Beauty and the dog show

Spring break is wrapping up well. I am looking forward to coming back to the friends of my sweet little college town. Some bad ass salad would be nice as well. Road food really turns on the bloat. I might consider another paleo 30 day challenge to get myself back into fighting shape. Or at least a "screw you wheat, we really don't get along like I'd like."

But I really couldn't ask for a better spring break. It's been a true visit to childhood nostalgia  I blazed through a marathon of Madoka Magica with my best friend of elementary school. I played table top games with my sister and ate at her favorite restaurants. And finally, I'm in New York with my middle school best friend looking at art galleries, making jewelry, and generally just letting her dress me up before going out. And since she's in the fashion business, she gets really into it. 

It's given me a few new ideas. This spring break is sort of turning out to be a reset for me. Will I keep up with straightening my hair and makeup? I'm recognize that there's this vague sense that the profession would be more pleased with me. Straight hair = professional. Curly hair = hot mess and frizz. Make up = lively looking = professional. Natural face = tired. 

Truthfully, I feel like crafting the professional, put together, alpha lady look is like entering into a dog show. And I'm a dog who hasn't been trained for it. You can groom me and preen me. Hell, I can even walk the circles and keep my mouth shut for a bit. But you put a taco in front of me and it is squirting straight out the back end and I'm giving the guys good bye bro hugs instead of air kisses. Or I'm commenting that the paint colors in this picture remind me of watered down bile from the autopsy I went to some weeks back, so I think I like it the best. 

I guess I was never blessed with a lady filter. But I did manage to wear 3 inch heels that are a size too small for me as my primary shoes for the last two days with nary a whimper. This dog grooms well. Particularly if you put her in wedges. 

Some of this I will synthesize into my play. The greatest appeal of beauty is play for me right now. Oh, there was a time when I studied it like a science, for the purpose of appearing appropriate for interviews. But, muh. That's more of the damn dog show I'm talking about. Heh, but I'd be lying if I claimed I wasn't tempted to enter. I've got a small list of products I'm going to do price checks on when I get back home.

Regardless, this Spring break has been good to me. I feel like I'm starting fresh in a way. Tomorrow is going to be the start of another long train ride. I'll put down more thoughts then.

Be well.

Alright. Bolt bus tickets are bought. One more thing down on the list.

Stream of thought: Gotta pack.

I'm jotting some thoughts down here to make it easier to pack. March 1st sneaks up on you pretty quick when Feb is so stumpy.

Tickets. Got the train tickets, still need to buy a Bolt Bus ticket to go between Boston and NY. And I can't forget to print that whole mess up! Printing. And maps. I'm gonna need maps too.

Updating the ISIC card to keep the train tickets cheaper. Gotta pick that up on Friday, but the application was taken care of today.

Packing. OK. So.

I've got to fit a week worth of clothes into a carry on. Trains between NY and Boston didn't allow checked baggage and I have a layover. The weather is in the 40s, and I'm assuming a little bit wet. Which seems like...I'm going to need a bit more jackets than I'm used to. We'll make it fit.

I had a hiking back pack, but I forgot one key element. That thing was only able to make it through my last trip on broken dreams and duct tape. And when it was done, I'm pretty sure that I tossed it. There's a chance it may be rolling around in the back of the trunk. Still, despite the condition it is in my head, I'm still tempted to use it if I find it. After applying another layer of duct tape of course. Otherwise I'll be using a much smaller bag + a regular book bag.

My strategy is to layer as many clothes as I can possibly get on myself until I transform into a baked potato. This is to leave more space for the non clothes items, mainly my laptop, a folder filled with all my traveling paperwork, and of course, my first aid review book for the STEP. Gotta do something on the long ride. Normally I harass fellow passengers on flights, so I imagine that it's not necessarily going to be much different on a train. Still, you never know who you're going to be next too, and chances are that they're less willing to to talk to you than you think.* Being young and cute helps, but I'm not sure I carry that quite so well anymore.

Alright, what the hell do I really need to pack. Thinking. Break it down by activity.

When I'm in Atlanta, visiting a friend for a day will be super low key. Same with seeing my sister in Boston. We're going to play table top games and cook food. Minimal threshold of dress: I'm warm enough. When I go to NY, I will be hanging out with an old friend who is a fashion designer and she wants to go out to party. Minimum threshold: much higher. Maybe I can wash things at my sister's. I also know my friend will lend me clothes, but there's no way I'm fitting into her miniature size shoes.

3 pants. 7 tops. Big jacket, little jacket. Clubbing dress. Vibrams, boots. Heels? I don't even own pumps. Whatevs, figure it out. Tights. Bras. Make up. Toiletries. ...

Bleh, I'm over thinking this. I'm just going to take 3 pairs of pants and then create 7 outfits around them, throwing a dress in for good measure. Then I'll cover myself in jackets and the heaviest boots I own, lumpy space princess style. Left over space gets filled with books, computer, make up, and travel paper work. That's exactly what I just said anyway isn't it? Heh, yeesh.

Hey, I didn't promise you an exciting post. Just stream of thought word vomit about packing.

I hope this all goes well. It's surprising to me at how last minute, yet coming together this whole experience is. I've been able to find a friend in each city I have a lay over. I remembered to get my loans in just in time for them to be dispersed today. Money should show up tomorrow. I'm getting my ISIC card renewed and it will be ready JUST IN TIME, on Friday. This has all been pulled together in the matter of a week (except for the loans), and I am shocked. It just so happened that a class mate was carpooling to the same city I'm going to go out of. Got the dates screwed up but was able to change the ticket on the phone. This is crazy how smoothly this is all working out.

I can think of ways that this could screw up. I have contingency plans for each of them. But we'll come to them when they happen.

I'm going to get on a train the day after tomorrow and trek across the country. And it's all because I said I wanted to. Me. woah.

If you couldn't tell, I'm just a bundle of nerves and excitement. :)

Squee!

------

*As an off note, I used to always wear college T-shirts whenever I traveled by myself. I go to a big state university where people get obsessed about football. It's a conversation opener, and you're very likely to find someone walking around who is in your conference when you're traveling. It allows you to temporarily pick up a posse so you don't feel alone.

"Ladies don't travel alone." The first of much bull I'm done with.

You know, there's always a part of you that wants to go crazy once you get out a long term relationship. Live dangerously.

Of course, that's not to say that your standard rational side will allow any such nonsense. Which like any other average med student, I've got the square trait in spades.

I already dug that grave, nailed that coffin, and effectively put myself on lock down by boldly claiming to my roommate that I was giving up men for lent. I'm not even Christian  But my roommate is. Between her watch, my honest word, and my three shot HPV vaccine series massive lag time to immunity, I think I'll have myself covered from making gloriously bad decisions for a while.

We can only hope.

In the mean time, I'll compromise with my compulsions for crazy. This spring break I'm getting the hell out of the house, and I'm traveling. Yeah...that's a week from now. And no, I definitely can't afford plane tickets for that. But I can afford train tickets. So my plan is to see how many old friends I can reconnect with. I've never traveled alone, and it kinda seems silly why. I didn't want people to worry about me. Like I had a responsibility to keep them from worrying about me. Or maybe there would be too much resistance. "Wait, you're going where? To meet who? But you're X years old, a young woman..."

So I could never bring myself to travel when I was young, and certainly not while I was seeing someone. Certainly not appropriate for a young southern lady to travel by herself, but why would you leave your boyfriend by himself at home when you spent so much time from him in school in the first place?

I want to make it known that no one ever flat out told me that I wasn't allowed to do something. Hell, no one's ever bothered to call me a young, southern lady either. These ideals aren't spoken so much as they are felt. It comes in the form of your parents yelling at you for forgetting your phone because "you could have been dead in a ditch somewhere". I comes in forewarning whispers about "creepers" and "crazies" when you tell someone you write to a pen pal you met online. It comes in the force never ending lapping waves at your feet, reminding you that you are a woman in a big nasty world that preys upon little pretties.

Buh. I'm tired of it. Particularly the part where you feel like you need to ask for permission to do anything that is not pre-approved, but who do you ask?

Which is the bright side of being 26 now. Sure, you feel old when you're in a college town and 23 officially puts you at oldest dude/tte in the club. But hitting 26 gives you a certain freedom. The freedom to say "I'm too old for this kid shit." Then that's that, and it's over.

So, no. I really don't think that I'm doing anything daring by planning a trip to travel alone. But I am surprised that this is the first time I'm going through with it. Which I'm actually really excited about. And well, funny enough, I'm only willing to do it now that I'm single. I'm sure I could go all psychotherapist on why my brain was inspired now of all times, but I think it's a good bet I should get some sleep.

Be well,
-Kick Kick

Fresh start

I haven't posted in a while. The long story short is that due to some weird circumstances a lot of communication issues started rearing their head in my relationship. True to stereotype, it fell apart. When push came to shove, med school won out. I'll just leave it at that. He's a damn good person, otherwise I wouldn't have dated him for over three years. We were simply less compatible than we thought.

So with that on the side, I've been dedicating the rest of my free time to keeping afloat in class. Hence the not writing. Today was a blur of four exams, and there's a straggler that's coming up tomorrow in a class focused around statistics and evaluating the scientific literature. Evidence based medicine is the buzz word.

Of course when you're cramming for pathology, radiology, oncology, and clinical diagnosis the day before...you just figure that stats can be figured out the night before. So some students and I met up randomly to start teaching the material to each other and that's what we've been at for the last five hours. It actually went really well, considering how puzzled we all were previously.

And I have to say this, tonight was a night where I felt incredibly proud to be a part of these people. It's probably the first time I've felt proud to be a part of medicine. I wasn't even proud when I originally got accepted to medical school in the past, just relieved. I have some theories why, mainly that a lot of the people I knew really resented physicians regardless of whatever prestige they associated with them. Or there's the constant talk of pathological competitiveness, neuroticism, and just plain old self absorption you hear infecting the entire gestation of the physician from pre-med to attending. I bought into that fear before I got into medicine, and I've been carrying the guilt of being associated with those opinions ever since. Not tonight.

I'm surrounded by the hardest working people I know. We build each other. I just felt a great sense of calm working through this material that I wouldn't have felt if I was working through it on my own. The communication was easy, free flowing, non judging. Everyone was going to get to where they needed to be, the common goal. I profoundly respect my classmates.

And really, that's what I needed to respect the field. So, I'd like to clarify. I'm not proud to be getting a job. I'm not proud I was picked by admissions. I'm not proud of the "profession". Fuck all of that. It really doesn't move me.

I am proud that I know good people. Respect an unflappable truth.  The oil in your feathers. It doesn't really matter what anti-doctor, anti-medical system, anti-faith-in-humanity comments get thrown at you. You respect the people around you. Sheets of stinging rain roll smoothly off what only shared experience brings. You can't bring me down with what builds me up. I know better.

While I was smiling quietly to myself, this realization has been a long, slow process. I think it's made  me more willing to be a patient because I'm finally willing to trust my provider. I also feel a little more stable on my feet, which I'm going to need now that I'm out of a relationship which I put so much of myself into. Truthfully, dating again sort of terrifies me because it's been so long. And I'm in no rush. Which is good, because my track record is to hop into new relationships too quickly, never being single, and in a sense, never really figuring out exactly where my identity settles when I don't have an outside source of influence.

I am dusting myself off, in a slow, methodical fashion. Yesterday I went in to get an HPV vaccine and got my standard well woman's exam while I was at it. Offices need to stock themselves with blankets, because those paper smocks are SO DAMN FRIGID. Nothing like being naked and cold to make you feel dehumanized at worst and as "one with the freezie pops" at best. My NP asked me if I'd like STD testing as well, and I figured, sure why the hell not. Seems like a honest way to enter the dating field again. And then I was told that the billing is different on a new system and this would now cost me a few hundred dollars. So....it's health department time!

Luckily there's no rush. I'll get that appointment set after the exam tomorrow and the following one on Monday. Some weeks are just a little more smooshed in than others. Life, right?

That's all I can reasonably write for now. Hope life is going well on your end too. Wherever you might be.

Start STEPing

Yep. I'm back. The semester starts again. Over winter break I was an absolute vegetable. A glorious vegetable who had reverted back into a child like state of playing games and eating holiday sweets. I regret nothing. I really was burnt out.

Of course now that I have a couple of days of classes under my belt, I need to get cracking. And more importantly, I need to start rolling out the plan for the step test. Because that's in June.

Yeah. I know. It starts.

For the uninitiated, the STEP exams are our boards. I don't know what the heck it stands for. We get three total, the first two are taken in middle school, and the last one is taken in residency. STEP 1 is the one that people stress about the most by far, because welll... 1.we're at that point in our lives, and 2. the scores you get determine what individual residencies you can apply to. The step is so important, that to get a non competitive score means to discount certain specialties all together. For example, you must score about the 75th percentile or higher to be looking at plastic surgery residency. They're most competitive, so they can afford to be choosy.

The step 1 is taken at the end of second year after all of your basic science courses are out of the way. Then third year you go onto the wards. So before you've experienced what specialties are out there, you already know which ones wont even sniff at you.

So what's a student to do? Well, as long as you don't want to discount anything you haven't tired yet, you study your ass off and shoot for that top 25%. And being med students, it feels like everyone is either a gunner shooting for that top 25%, or a survivalist shooting for the average score of people who shoot for top 25%. Um...if that makes any sense.

So I hatched a plan to a buddy of mine today. We make this into a competition. Not for score. I never set goals for numbers. Weight, scores, money, it's meaningless. You always set goals for the practice and actions it takes to get you to where you want to be. So we're competing in study time.

Here's the rules.

1 block = 25 minutes of study time + 5 minutes of break. If you choose to use your break for more studying, that's you're problem. I chose this number because of the pomodoro technique. http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

Every block you finish studying materials specifically for the STEP, i.e. not class notes, the other person owes you a dollar.

That's it. If we study consistently and well, then we'll be even and no one owes anything. But given that the hours can add up quickly, it's easy to get caught behind if you slack. After six months, this could easily turn into hundreds of dollars if you left yourself that unprepared. In less than 24 hours, I'm lagging 8 dollars already. oh my.

This could either be one of the worst or best decisions I've ever made in my life. We shall see.

Cycles.

I feel like my life goes between cycles of panic and exhaustion. Just centered around tests. When I'm good, I'm good. And when life is under stress, that's just my new normal.

I seem to have a good amount of mental willpower. But it only goes all out for one thing at a time. I'm on roll with my school work, or I'm on roll with the personal health thing. Never both, never balanced.

Yeesh. I'm not even really thinking in full sentences right now. Let me start over.

Today I came home and passed out around 5, woke up at 10:30. I'm in the burn out phase of my test cycle where I crash. Tomorrow, I'll come to the realization that I have additional exams on Tuesday, and I'll start ramping up into the panic cycle. This is where you spend every waking hour of your day studying or sitting through class prying your own eyes awake. To keep myself on track, I will call my study buddy, a sweet but sheltered girl who has the most unhealthy relationship with studying that I know. As in, last year her diet was probably 75% ramen (I'm being fucking conservative.) because she 1. didn't have the time to grocery shop, 2. spent so much time on campus studying that she needed shelf life stable foods and 3. could not pull herself away to spend more than a minute thirty to cook a meal.

To boot, despite her immense ability to memorize absolutely everything, her confidence in the material is terribly shaky. Which causes her to study more, which causes her to run herself into the ground more. Despite all of this, she's still always the most kind and friendly person you'll ever meet and is always looking for company...to study. Which you have to steel yourself for. She will pound you with a million questions and if you ask her what to she wants to focus on...the answer is always, always, everything. Let's do ALL the lectures. Lets study as long as possible. I had to start putting my foot down on how often I got myself into this because it's overwhelming.

And it's funny. Because despite being one of the smartest people I know, she puts me on a pedestal. Hanging on every word I say. Yet this may be the first time since lecture I'm looking over the material. Hell, it's almost always the first time since lecture I'm looking over the material.

Now that some background is out of the way, I can go on and continue telling you about the cyclic mess I've gotten myself into. When it gets close enough to crunch time, I just let everything else go and to stick to the plan, I study with her. And we can be dysfunctional together. By the time the test comes around, I'm burnt out again and it all starts over.

But you'd at least get a couple of good days in between crash and panic. But it seems lately, I've let my sleeping schedule get so messed up, that the days between crash and panic are getting shorter. It's just one or the other. I've just got to keep myself up for the next couple of days and I can make it to winter break, reset, and be normal again. Real normal. Not this neo normal, I'm used to bizzaro stress world normal. We're going to make that happen.

I hate to sound stressed and mopey on here, but what I can't stand more is to lie and pretend everything is fine. There's a lot of fun moments that I really do want to write down, but I'm going to save them for winter break. No really! I've got a great story about the teacher they hired to teach the prostate exam to us and the stolen? er borrowed? hotel pool towel he used to clean up with. Yep.

I haven't been updating, but life isn't all bad. I am tired and worn, but I'm not alone in it. And like most of my class, we use humor to get through it. Of course, our humor can get pretty bad, especially when you get into the medical puns. But we take what we can get. ;)

Still, I do feel tired right now. And I feel guilty for being tired. Not because of my classmates. My boyfriend has his own cycles of exhaustion too, but his are with 24 hour on and 48 off shifts. So it's even harder for him to have a normal sleeping schedule, and the guy drives so much. He would never want me to feel this way, but here I am fighting my own mind apparently.

I'm going to get through these next couple of days, but I want my next goal to be tackling my sleeping issues. I'm being a little laxer with the paleo diet lately, because really. I am not in the mood to cook. It's becoming fairly obvious that my bloating problem is a wheat issue more than a milk one. I feel like I've learned something valuable and tangible with that last venture. Of course...now that comes with the added guilt of knowledge. I know exactly what kind of damage I'm doing every time I eat the stuff. This is really changing my relationship with food and I'll leave that subject for another day.

With that being said, I'm going to do my dishes and get back to bed. Thanks for bearing with me. I feel more comfortable about what I've got to do already.