Shortly after Thanksgiving, I texted that girly to ask about life. This is the girly with whom I had prayed about dating, and then she essentially made it clear that I should not try to communicate with her. But it had been six months and I do not like to hold grudges or stay angry (she had responded to things in a notably unempathetic manner), so I opened with an apology. We texted as comfortably as if nothing amiss had happened, and we made plans to meet for coffee when I visited home the weekend before Christmas. She was very excited to see me, and I was trying to get over my angries through casual friendly exposure, which was fairly effective. I insisted that we celebrate her birthday early since I would not be in town for it, and she obliged.
Family was fun over that weekend. I was on call on Christmas Eve, so I had to drive back to Houston, but I was secretly relieved, because I sang karaoke two nights in a row, and also had to manage a little family drama, which seems to be the norm these days. Christmas Day, I Skyped with family and then went to dinner with some fellow medical students.
On New Years Day, I will be one month away from completing my third year of medical school rotations. This means that I will begin studying for the second hardest exam of my life (I already passed the hardest one). It also means that I am potentially a year (or less) away from becoming a doctor, and about a year away from booking tickets to Southeast Asia to go backpacking before residency. I hope that friends join me. At least three good friends seem a lot more interested. It looks like I have already saved up close to enough for the trip, depending on whether I find a good flight deal.
It has been difficult to make myself study much at all during this rotation. Once I watched all the surgery lectures and read up on some anatomy, there was not much pressure to study more, because most of the learning curve has been practical. I simply had to learn to scrub in and assist a little in surgery, but not much more than that. But I need to study consistently and well in order to get a good enough score for residencies to want me. Ugh.
