and studying without the benefit of a true social life.

Until now, I never though of myself as having ADD, but when faced with the prospect of studying for as many hours a day as I plan on sleeping that night, there are just so many other things that seem more pressing than the brachial plexus. For example, a typical hour of studying may go like this: Reading a paragraph or two, checking my OSUMC email, checking my facebook, checking my AOLMail, checking facebook again, people watching/shooting the people across the way a dirty look for being so loud and obnoxious and interrupting my "studying", checking my OSUMC email, reading another paragraph, checking one of a host of several other websites that are marginally more entertaining than anatomy. Wash, rinse, repeat...

In other news, there is an up-side to all of this medical school stuff. I've met some really awesome people already, including a couple of sweet roommates (a testament to the wonders of facebook). Already, I have some great memories, and I've found that most of the time, they come from nothing more than laughing hard enough to cry about a random comment made by a professor ("Today is a very exciting day..."), laughing hard enough to cry about a random comments made by study partners in the middle study-sessions ("My hair is crazy. It falls out all over the place"), and laughing about how sad it is that our lives have been reduced to a series of platitudes that we have concocted to reassure ourselves that we are indeed not as ill-prepared as we feel ("Why learn today what we can learn tomorrow," "We can't be doing less studying than anyone else... right?," and "It's better know a little about a lot of things than a lot about a few things.")

Well, it's time to go back to studying. Never have I worked so hard to ensure I know 70% of the information I'm supposed to, except maybe in Organic Chemistry.

More to come...

LG