Delayed Entry: The Good Side of "Last Week"

The whole point of my Aug 29 Posting Title "The Bad Side of Last Week" was lost due to the fact that I got lazy. The original idea was to quickly follow up with "The Good Side of Last Week" in a charming little juxtaposition. I made the mistake of telling myself I'd wait until the next day. So, now it's been a week and I'm writing tangents about spices! It's time to re-center...

--cue harp music and wavy horizontal lines, ala "having a flashback"--

There were alot of GOOD aspects of "last week", but I thought it would be too confusing and long winded to mention both the good and the bad at once. On Saturday, I was part of a beautiful thing called a study group. As a rule, I avoided study groups as an undergrad. They always disintegrated into nonesense because someone got bored, or two people had a personality conflict, or everybody just wanted to talk about their day. It was just inefficient and boring for me.

But this was different. Everyone in our anatomy group who was in town met at the library during Saturday afternoon ready to go. We chatted a little while, then all gathered around a skeleton and started grilling each other. The questions were uncompromising, and you really had to know your stuff...but everyone was so supportive! If you don't know that muscle's innervation, now you know to study it. "Let's keep moving on." I was surrounded by intelligent, well-prepared, and collegial peers! It was a great feeling, and I honestly learned more during that time than I would have learned studying alone.

The second good aspect of last week was that my Katie* came down to visit for the first time since I moved from back home to school (~7 hours away). Having her around was the best part of the weekend. I could mentally walk away from all of my med student baggage and spend quality time with her instead of fretting about some meaningless quiz in a couple of days.

This brings me to a mini-rant. Everybody tries to say you shouldn't be involved with someone during med school. The doctor I previously mentioned (Dr. Johnson) gave me a long speech about how he was so glad that he waited to have a significant other until after residency...you're much better off giving med school your full attention and finding a nice woman once you're all done. Well, I think that's a bunch of crap.

While the weekend I mentioned is not necessarily indicative of all of med school, one thing that stands out about it is that contrary to Dr. Johnson's claim I was better off (ie more sane) since Katie was there. Yes, of course there was compromise - I studied alot more during the week in order to have more time for her during the weekend, and she had to entertain herself for hours when I actually did have to study alone - but that's the nature of life. I'm sorry to say though that the medical profession is brimming with very intelligent people who refuse to compromise in their daily lives.

I think they're worse off for it.




*You may have to doublecheck your playbills, because this is the introduction of a new character on the blog. I call her My Katie only to distinguish her from Katie-from-anatomy-group. She's in school back home, and for those friends and family members who are dying to know more about her, just email me.