It's Been A HARD DAYS NIGHT

This past week was what we will refer to as the "Anti-Yale System" week. This, by definition, means that the week involved WAY too much class, too many long days, and not enough "free time", something that we were told when applying that we would have an excess amount of. The first factor in making this week insanity was the existence of not one, but TWO anatomy labs. While I must admit that it was cool to do both a lung and heart procedure and I felt pretty awesome physically holding the lungs and the heart, as if it was no big thing to be touching these life sustaining organs, 2 labs involved a lot of time in and out of class and was pretty much overkill. Yet, despite the time commitment and obvious inability to learn the shear bulk of information needed to understand this course (in an almost "I surrender to not knowing everything" sort of way), I am feeling a little better about anatomy as a whole. In the past few labs, our group was complemented on our dissections (at first we thought it was a joke, but our leader actually meant it) and, we FINALLY got into a groove to finish the labs with over an hour to spare (something that we all decided is actually due to the fact that none of us really care enough about anatomy to be nit picky and need to stay to more perfectly see a structure. If someone shows us it, that's great, and we move on and leave). As for my skill level, I am getting better at guessing correctly when professors come around and ask us what certain veins, nerves, or arteries are and frankly, they probably think that I have studied and know a lot more than I actually do (while the truth is for me, unlike many of my classmates that try to get pats on the back for knowing words or pathways, it is all simply word vomit). If only I could guess correctly to pass the exam....

The second "time suck" of the week was the donating of two afternoons to our pre-clinical clerkship class. One three hour period was spent listening to a lecture on patient interviewing (and frankly I believe this is a skill we will learn by doing, not hearing, so it was pretty hard to sit through), and the other was a skill building session aimed to teach us what we need to know to work in the free clinic, mainly how to take a blood pressure and use an interpreter. Side note, as I was not "accepted" to work in the free clinic, due to an overload of applications, I was pretty bitter about this session and the idea that future physicians who want to help people who cannot afford care could be turned down at all. Yet, as most of my friends were selected to work in the pharmacy or in patient education or at the front desk, and will not even be seeing patients, perhaps I am not actually missing much. Interestingly, during the skills session, my group could not find my diastolic blood pressure (I warned them that I often have low blood pressure, but, as typical type-A's who think they can manage the challenge can be, they thought that they would still be successful ). This was not the first time that we had practiced on each other (never something extreme like the appendectomy in Greys, or private like examinations of the genitalia, even if my friend sheepishly thought we did this later on in the year), as in Anatomy we learned how to do and read cardiac ultrasounds with a friend on the table. During this session, our professor warned us that they often find little problems (like gall stones) in medical students while doing these sessions. Ironic, perhaps, but it is also pretty awkward when an entire group sees what they find and you have to cope with whatever it is in public. I can only imagine how much worse this "self-doctoring" gets when we actually know the signs and symptoms of disease...

The icing on the cake of the anti-Yale week was that we had to sign in to many of our classes, most specifically this research class designed to help us for our thesis. While they had sort of implied we would be signing into this class, many people, like me, who have done significant research before felt like this was a big imposition, and most skipped the lecture (I did not, but I had definitely thought about it). Sign in sheets when classes are supposed to be optional just suck...especially when a class is all review anyway. I mean, you know things are bad when even a free breakfast is not a good enough bribe to get people to show up. Oh well, maybe now that I am co-class president I can actually change something.

In all honesty, the only way I really got through the week (besides my fabulous new friends) was the return of fall TV (oh hello Glee, House, Greys, Gossip Girl, and How I Met Your Mother...how I have missed you), going to see the movie the Town (pretty powerful and entertaining boston-centric thriller/heist/drama movie written/directed/and acted in by Ben Affleck, with appearances by Don Draper and Serena Van Der Woodsen as a shockingly believable drug using prostitute type), and, of course, powering through 3 Netflix films: Letters to Juliet, Chloe, and Broken Embraces. The first two movies featured Amanda Seyfried in two VERY different roles (neither at all like her quotable Mean Girls part..."I have like ESPN"). One, Letters to Juliet, is a very romantic chick flick-y film that was still entertaining despite its predictability, while the other, Chloe, is just plain insane. Let's just say if you feel somewhat voyeuristic watching sex scenes in movies, you will probably have to get up uncomfortably and leave the room for this creepy-fatal attraction husband-wife-prostitute tale. As for Broken Embraces, if you are tired, do not watch this movie, as it is subtitled and is a bit like reading a book before bed (yes, it made me go to bed for the night at 6 pm. I woke up at 2 am like "so much for learning Anatomy"). While the storyline and acting by Penelope Cruz are very entertaining.....You know I don't speak Spanish.