Seriously, that's like, Eggs 101.
I'm hoping you don't know me.
Because as distressing as it is when it happens to me in real life, I kind of like the idea of sending out random thoughts to no one in particular, yet knowing that someone's on the other end. It doesn't really matter who, which I guess detracts from the inherent value of my words (every author needs a target audience, right?), but sometimes it's just easier to say what you're thinking without thinking about what other people are going to think. I think.
~
I'm taking Step 1 (the boards, the United States Medical Licensing Exam, etc.) on Monday, after having pushed it back twice, because let's face it, despite my limited set of life skills, I'm really awesome at procrastination. And now, here I am, 3:30 AM less than a week before my exam doing something absolutely inconsequential and uninteresting, instead of doing any one of the four officially sanctioned activities medical students are allowed to engage in while preparing for Step 1: 1) studying, 2) sleeping, 3) eating, or 4) tending to bodily functions. This makes it only slightly more austere than Medicine, which affords the luxury of #2-4 without feeling guilty that you're not doing #1, albeit at the cost of a #5: rounding. Still, Step 1 studying substantially cushier than Surgery, in which you can really only do #1 with impunity (more or less), and #2 in the form of absence seizures in the OR.
My level of self-confidence waxes and wanes from one page in First Aid to the next, and I'm being perfectly honest when I say that I could either just barely pass or I could completely rock this exam. (Okay, I have an Asian mother. Failure is not an option... although one could argue that what that actually means is that anything less than a perfect score is also failure. Fortunately for me, I crossed the failure line years ago by not attending Harvard.)
Despite periodic freak-out sessions where I either bury my face into a pillow or displace my pent-up anxiety onto my hapless boyfriend, I'm starting to feel pretty blase about all of this.
~
In my research, I study the effects of a medication on postoperative pain management. All of our enrolled patients are scheduled to undergo radical retropubic prostatectomy (i.e., plus one abdominal scar, minus one prostate) for prostate cancer. After the surgery, there are a series of follow-up surveys, and they include standardized questions like, "How satisfied were you with your postoperative pain control?" or, "How much has pain interfered with your [insert activity of daily life here]?"
Favorite question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning not at all and 10 meaning completely, how much has pain interfered with your enjoyment of life?"
I always get a warm, fuzzy feeling when they tell me they've never enjoyed life more.
~
Cute things my boyfriend does:
- gives me a daily backrub
- calls me Little Tuna
- buys me groceries because I hate grocery shopping
- wears cologne even when we don't go anywhere because I like the smell
- tries to eat more than I do so I don't feel too bad about being fat
- wears boxers with tiny pink pigs on them
- makes homemade jam
~
My most productive hours of the day (or night, really) are generally when everyone else is asleep. I used to think it was because I was naturally a night owl, but now I'm pretty sure it's just because it is absolutely quiet.
Despite my terrible hearing, I'm particularly sensitive to noise. One of my roommates in college used to say that she never knew whether or not I was home because I made so little noise when I was there. Honestly, I didn't really understand why that was so strange, because I just thought, conversely, that my friends were just generally loud people who were blissfully ignorant of the fact that their clangling noises of daily life obtruded onto the serenity of those around them (namely, me).
Turns out, people in general (even Asians!) are just loud... relatively speaking. I don't know why it never occurred to me until relatively late in life, but I grew up in a home that was, and still is almost eerily quiet. A large part of it probably had to do with the fact that growing up, my dad worked the night shift and slept through most of my waking hours at home. TV shows were watched at lowered volumes, conversations with my brother and sister barely went above a whisper, and talking toys had their catchphrases quickly muffled.
Even now, we're still incredibly quiet. Silence is something we've grown accustomed to, something we're comfortable with, and it's something that I no longer take for granted. On a typical evening, with all of us lolling about at home, the loudest thing in the house is probably either the TV, if it's on, or the humidifier. Entire family car rides go by without a single word spoken, save for the continuous loop of the latest headlines from WTOP on the radio.
It's not that we don't like each other, and it's not that we don't care... it's just that we don't need the noise. Don't get me wrong, I love loud, enveloping music that suffuses me with feeling and grand, cinematic sound effects that reverberate in my bones, but there's a time and a place for everything. I just can't identify with people who need noise to work or study, who can't go an entire day without having to talk to someone else/themselves/inanimate objects, who can't be within 20 feet of someone else without filling the silence between them with inane conversation. I'd be lying if I said I don't judge, but in a way, I just feel like they're missing out, because they'll never find comfort in silence the way that I can.
That's why I like these hours between 2 and 5 AM. It's the only time when everything is quiet, and I don't need to talk or listen, or even hear. It's just me and the silence. It feels like home.
~
Not-so-cute things my boyfriend does:
- leave stubble dust from his razor on my bathroom sink
~
Medical school has really emphasized something that I'd started learning in high school: that I am neither the smartest nor the most hard-working, neither the most interesting nor the friendliest, neither the wittiest nor the most talented. So I'm not the dumbest or the laziest, either, but my superlative lack of superlatives is just underscored by the fact that I'm not even the most mediocre; I'm acceptable. Not even barely adequate, and not even amply sufficient, just acceptable.
For the most part, these days, I feel okay about being okay. Sure, I'd like to be better, and I'd hate to get worse, but such is life. And life is okay. I guess that shouldn't strike anyone as totally unusual, but it's taken a lot for me to reach a place in life where I could strive for the best without feeling like a complete failure when I fell short. There's still a little part of me that sits in the back of my mind, noting every time my best wasn't good enough, every misstep and poor decision. For the most part, I ignore her these days.
But... I'll tell you a secret: one of my deepest fears in life is that one day, she'll get up and read me the litany of every crime I've ever committed against myself.
But... here's another: my greatest fear is that I just won't care.
~
Second favorite question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning not at all and 10 meaning completely, how much has pain interfered with your relations with other people?"
Best response: "Do you mean sexual relations? Because I don't think the pain would interfere at all, but we haven't tried because people keep coming in and out of the [hospital] room. Besides, the catheter coming out of my penis might be a turn-off for my wife."
~
I've been getting that feeling these days... you know, that feeling you get around your junior/senior year of high school or college, the one that tells you you're ready to move on? Not that the previous three or so years were all that bad, really. I loved TJ, I loved UVA, and I've loved it here. Still, now I kind of just want to shrug my shoulders and say, "Well, it's been great, but I'm so over this place. Gotta go, kthxbye!"
As much as I love the comforts of familiarity and a place to belong, I periodically crave novelty, on a cycle of q3-4 years. That actually works out well for someone who will end up spending half of her life being formally educated, generally at a different place every 4 years. Of course, the downside to that is that I'm spending half of my life being formally educated.
Can I just graduate yet (again)?
~
Because everyone needs to know: "Telephone" by Lada Gaga, featuring Beyoncé, is epic. And totally amazing, in the way that only cigarette sunglasses and Diet Coke curlers can be.
Secondarily, I'm engaged pregnant becoming a Scientologist. Regardless, if I actually were any of those things, they would still be secondary to Lady Gaga. Yes, it's that good.
Because as distressing as it is when it happens to me in real life, I kind of like the idea of sending out random thoughts to no one in particular, yet knowing that someone's on the other end. It doesn't really matter who, which I guess detracts from the inherent value of my words (every author needs a target audience, right?), but sometimes it's just easier to say what you're thinking without thinking about what other people are going to think. I think.
~
I'm taking Step 1 (the boards, the United States Medical Licensing Exam, etc.) on Monday, after having pushed it back twice, because let's face it, despite my limited set of life skills, I'm really awesome at procrastination. And now, here I am, 3:30 AM less than a week before my exam doing something absolutely inconsequential and uninteresting, instead of doing any one of the four officially sanctioned activities medical students are allowed to engage in while preparing for Step 1: 1) studying, 2) sleeping, 3) eating, or 4) tending to bodily functions. This makes it only slightly more austere than Medicine, which affords the luxury of #2-4 without feeling guilty that you're not doing #1, albeit at the cost of a #5: rounding. Still, Step 1 studying substantially cushier than Surgery, in which you can really only do #1 with impunity (more or less), and #2 in the form of absence seizures in the OR.
My level of self-confidence waxes and wanes from one page in First Aid to the next, and I'm being perfectly honest when I say that I could either just barely pass or I could completely rock this exam. (Okay, I have an Asian mother. Failure is not an option... although one could argue that what that actually means is that anything less than a perfect score is also failure. Fortunately for me, I crossed the failure line years ago by not attending Harvard.)
Despite periodic freak-out sessions where I either bury my face into a pillow or displace my pent-up anxiety onto my hapless boyfriend, I'm starting to feel pretty blase about all of this.
~
In my research, I study the effects of a medication on postoperative pain management. All of our enrolled patients are scheduled to undergo radical retropubic prostatectomy (i.e., plus one abdominal scar, minus one prostate) for prostate cancer. After the surgery, there are a series of follow-up surveys, and they include standardized questions like, "How satisfied were you with your postoperative pain control?" or, "How much has pain interfered with your [insert activity of daily life here]?"
Favorite question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning not at all and 10 meaning completely, how much has pain interfered with your enjoyment of life?"
I always get a warm, fuzzy feeling when they tell me they've never enjoyed life more.
~
Cute things my boyfriend does:
- gives me a daily backrub
- calls me Little Tuna
- buys me groceries because I hate grocery shopping
- wears cologne even when we don't go anywhere because I like the smell
- tries to eat more than I do so I don't feel too bad about being fat
- wears boxers with tiny pink pigs on them
- makes homemade jam
~
My most productive hours of the day (or night, really) are generally when everyone else is asleep. I used to think it was because I was naturally a night owl, but now I'm pretty sure it's just because it is absolutely quiet.
Despite my terrible hearing, I'm particularly sensitive to noise. One of my roommates in college used to say that she never knew whether or not I was home because I made so little noise when I was there. Honestly, I didn't really understand why that was so strange, because I just thought, conversely, that my friends were just generally loud people who were blissfully ignorant of the fact that their clangling noises of daily life obtruded onto the serenity of those around them (namely, me).
Turns out, people in general (even Asians!) are just loud... relatively speaking. I don't know why it never occurred to me until relatively late in life, but I grew up in a home that was, and still is almost eerily quiet. A large part of it probably had to do with the fact that growing up, my dad worked the night shift and slept through most of my waking hours at home. TV shows were watched at lowered volumes, conversations with my brother and sister barely went above a whisper, and talking toys had their catchphrases quickly muffled.
Even now, we're still incredibly quiet. Silence is something we've grown accustomed to, something we're comfortable with, and it's something that I no longer take for granted. On a typical evening, with all of us lolling about at home, the loudest thing in the house is probably either the TV, if it's on, or the humidifier. Entire family car rides go by without a single word spoken, save for the continuous loop of the latest headlines from WTOP on the radio.
It's not that we don't like each other, and it's not that we don't care... it's just that we don't need the noise. Don't get me wrong, I love loud, enveloping music that suffuses me with feeling and grand, cinematic sound effects that reverberate in my bones, but there's a time and a place for everything. I just can't identify with people who need noise to work or study, who can't go an entire day without having to talk to someone else/themselves/inanimate objects, who can't be within 20 feet of someone else without filling the silence between them with inane conversation. I'd be lying if I said I don't judge, but in a way, I just feel like they're missing out, because they'll never find comfort in silence the way that I can.
That's why I like these hours between 2 and 5 AM. It's the only time when everything is quiet, and I don't need to talk or listen, or even hear. It's just me and the silence. It feels like home.
~
Not-so-cute things my boyfriend does:
- leave stubble dust from his razor on my bathroom sink
~
Medical school has really emphasized something that I'd started learning in high school: that I am neither the smartest nor the most hard-working, neither the most interesting nor the friendliest, neither the wittiest nor the most talented. So I'm not the dumbest or the laziest, either, but my superlative lack of superlatives is just underscored by the fact that I'm not even the most mediocre; I'm acceptable. Not even barely adequate, and not even amply sufficient, just acceptable.
For the most part, these days, I feel okay about being okay. Sure, I'd like to be better, and I'd hate to get worse, but such is life. And life is okay. I guess that shouldn't strike anyone as totally unusual, but it's taken a lot for me to reach a place in life where I could strive for the best without feeling like a complete failure when I fell short. There's still a little part of me that sits in the back of my mind, noting every time my best wasn't good enough, every misstep and poor decision. For the most part, I ignore her these days.
But... I'll tell you a secret: one of my deepest fears in life is that one day, she'll get up and read me the litany of every crime I've ever committed against myself.
But... here's another: my greatest fear is that I just won't care.
~
Second favorite question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning not at all and 10 meaning completely, how much has pain interfered with your relations with other people?"
Best response: "Do you mean sexual relations? Because I don't think the pain would interfere at all, but we haven't tried because people keep coming in and out of the [hospital] room. Besides, the catheter coming out of my penis might be a turn-off for my wife."
~
I've been getting that feeling these days... you know, that feeling you get around your junior/senior year of high school or college, the one that tells you you're ready to move on? Not that the previous three or so years were all that bad, really. I loved TJ, I loved UVA, and I've loved it here. Still, now I kind of just want to shrug my shoulders and say, "Well, it's been great, but I'm so over this place. Gotta go, kthxbye!"
As much as I love the comforts of familiarity and a place to belong, I periodically crave novelty, on a cycle of q3-4 years. That actually works out well for someone who will end up spending half of her life being formally educated, generally at a different place every 4 years. Of course, the downside to that is that I'm spending half of my life being formally educated.
Can I just graduate yet (again)?
~
Because everyone needs to know: "Telephone" by Lada Gaga, featuring Beyoncé, is epic. And totally amazing, in the way that only cigarette sunglasses and Diet Coke curlers can be.
Secondarily, I'm engaged pregnant becoming a Scientologist. Regardless, if I actually were any of those things, they would still be secondary to Lady Gaga. Yes, it's that good.