an excuse to procrastinate: i've been tagged!

:-)

i've been tagged! this means that, for an actual, oh, 20 minutes or so, i get to stop thinking about anatomy! hooray!

okay, perhaps it seems a little strange for a medical student to want to be distracted from her studies, but you have to understand: i've just been through two weeks of anatomy, punctuated only by very droll orientation lectures and one too many doctors' appointments. it is a tad easier this time around--i've been able to stuff my own anxiety just long enough to look around and notice that when you take 160 overachieving type-A students and put them under a crazy amount of pressure, life gets rather comical. being on campus is akin to being put in a blender of self-doubt--i swear, i can hear the voices in other people's heads asking the same questions that mine does:

am i studying enough? am i smart enough to do this? how come everyone knows this material better than i do? what am i not doing? why can't i learn faster? did they make a mistake with my acceptance? did i do something to piss off the anatomy professors? is that why they ignore me? what if i fail? what if i get kicked out of school? what if i kill someone because i didn't learn the innervation of this muscle? who was that dead person? why do i have to study dead people? what was this person thinking when they put on that coat of nail polish for the last time? omg, i just wasted 5 minutes thinking about nothing! will i fail the exam on monday because i wasted 5 minutes?

i could go on for hours. but i'll spare you. but in case that wasn't quite enough of a description to give you a glimpse into this world, check this out--the following is the list of topics that will be on tomorrow's exam:

• osteology/function/movement/characteristics of the vertebral column
• all the muscles of the back, including their origin, insertion, innervation, blood supply, function, embryologic origin, etc.
• all the muscles of the shoulder and upper limb, with all the same 411 as for the muscles of the back
• the microanatomy/histology of all of the following, including how to recognize tissue type, cell type, function, composition, development, etc.:
• epithelium
• connective tissue
• cartilage
• bone
• lymphoid system
• muscle
• any/all relevant clinical information to said areas, particularly as relates to "loss of function"

so that's what i have to know for tomorrow. no biggie, right? now if i could just keep myself from having a panic attack....

but i digress. the point of this post is not for me to whine about anatomy or share my anxiety. rather, the point is NOT to think about anatomy or the exam or about anything regarding the past two crazy weeks of my life! so, on to the point: 7 (random!) things about me.

1. i can witness human medical emergencies, whether on tv, in a movie, or in vivo, but i cannot watch animal emergencies. for some reason, i cannot bear the sight of a critter in pain. i suppose it has something to do with their inability to speak for/defend themselves, but i'm not really sure. what i do know is that i'm still haunted by images of animal abuse/injuries that i've seen in the past--even if they were part of a natural course of life documentary. roadkill breaks my heart. <--yes, even if it's "just a squirrel." i am, truly, that sensitive.
2. one of the best days of my life was a birthday on which a friend took me to see the rhind papyrus in the British museum in London. since the papyrus is sensitive to light, it's stored in a desolate hallway in the bowels of the behind-the-scenes portion of the museum. you can only get to it if you've got connections--case in point, my friend, who is a professor of math history. it's the most amazing thing, to end up in some random place like that, having a personal viewing of one of the oldest documents in the world. it was particularly special to me because i grew up with a considerable amount of math anxiety that i didn't confront until i went to do my post-bacc pre-medical studies and was shoved, head-first, into a calculus class after not having had a math class in, oh, probably 8 years or so. thanks to my fantastic professor, i overcame my anxiety such to the extent that i am now a student member of the Canadian society for the history and philosophy of mathematics. i now love math! i sh!t you not! how random is that?!? ;-)
3. i've been such a "good girl" that i've never experienced the kinds of things most people do either as teenagers or in college. yes, this means that i've never been drunk. or stoned. or any of that (although some of my family members would argue that i'd benefit from a bit of pot now and then....). my case of "goody-two-shoes" is bad enough that i actually missed points last year on one of my exams because i couldn't remember how many cigarettes were in a pack or how many ounces of beer equated to a shot. it's sad, i know. *however,* i can curse like a sailor. and often do. especially when i'm in medical school. apparently this started when i was a toddler. what can i say, i've always had a penchant for words!
4. my right ear sticks out. i don't really know if people notice it unless they look closely, but it is abnormal. most would probably deem it a congenital defect, but i blame it on the @sshole who delivered me via forceps because he was going to be late for his tennis match if i wasn't born on his schedule. apparently i was bruised for weeks after that delivery. people have suggested that i get my ear "pinned," but i've had enough medical procedures for one lifetime already. besides, i eschew the notion that one must be perfectly symmetrical in order to be beautiful.
5. along the lines of #3, i am probably the only person who has ever been accepted to medical school after saying the f-word in the interview. :-P oh, does that require some explanation? there's a good--and very true--story behind this. it's got to do with a professor i once had who directly said to a student (in the middle of class, mind you): "f*ck you." i personally asked her to cease and desist this behavior, one on one, like an adult, during her office hours (i may curse, but i never direct it *at* people...unless i'm in traffic....). her response? first, to tell me that i'd never get into medical school and that if i did, i'd never survive. second, she slapped me with a d- in the course (an essay based class with no other professor teaching the same subject in the school--how convenient!). i had to explain my grade, of course, which is how i came to say f*ck in my medical school interview. it's all about the context....
6. i have an intense phobia about the deep ends of pools and of drains in particular. why? i have no idea.
7. because this is such a good story--even i could not make this up if i tried--i will tell you about my most embarrassing moment ever. it happened when i was dating a certain someone. i'd escaped to his house one year when we had a particularly bad hurricane season. we had gotten several back to back storms where i lived at the time, so i ended up living with him for a month in a city without hurricanes. one day, while he was at work, his mom came over to look for a document (i.e. paper) that he had misplaced. she went into his home office and looked for it. i found this a bit odd, simply because i'm one of those people who does not go into another person's space uninvited. when she didn't find the paper in the office, she went into his bedroom and started looking for it there. why she expected that he'd put such a thing in his underwear drawer, i do not know. she said something to me about helping her look for the document, but i said that i don't go through people's drawers when they're not around. her reply? "oh, he doesn't have anything that's private." i'm pretty sure this is when i froze and stood there like a proverbial deer in headlights. before i could snap out of it, she went over to the nightstand and opened the drawer. yeah...that's where we kept the, erm, "toys" and such. i wished, at that moment, for the earth to crack open and swallow me whole. but it didn't. she said nothing; in fact, she kept going through drawers! 8-O By the way, did i mention that his mother had been my high school math teacher? *shudder* and you wonder why i had math anxiety.... i told you, i couldn't make this sh!t up if i tried.

so, there's seven (random) things that probably represent seven more things than you ever wanted to know about me! :-) but then, i bet i made you laugh. and i got to procrastinate. so it's all worth it!

since j.p. could likely use some distraction, i say: "tag! you're it!" ;-)

thanks, americanmum, for the reprieve from study!