The Final Stretch

Well, I made it this far. Two weeks from tomorrow, I'll be back in the States. Of course, before that, I have to make it through my finals. Aside from one embryology lecture tomorrow, all of this week is review. I just have to get all of the information from the past three months and cram it into my head. It's already there, you say? Oh, okay. Guess I don't need to study.

I've developed memory tricks over the course of the semester, but it wasn't till halfway through that I became more adept at making them. At first, it was a lot of straight up memorization, which just so happens to make my list of things to avoid having to do if possible.

So now I'm having to start making memory tricks for the things we learned early on. So hopefully studying will become progressively easier as I near the actual test day.

And I know I've probably said it before on here, but it is really hard to go through such a big transition as moving to an island for medical school and not have a pretty white girl to have a crush on. I mean really. It's actually a way that I've emotionally coped with much of my life. And when I didn't have a crush, it was always more difficult, emotionally. I have that part of my brain that has nothing to occupy it. And the natural urge is to try to fill it with something, but then it becomes superficial and objectifying, so I have to say "no" to all of that and it just doesn't feel as good.

Transition is difficult, folks. I probably won't feel okay about living here until it's time to leave. Such my current life.

What I'm Learning From Ferguson

I often like to say that my family is racist and sexist and also offensive to other cultures. But really, that's not quite true. See, for the most part, my family is like me. While we do get caught up in white privilege and whatever, that's more of a surface-level thing, a superficial social mask like when guys manage to have full conversations consisting of "hey bro what's up" and such while never actually communicating an idea. It's just a social thing because we've all talked to black people and people from other cultures, and we would therefore have to be idiots to think that they are in any way inferior to white people.

But what I've seen more and more is that the current culture isn't like my family, That superficial social mask apparently isn't a mask at all; it has become deeper than that, deep enough to penetrate their actions towards others.

So here's why I hate this racism.

I love to make racist and sexist jokes and belittle other cultures that are foreign to me. Because we all know that we're all human, just with different cultures and bodies.

But somewhere along the way, people apparently forgot that different people are still people, regardless of how different they are.

And because of this apparent loss of critical, fundamental knowledge, I can't make the same jokes. The jokes I make that should in reality be making a mockery of myself for judging on such unimportant attributes instead become cruel jokes at the expense of others because so many people do, in fact, judge based on such unimportant attributes.

A person's a person. I thought we all learned this from Dr. Seuss, but this whole Ferguson ordeal is showing that a great portion of the world is still quite juvenile in their thinking.

OOOooooooohhhh

Got a pathetic 87 in FCM. Roommate got a 93 'cause I taught him (and kinda forced him to memorize) the answers to the harder question.

I need to stop comparing myself to others, rather than just learning and working hard. It's just difficult when people talk. And speaking of which, why does everyone here feel the need to talk so much? Is it a cultural thing? The need to fill the air with something, even though it's worthless? And when I try to find time alone, why do people sit next to me and try to start conversation? For the ones that know I'm an introvert, SURELY THEY KNOW THAT INTROVERTS DON'T LIKE POINTLESS CONVERSATIONS!

Yet here we are, in a world with worthless words and overly-abundant company.

Anyway, we have three weeks of school left. Gross Anatomy lectures are finished. It's all review lectures now. Histology has a few more lectures, then review. Last block exams are on Thursday and Friday, followed by a week of review, and then our finals with their shelf exams.

I'm three weeks away from going back to the States. Three weeks from unemployed peasant life being a relief again. Five weeks from being with relatives who will throw down shame on me because I may make C's this semester unlike my cousin. Six weeks from New Years, and a few more days from then until I'm back here. Oh no!

Distancing From Friends

I have a habit of distancing myself from friends that don't seem beneficial to me. If a given friend doesn't sharpen my wit, lead me into a deeper spiritual understanding somehow, or generally doesn't really make me a better person by being around them, I will usually not try to be around them. This habit, coupled with the fact that I generally don't try very hard to stay in contact with most people, means that I don't have many close friends. Very few, in fact.

Even today, I was thinking "this friend isn't really doing much to make me a better person, so maybe we should stop being friends so much..." but then I decided against it. I made this decision because I realized that I'm at a good point where I'm not going to be dragged down by anyone, which means I can pull other people up. I assume.

I've been napping after dinner for the past two days. I studied less after classes but I also listened pretty well in class. The naps have led to slightly later nights, but still feeling about the same in the morning, so I dunno. I used to be a prodigy with naps, but without the ability to control the feel of the room in terms of lighting and some decor, I dunno... The #blanketfort was so powerful...

In any case, I have one week till I take my last block exams, and two more weeks after that until I finish my first semester of medical school.

Oh, and my visa was approved today, so that's something.

Stress Dreams

As much as I wanted to make light of it, our FCM final was a big deal. All the upper meds said not to worry much about it; no one ever failed the FCM 1 final. But when your entire grade for a class is based on your performance in the space of 15 minutes, the pressure can't help but build. We were given 20 relatively simple questions ahead of time that were derived from our lectures, and all we had to do was show that we knew three randomly selected ones on the day of the exam. I was in one of the latest block times, 4 PM (the first were at 2 PM) which meant that I was to panic and study and let anxiety build for two hours. I was fairly relaxed at first, but with that much time to wait, the sympathetic nervous system just kinda takes over.

I forgot two small points in front of two of the professors (each of the three questions had its own professor, and you randomly selected the question itself when you first walk into the room), but some were over-eager to give them to me, so I couldn't really tell how they assessed me. This is the only class that I could possibly make an A in, and I had grown fond of the idea of doing so. That created stress. So last night, after all of the testing was done, I briefly napped (which I've become better at since I've learned to disregard my roommate in my mind) and then, later that night, found that I could not get to sleep until far past the reasonable hours. My mind would not shut up. Then, when I finally did get to sleep, I had school stress dreams, which involve signing up for a class and then forgetting you did so.

Anyway, back to the grind. Hope I made an A but maybe I made a C... Who knows...

A Protestant, a Catholic, and Two Muslims Walk Into a Bar...

I made an 81 in Embryo, same as last time, but only studying for a weekend instead of a full week, so suck it.

Also I had a theological discussion with a Protestant, a Catholic, and two Muslims today. The topics varied, but I learned that, at least for these Muslims, Jesus was not only a great prophet for them but also their Messiah. They just think that our Bible was corrupted over time, and that Mohammed made the final version that couldn't be corrupted again. This brought up the idea from them that Paul (who wrote most of the New Testament) wrote the books 200 years after the time of Christ. This is just plain incorrect, of course. Paul hung out with Jesus' disciples as they preached the gospel, and that only happened because Jesus showed up and talked to Paul to convert him.

Anyway, really cool discussions today and I hope they happen tomorrow. They're a breath of fresh air for me.

Oh Oh Oh... (We're Learning Cranial Nerves)

Another of these awful back-to-back test weeks. Last weekend was spent studying for the hardest classes (Histology and Gross Anatomy). This past weekend was spent studying for Embryology. Though embryo should really be easy, it is taught by a professor who doesn't really teach. He just reads off the slides in no particular order. Maybe I failed, maybe I passed. I'm tired of making that a consuming part of my mind.

So now we have two and a half weeks until the next exams, which happen to be the last exams before the finals, which are cumulative and are followed by shelf exams. Shelf exams are from the actual Step 1 exams, questions recently discarded to make way for new questions. In this way, shelf exams are actually kinda the best assessment for us on how we're doing in terms of preparation for the test that will push us toward being real doctors.

I say all that to say that we finally get to party a lil' this weekend. Karaoke on Friday baby! I befriended the IT guy (not that hard since we're both white, a kinship formed when you're in the minority for the first time) and he sent me a schedule of weekly events, one of which is karaoke.

Oh, also, it's really difficult to be in school without having a crush. I just can't even remotely consider anyone here, not really. Race, culture, religion, drinking habits, and level of attractiveness are all big factors, of course, and this isn't the island to find the perfect match for those. And since God has done a remarkable job of crafting me into a (kinda) good student and a stronger Christian while I've been here, it's not like I'd be likely to even pretend to go for any kind of fling. I must admit, I like to flirt like cray-cray, but this just isn't the place or time in my life. I have to be stiff with women here. Both because I'm attractive and don't want anything to happen and because I'm a witness. As one of maybe 30-50 Christians (possibly a generous estimation) on campus, I am the only Jesus some of these people are ever going to see. And it's a burden. So it's hard to keep my last thoughts at night as pure as they should be, though I mostly do, which keeps them from getting into my subconscious and therefore my dreams.

Being a single Christian male is rough, and my guess is that I've got years left to go in this capacity. Because I'm not willing to settle for anything less than precisely who God has for me.

Block 3 (Med 1)

Aside from my absence at church, this block was my best overall. By that I mean that spiritually, physically, mentally, and academically, I did the best I've done since I started med school. I kept my thoughts pure, didn't eat after 9 PM, and used worship to relieve stress the night before tests. Ironically, we were studying the pelvic/perineal portion of the body, so my purified thought life came in the midst of seeing the most genitalia I've seen in such a short time span.

Part of my focus was on pacing myself. Study more and harder every day, then don't burn out the weekend before the exams. Granted, I still burned out to an extent, but not nearly as much as before.

A few new things happened. The night before our lab exam, my roommate had us go through the histology slides without any labels and find the contrasting features that we're supposed to know. I usually used labeled ones for this, but I also usually don't do as well, and I got 10 points higher on the lab portion. The night before the theory exams, I found that I hadn't finished going through all of the slides again, and was forced to speed read through them. And you know what? It was fine. I still slowed down to make sure I knew stuff pretty well, but with so much information to cover, I couldn't just take my time like I've been doing. This brings back a lesson I learned in undergrad: memorization doesn't equate to a lack of real understanding. You can learn even while memorizing; it's usually just a more efficient method.

To clarify for future me or for whoever might feel intimidated or discouraged over this stuff, don't be. I had a really good undergrad, during which time I learned to study very similarly to how I study now. Not quite as much, but nearly. And I'm not making A's. I'm making mostly high C's and low B's (though I finally made a high B in Anatomy this time). So I'm slightly above average in one class, slightly below in another, and right at the class average in the other one. As one professor here told me when we were discussing study strategies, "You don't have to make A's. As long as you get the concepts and understand things, that's fine." Until med school, I'd never had a teacher tell me outright that I don't need to make A's, that A's aren't even necessarily the goal.

In any case, six weeks until I'm done with this semester.