A firm decision to do or not do something.

My resolutions for 2013 are straightforward:

1) Take better care of my teeth.
2) If I wear make-up during the day, I must wash it off before going to sleep.

And by "straightforward" I evidently mean "peepholes into my true life as a slob and possible redneck."

I forget how messy I was am. Throughout college, my roommate, Disturbingly Potent, was meticulous and very upstanding when it came to home making. Think pastel hued gingham with navy madras accents carrying a book on manners whilst wielding an acerbic wit and you have the jist of her persona. So of course she was tidier than a 1950s housewife.

In an effort to make up for the fact that I was am incapable of getting up when my alarm goes off and therefore ruined the majority of her mornings with my snooze hitting, I tried to keep my areas in check. No clothes on the floor. No dirty dishes.

At least, no dishes dirty enough to grow things.

As soon as I got to med school and had a room of my own again, the clutter came screaming back, albeit a little reigned in because Manhattan isn't a place too conducive of hoarding, at least not on the amateur level. I certainly rivaled the pros in terms of incapacitation due to mental illness, but even though I couldn't get out of bed in the morning, by God I could still aim and throw things in the trash.

Having said all that I don't think my hygiene has ever been out of check, save for the few years in elementary school when I was the smelly kid.

It had to have been around fifth grade after we moved 3 hours away from the only home I'd known and I implemented a bathing strike to make my displeasure known. Malodorously.

But I've found that when your time is crunched, like say, if you're enduring an on-the-job equivalent of water boarding and come home after an 80hr week unable to function in society, non-essential things go by the wayside. And now that you realize teeth brushing and face washing fall into the "non-essential" realm of life, you can see what dire straits we are dealing with here.

Residency: don't let it happen to you.

Oh my God, I know.

I wouldn't make eye contact with me either. It's awkward, whatever, a seven month hiatus following a blahbity month hiatus before that... you might think that I should just take this God forsaken thing down, but alas, no.

So, it's July.

I am now a fourth year medical student.

I don't know if you're aware, but there are only four years to medical school. As in, this is my last year of medical school. As in, my holy God I'm going to be a doctor in less than a year.

I would've written that last bit in caps, but frankly caps just won't cut it. I don't know what would. Skywriting? A Mt. Rushmore-esque proclamation? Blood?

Lots of changes have been afoot as is usually the case when seven months goes by. I'd say the most jarring of which is that... brace yourselves...

I want to be a doctor.

All evidence to the contrary, turns out there's a sick diluted part of me that loves this stuff. A very specific realm of this stuff, but a slice of this stuff that counts as medicine just the same.

I don't feel I can just come straight out and tell you because what fun would that be. Plus, I feel as though this proclamation is a pretty huge anti-climax to the whole of my blogging career. So I'm going to doll it up with a countdown of sorts. I think I'll try to recall as best I can the foibles of each rotation this past year and see if you can guess what I've decided to pursue.

You know, all two of you who still bop by this ragtag site from time to time.

The same two who already know what I want to be, but WHATEVER. I NEED TO WRITE AGAIN.

Typical

Today we had to meet in small groups with the chief of internal medicine whose office is literally larger than my apartment. He was very welcoming and gave us each a chance to relay our spiel to him about where we came from and why we chose medicine.

I told the chief of internal medicine that I kind of wanted to do something important sort of once and because I didn't know what else to do I wound up at medical school. And now that I'm here well, I don't really know what to go into since I hate science to my very core and I've found I don't like working with sick people, so that seems to limit my options and oh yeah, I want to have a family someday too. But I do know I'd like to do something that enables me to pay off my loans sooner rather than later by practicing as little clinically as humanly possible.

I said that, aloud, and did so far more inelegantly than I've typed it out just now.

To the chief of internal medicine.

To the chief of internal medicine at my very self-important school and perhaps actually important affiliated hospital.

It was kind of liberating to feel that bullet fire through my foot.

A Fool for April

Dear April,

So. I hear you're quite the wannabe. The Internet tells me you're proffering a challenge, you saucy minx. A challenge that is uncannily similar to November's proposition.

You too are attempting to entice bloggers to post every single day, although this time you've upped the ante. You've got a theme. Well. Aren't we high maintenance, all hoity toity with imminent showers and promises of flowers.

Your theme is letters. Be they correspondance, typography, interesting signs... you just want letters. You remind me of me in the second grade when I tried to accrue as many pen pals as humanly possible because I was desperate to get mail. Although, I'd venture you're a little more desperate, what with the whole soliciting the entire blogosphere and all.

I don't know if I'll be able to meet your needs, April... my second year of medical school is ending next week and then I'll be descending into a hell of my own creation, better known as studying for the boards. These are things that demand time and, were I responsible student, all of my attention. But you are intriguing, April... I don't know, something in your taunting overtures makes me want to try.

30 letters in 30 days, eh? I'll give it a whirl... even though it is probably the last thing on Earth I should be doing with my time this month. You're worth it. You boast the best birth stone of any month in the calendar.

And should I fail, I can always chalk this up to your yearly joke.

Love, Pants.

p.s. I realize Christmas doesn't fall in your month... a more appropriate header is in the works.

Oh geez, HI!

Hello everyone! Whoopee! It's nearly midnight!

I remembered just now that I'm doing this whole write on my blog every damn day thing.

EEDIOT.

Okay so. Uh. The bulk of my day has been whine whine whine, bitch bitch, moaaaaaaan, whine whine. You aren't missing much.

I've been fighting people for a single washer all night long, they're far faster than I am getting down to stake their claims in the laundry room and are GREEDY LITTLE BUGGERS when they do... uhm... I have no desire to be in class right now because I am so effing burnt out from the last course... I should probably do work over Thanksgiving, but I just know I won't.

Oh. Here we go. It really annoys me that people are leaving early tomorrow, some even peaced out TODAY, for the holiday when we clearly have school scheduled until 1pm tomorrow. What makes you special? What makes you above the schedule? I look at the schedule and I see things scheduled until 1... to me that means I have to stay here until 1. It does not mean schedule a flight for 11a and then throw a tantrum when I'm going to be penalized for missing something mandatory.

I mean, ugh, okay, really I'm just jealous that I can't leave too, because I couldn't find a flight home under $600 (RIIIIIIDICULOUS) for tomorrow, but if I'm going to be here suffering through the world's slowest pharmacologist detail at a rate of six words per minute how this or that receptor was discovered in the 1800s, THEN I WANT YOU ALL TO COME DOWN WITH ME.

Okay, love you, bye! Hopefully I'll learn how to time manage soon. Also, if you have any requests for topics or I don't know, questions you want answered, let me know and I'll try to blog about that. If I have a proper topic in mind I think I'll be less likely to repeat this performance yet again. Oy.

Brought To You By...

Thus far there are three major contenders vying to sponsor my medical education:

Creamsicles

Cheese

Hospital Machine Hot Chocolate

I'm not ashamed to admit I have consumed more of these items in the past 10 weeks than I have in the whole of my life prior.

All efforts to increase my knowledge appear usurped by a more dedicated attempt to expand my waistline.

This is excellent news for my future. I mean, who won't want an overweight, highly educated, past her fertile prime woman in their life? The personal ad practically writes itself.

2010: A M.D. Odyssey

I don't think it's any secret that science is not my first love. Or even first like. If we were doing Fuck, Chuck or Marry for academic disciplines and my options were science, paper engineering or... I don't know, something truly heinous... ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP (You should know I deleted Elementary Ed. That's how much I've grown as a person.), science would definitely get the chuck.

That's right. I would rather have a hot n' dirty fling with pulp (or whatever the hell paper's made of) and spend my life doing fanciful pretend things like consulting and motivating then spend any more time than necessary with science.

In undergrad I made the grievous error of majoring in something science-ical instead of biting the bullet and trying to be happy already. I tried to reconcile my bio and physics classes by filling in my electives with such gems as "Acting For the Non-Major," and "Social Dancing." The piece de resistance of what came to be known as my Quality of Life Electives was to be a course entitled "Popular Literature."

Mmmmm. Popular literature... aren't the images of Oprah's Book Club and The NYTimes Best Seller's list so snuggly? Wouldn't you want to cuddle up to a course like that, so much so that you might dangle it in front of yourself as a beacon of incentive to finish your four years in a science program? Well I did.

I waited until the second semester of my senior year to register for "Popular Literature" as my prize for surviving 3.5 years of my heinous heinous major. What better way to congratulate yourself than to take a 100 level trek down pleasure reading road.

Oh... what a fool... I was.

Evidently this "Popular Literature," IF THAT WAS EVEN IT'S REAL NAME, masqueraded about as a seemingly desirable class when in real life it was the biggest crock of poop since the 2004 election. THE GENRES CHANGE. Nobody tells you that. THE GENRES. CHANGE.

One semester it might be romance, another mysteries, still another... westerns! All good, acceptable, and above all... TOLERABLE, genres.

What is the genre the semester I take it?

Long time readers may recall, it was SCIENCE FUCKING FICTION.

I'm not proud of the fact that I actually took the course. I am even less proud of the papers I had to write for it and the things I had to say, aloud, for people to hear, in that class in order to pass. I did a presentation on THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE OF SCIENCE FICTION FOR CRYING OUT LOUD -- Do you even know what that means? Do you know what I had to do? What I had to research? Fictional women with THIRD BOOBS and MECHANICAL PARTS and how that affects PROGRESSIONIST SOCIAL THEORY and I... I... really don't want to talk about it anymore.

Suffice it to say, I was angry. Ohhhhhh was I angry. It's two years later and Disturbingly Potent can probably still hear my SF ranting when she tries to fall asleep at night.

There I was, a mild mannered fluffy-fictional literature enthusiast, trapped in a bio major's sad, pitiful life, and all I wanted was a little escapism. A little... escape from electrophysiology. An escape from comparative vertebrate anatomy.

I DIDN'T PLAN ON ESCAPING TO PLANET FREAKSHOW.

I guess I should've been more specific... or perhaps consulted the course description a little more thoroughly.

What happened was I read the course description once... probably when it was being offered as a cool permutation (because honestly, how great would it be to have an entire course on trashy romance novels?)... and got it in my head that it was the best thing ever.

I worked towards it. I had this vision of what it would be. It was my motivator.

And then when I got there I was just like... wtf karma, wtf. And ho ho ho, I HAAAAAAAAD to take it because YES. I SAVED IT UNTIL THE VERY LAST POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY AND NEEDED THAT CREDIT TO GRADUATE. There was nothing left for me except science fiction. And thus, I had to endure. I had no choice.

Occassionally I feel that what science fiction was to my undergrad career, medicine may be to my life.

I fleetingly once thought, "hey cool, I want to save lives" filed that away in the back of my head, worked and worked to get there, and then when it was finally time I stopped to look around and thought... Wait a minute... this isn't what I signed up for. But I'm here now. I've got nothing else. I have to finish.

This week is just one of those weeks that makes me wonder how... in the world... I let this happen.