(no subject)
Well, it's the first day of 2017, may as well do an inventory of 2016, otherwise it'd be a blank in my future self's memory XD
(yes I use LJ as a memory augmentation device)
- Took off a couple of weeks around Christmas/New Years to go back to Taiwan (and half-assed my way through a crappy presentation to the Tai-Dah vet school just as a resume builder lol)
- Thanks to that plus a bunch of fuckery with the other residents' travel/holiday/schedule, couldn't physically go to the Mystery Hunt, so Hunted remotely with Albert at home - which was a surprisingly not-so-bad experience, like a low-key staycation
- Dr. Andrews died - he had a heart attack in his office, went to the hospital where they surgerized him for a couple of days, and didn't make it. He was the crotchety old guy who was super good and super dedicated to his work, did not tolerate incompetence, had a super dry and sarcastic sense of humor, and he and I got along famously.
- Turned 28 and didn't do much about it IIRC
- Passed phase I of boards! Good riddance XD Was a nice confidence boost, and also 1/4 of the exam off my mind...
- And then literally the day after that was Naka-Kon (and also the start of the spring break), so for once Albert and I booked a hotel nearby for the weekend and just stayed the whole con, which was quite a different experience from the daytrips we'd do before... I cosplayed as Sakurako Kujo from Sakurato-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru :D
- Impy came by the following weekend because it was the end of Spring Break XD We just chilled at home...
- The rest of spring was a lot of "dammit Shambhu" for picking up and leaving us in the middle of everything so having to do extra necropsy on top of my wanting to pick up biopsies (and also trying to do this small research project that Dr. Henningson laid on me, though it turns out that she was too busy the rest of the year to actually help me with it so it's still incomplete lol)... though Dr. Mosier and the pathologists did let us have Wednesdays off (i.e. only the pathologist on necropsy) because of that. This residency can be kind of swei bien at times lol...
- Dr. Debey retired at the end of March, too. He was pretty chill, and very happy to be done with work and go spend time with his family and grandchild XD
- Oh, and I was on the pathologist selection committee as the "obligatory token resident viewpoint" from spring to, like, a couple of months ago (they might've re-formed the committee without me? not sure) to fill the two spaces left by Dr. Andrews and Dr. Debey. We managed to fill one with Dr. Njaa formerly-of-Oklahoma-State but the other space is still open, so everyone was overworked for a while and now are still a little overworked and now Dr. Nietfeld's about to retire too so there'll be another extra gap to fill...
- Doris graduated in May, hurray! Albert and I went to New Haven for that, and so did my parents. And then Mom and Doris went off to Italy for a couple of weeks, and then back to Taiwan, and then Doris went to Boston to live with her boyfriend and get a job in the museums in the city.
- Summer - the two new residents arrived around June-ish/July-ish, Jon and Argine. They kind of remind me of me, lol... Jon is the anxious self-deprecating/beating-self-up bit that got burned out of me in late 2015 (and also going back to Taiwan helped with that too), and Argine is the hyperactive overeager overachiever (and I was like "... oh, now I see why the pathologists often 傻眼 when I'd interact with them like that" lol, train of thought speeding way faster than the conversation). They're hard and earnest workers, though, and they're improving pretty quickly. Jon did 10 months out in practice in Oregon and Argine (who's from Spain) had a bunch of pathology-related experience already so she kind of started at almost a 2nd year level (or maybe a 1.5 year level)...
- Went to Auburn for the Descriptive Course at end of June, had a lot of fun, good food...
- And then the Gross Course was in KSU in July so we didn't even have to go anywhere for it, which was nice. Everyone came to us instead lol.
- Sliced my finger wide open sometime in August and needed to get stitches in it XD Souvenir of this residency!
- NEHS 10 year reunion, which I wrote its own entry about. It was awesome to get together again and catch up with people (because I suck at keeping in touch lol) and just hang out... and a subset of us were furiously PokeGo-ing at the same time XD
- Oh yeah for a while Albert and I were PokeGoing pretty consistently - it was a way for me to get him out of the house and walking around/active lol. But then they banned rooted phones so we stopped for a while, and now there's some kind of workaround so Albert started it up kind of desultorily...
- Went to the Kansas State Fair with Mark and Alicia in early Sept, ate fair food and did some rides and mostly looked at the animals (with Albert grumbling most of the way lol)
- In Joong and Pankaj went to take Phase II boards in Ames (as did the clinpath residents Adi and Rachel) (and probably Loni though I didn't hear how she did)... In Joong did not pass any of the sections (as I expected) so he gets to do it over with me in Tampa next no wait this year (lol), Pankaj passed two sections but flunked the histo portion so he gets to make it up in Ames this upcoming year (the last clean-up year they're doing in Ames). I think Adi passed everything because she's now running the clinpath department (because 2 out of 3 of the pathologists either retired or ran away), Rachel did not pass I'm not sure how many sections, possibly all 3... in other residencies with people I knew, most people passed I think...
- Hung out more with Jaime now that we're not teacher-and-student lol
- Impy visited again in October :D We ate calf testicles at the vet school "nut fry" event, and went to RennFaire.
- Went to a college RHPS showing on Halloween weekend at the KSU Student Union with Lain and their bunch - Albert and I did the JHU callbacks (with some editing for the ones that didn't make sense outside of JHU/MD), and maybe a couple other people were also yelling their callbacks too... but for once we got to throw things per actual tradition (rice, cards, etc.), they spread a tarp on the floor for easier cleanup XD
- Albert started getting into fossil hunting sometime in the fall - was inspired by the fossils he saw at the state fair in the summer, so we'd go out on weekends to search around likely-looking cliffs in the area. (or in my case, climb up nearly-sheer crumbly cliffs mostly by dint of sticky-out tree roots XD)
- November - week-long externship at Antech in College Station, TX, which coincided with the presidential election. Antech was fun, election not so much.
- Had Thanksgiving at Jaime's place with some of her friends/fellow vet school classmates... and then we went out and watched Fantastic Beasts together spur-of-the-moment XD
- Was supposed to report for jury duty on 11/29 but it got canceled o_o;;;
- ACVP conference in New Orleans! Fucking Shambhu and In Joong took the last two years' ACVP conferences (because KSU always wants at least 2 residents around to take necropsy duty) so this year Pankaj and I were like FUCK Y'ALL we're going and the new kids can stay and hold the fort XD Though to be honest, I feel like it actually helped that I didn't go till this year, because I had gone to all the other conferences and courses and met people there instead, so I had a good friends base to network and hang out with for the entire conference. Put up two posters, received an award that I had been nominated for earlier this fall, hobnobbed like no tomorrow (it was repeatedly noted that it's ironic that a profession of mostly introverts has events like these where it's ALL PEOPLE ALL THE TIME, most of us were people'd out by the last couple of days)
- Low-key Christmas, low-key New Year's, at home with Albert... Argine went back to Spain for the holidays so the rest of us stuck around to work.
And soon, Boston and the Mystery Hunt! Which I am definitely going to this year, dammit. XD
Phase II of boards in August. Have been putting off the "holy shit need to study" till January (or probably till after the Mystery Hunt, TBH)... but it's gonna be crunch time soon. AUGH.
(yes I use LJ as a memory augmentation device)
- Took off a couple of weeks around Christmas/New Years to go back to Taiwan (and half-assed my way through a crappy presentation to the Tai-Dah vet school just as a resume builder lol)
- Thanks to that plus a bunch of fuckery with the other residents' travel/holiday/schedule, couldn't physically go to the Mystery Hunt, so Hunted remotely with Albert at home - which was a surprisingly not-so-bad experience, like a low-key staycation
- Dr. Andrews died - he had a heart attack in his office, went to the hospital where they surgerized him for a couple of days, and didn't make it. He was the crotchety old guy who was super good and super dedicated to his work, did not tolerate incompetence, had a super dry and sarcastic sense of humor, and he and I got along famously.
- Turned 28 and didn't do much about it IIRC
- Passed phase I of boards! Good riddance XD Was a nice confidence boost, and also 1/4 of the exam off my mind...
- And then literally the day after that was Naka-Kon (and also the start of the spring break), so for once Albert and I booked a hotel nearby for the weekend and just stayed the whole con, which was quite a different experience from the daytrips we'd do before... I cosplayed as Sakurako Kujo from Sakurato-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru :D
- Impy came by the following weekend because it was the end of Spring Break XD We just chilled at home...
- The rest of spring was a lot of "dammit Shambhu" for picking up and leaving us in the middle of everything so having to do extra necropsy on top of my wanting to pick up biopsies (and also trying to do this small research project that Dr. Henningson laid on me, though it turns out that she was too busy the rest of the year to actually help me with it so it's still incomplete lol)... though Dr. Mosier and the pathologists did let us have Wednesdays off (i.e. only the pathologist on necropsy) because of that. This residency can be kind of swei bien at times lol...
- Dr. Debey retired at the end of March, too. He was pretty chill, and very happy to be done with work and go spend time with his family and grandchild XD
- Oh, and I was on the pathologist selection committee as the "obligatory token resident viewpoint" from spring to, like, a couple of months ago (they might've re-formed the committee without me? not sure) to fill the two spaces left by Dr. Andrews and Dr. Debey. We managed to fill one with Dr. Njaa formerly-of-Oklahoma-State but the other space is still open, so everyone was overworked for a while and now are still a little overworked and now Dr. Nietfeld's about to retire too so there'll be another extra gap to fill...
- Doris graduated in May, hurray! Albert and I went to New Haven for that, and so did my parents. And then Mom and Doris went off to Italy for a couple of weeks, and then back to Taiwan, and then Doris went to Boston to live with her boyfriend and get a job in the museums in the city.
- Summer - the two new residents arrived around June-ish/July-ish, Jon and Argine. They kind of remind me of me, lol... Jon is the anxious self-deprecating/beating-self-up bit that got burned out of me in late 2015 (and also going back to Taiwan helped with that too), and Argine is the hyperactive overeager overachiever (and I was like "... oh, now I see why the pathologists often 傻眼 when I'd interact with them like that" lol, train of thought speeding way faster than the conversation). They're hard and earnest workers, though, and they're improving pretty quickly. Jon did 10 months out in practice in Oregon and Argine (who's from Spain) had a bunch of pathology-related experience already so she kind of started at almost a 2nd year level (or maybe a 1.5 year level)...
- Went to Auburn for the Descriptive Course at end of June, had a lot of fun, good food...
- And then the Gross Course was in KSU in July so we didn't even have to go anywhere for it, which was nice. Everyone came to us instead lol.
- Sliced my finger wide open sometime in August and needed to get stitches in it XD Souvenir of this residency!
- NEHS 10 year reunion, which I wrote its own entry about. It was awesome to get together again and catch up with people (because I suck at keeping in touch lol) and just hang out... and a subset of us were furiously PokeGo-ing at the same time XD
- Oh yeah for a while Albert and I were PokeGoing pretty consistently - it was a way for me to get him out of the house and walking around/active lol. But then they banned rooted phones so we stopped for a while, and now there's some kind of workaround so Albert started it up kind of desultorily...
- Went to the Kansas State Fair with Mark and Alicia in early Sept, ate fair food and did some rides and mostly looked at the animals (with Albert grumbling most of the way lol)
- In Joong and Pankaj went to take Phase II boards in Ames (as did the clinpath residents Adi and Rachel) (and probably Loni though I didn't hear how she did)... In Joong did not pass any of the sections (as I expected) so he gets to do it over with me in Tampa next no wait this year (lol), Pankaj passed two sections but flunked the histo portion so he gets to make it up in Ames this upcoming year (the last clean-up year they're doing in Ames). I think Adi passed everything because she's now running the clinpath department (because 2 out of 3 of the pathologists either retired or ran away), Rachel did not pass I'm not sure how many sections, possibly all 3... in other residencies with people I knew, most people passed I think...
- Hung out more with Jaime now that we're not teacher-and-student lol
- Impy visited again in October :D We ate calf testicles at the vet school "nut fry" event, and went to RennFaire.
- Went to a college RHPS showing on Halloween weekend at the KSU Student Union with Lain and their bunch - Albert and I did the JHU callbacks (with some editing for the ones that didn't make sense outside of JHU/MD), and maybe a couple other people were also yelling their callbacks too... but for once we got to throw things per actual tradition (rice, cards, etc.), they spread a tarp on the floor for easier cleanup XD
- Albert started getting into fossil hunting sometime in the fall - was inspired by the fossils he saw at the state fair in the summer, so we'd go out on weekends to search around likely-looking cliffs in the area. (or in my case, climb up nearly-sheer crumbly cliffs mostly by dint of sticky-out tree roots XD)
- November - week-long externship at Antech in College Station, TX, which coincided with the presidential election. Antech was fun, election not so much.
- Had Thanksgiving at Jaime's place with some of her friends/fellow vet school classmates... and then we went out and watched Fantastic Beasts together spur-of-the-moment XD
- Was supposed to report for jury duty on 11/29 but it got canceled o_o;;;
- ACVP conference in New Orleans! Fucking Shambhu and In Joong took the last two years' ACVP conferences (because KSU always wants at least 2 residents around to take necropsy duty) so this year Pankaj and I were like FUCK Y'ALL we're going and the new kids can stay and hold the fort XD Though to be honest, I feel like it actually helped that I didn't go till this year, because I had gone to all the other conferences and courses and met people there instead, so I had a good friends base to network and hang out with for the entire conference. Put up two posters, received an award that I had been nominated for earlier this fall, hobnobbed like no tomorrow (it was repeatedly noted that it's ironic that a profession of mostly introverts has events like these where it's ALL PEOPLE ALL THE TIME, most of us were people'd out by the last couple of days)
- Low-key Christmas, low-key New Year's, at home with Albert... Argine went back to Spain for the holidays so the rest of us stuck around to work.
And soon, Boston and the Mystery Hunt! Which I am definitely going to this year, dammit. XD
Phase II of boards in August. Have been putting off the "holy shit need to study" till January (or probably till after the Mystery Hunt, TBH)... but it's gonna be crunch time soon. AUGH.