Destination M.D.

You wait until It's three am and you are so tired your body aches with the need for sleep, so what do you do? if you're premed you take a cold shower, brew some coffee,pop a no doz and settle back in to studying. I find that if i'm to have any sort of social life i need to forgo sleep to keep up with studying. I should be very well aquainted with the lack of sleep by the time the real test comes (residency). I'm always tired when Im going to school. So if you're horribly opposed to averaging 30-35 hours of sleep a week, when you should get 56,and you want to be premed-you need to readjust your expectations.

Well I made it through one semester! All As and Bs so I don't have to etake anything and a GPA of 3.61! I still have a long way to go I need a 3.8 to get into the schools i'm interested in!

Over winter break I shadowed at a Childrens hospital. It was so great it completely renewed my motivation. i shadowed a Nurse, Resident, and an Anesthesiologist. I learned so much and made some useful connections. I was taught how t calculate the diameter of a breathing tube based on the age of a child, how to read chest xrays, how to tell if an infection is viral or bacterial based on lab results, A nure even tauht me how to draw labs and put in IVs (which ws terrifying especially considering I was practicing on a Doctor!). I learned tons about the social aspects and lifestyles as well. Though for the ane.I have to admit I was dissappointed I was with an ENT surgeon and didn't get to see any really bloody cool surgeries. I plan on mking arrangements to shadow a general sugeon, and not gonna lie I'd LOVE to get in with a  nuerosurgeon or cardio thorassic surgeon!

I returned to school. My schedule,s much more mnageable. and in biology were finlly learning more anatomy and pysiologystuff that'll actually be useful. I denied work study as they were all office jobs, and so I'm applying to other places. One I secure a paying job I'm going to start Volunteering on the Maternity ward of the hospital thats net to my school. So my life will be hectic again soon!

So in summary- I did OK grade wise last semester, I shadowed and it was awesome, and my life is anout  to become chaotic.

So remember how I said I hate college? Thats because I do. I got a letter a few weeks from one of the colleges in Florida that I applied to saying my scholarship is still valid if I wanted to transfer. And recently I've been thinking a lot about it. It would be warmer a different (maybe better for me) school, I'd get to dorm, On the other hand it's so far from home and If I end up hating it there too then what? Now I think If I really wanted to mom would be okay with it but I'm not sure if I do. It's a pretty even split. However I know the schooling here is better than that of the south and the school i'm at has a great per-professional curriculum, with 92% who try actuallyu getting into Med school, which leads me to my next arguement. I want to go to Med school in Miami,so if I go to this Florida school I won't have to deal with moving and starting at a new school in four yeasr cause I could get that over with now. I don't know honestly it probabl won't happen, I just hope I'm not letting a good oppurtunity pass me by. What should I do?

Acting ambitious and motivated on Mondays is quite likely the most difficult part of my day, I don't know if Its the long school week stretched out in front of me or just my general hatred of college and getting up before ten but getting out of bed on these days is next to impossible. Now once I'm actually out of bed I'm pretty fine, Yeah I'm half asleep but I don't feel the impending doom I did whilst laying in bed lisening to my alarm clock serenade me via my ipod. Of course I get this feeling on tuesdays, wednesdays and Thuresdays as well, but not nearly to the extent that i get it on mondays.
 
So to make it worse I lay in bed untill quarter to eight then end up panicking because i haven't given myself enough time to get ready. Typicically I race though my house leaving a mess in my wake (that mum'll get pissed at me for later- but at he time I don't care cause I'm running late and don't want to miss calculus) and frantically searching for all of my stuff that I never pack the night before because I always figure I'll have time in the morning (which I never do).Then I practically jog the six blocks tom the bus stop and If I'm lucky I catch the bus. If I'm not luck I miss the bus, havr to stand there for twenty minutes and I fume aout how retarded the whole thing is and I end up being late to My calculus class.

So the moral of he story?
I hate mondays with a burning firey passion.

Ok I admit this is not very exciting. It was horrible, mostly because I had to get up at nine on a saturday. And to make it worse i was super paranoid I would over sleep so  wokke up EVERY TWENTY MINUTES to look at the clock and make sure I didn't oversleep and miss my oppurtunity at getting the classes at times that might improve the overall quality of my life. Finally at 8:40 I got up and sat at the computer for twenty minutes while staring blankly at the clock so I could hit enter as soon as the clock struck nine.Then the whole ordeal took less than a minute.

So heres what my schedule is like. On Mondays, Wednsdays, and Fridays I have Calculus one part b (this is because I had a terrible pre-calc experience in high school and was too emotionally traumatized to consider myself capable of taking normal calculus) from 9:00 -9:50 am, Then I have Organismal Biology from 10:00-10:50 am, After this I have an hour for eating or studying or whatever, followed by General Chemistry  from 12:00-1:00. This is great because it means i'll be done and home by two three times a week! On tuesdays I have Calc from 9-9:50 am ,then a bit of a break, and from 11:30-12:45 I have Philosophy 101. At 1-2:15 I have Chemistry recitation( this is time for review and quizzes) and 2:30-5:30 I have Chemistry Lab. So pretty much my schedule sucks on tuesdays. Lastly on thursdays I have Phiosophy from 11:30-12:45 (this means sleeping in!) Then I have Biology recitation from 1:00-2:15. Followed by a 2:30-5:30 Bio Lab. Overall I'm satisfied with it my only gripe is having to be up at seven thirty four times a week for a 9 am class. Regardless this is about a hundred times than my current schedule( I have two-four hours between classes everyday and I never get home before five. I leave the house at 8.)

Ok I guess I'll tell you a bit about what I did in high school to get myself into a good school. I took a lot of honors and AP courses- these didn't really let me "skip" having to take them in college, however I do think they helped prepare me for the amount of work thats expected in college. I joined NHS and did  a lot of volunteering that way. But NHS was my only club activity. As a side note I also took a lot of ceramics and sculpture courses, these were my outlet, and they boosted my grades. I managed to get into the top 10% of my graduating class and I got a 2300 on my SAT. I applied to five colleges,and got accepted to all of them. That's pretty much it as far as preparation for my career. Oh I should probably mention I did shadow an ER physician Assistant during my senior year. I was pretty busy during the school years so I didn't work. I did babysit throughout (and still do) and I worked as a summer camp councelor for two of my summers.

Ok, this is semi-random, but I know I won't be able to hide it for long. Two things actually.

Ok Thing one: I'm an insomniac. I don't know why but come nine pm it's like a switch goes off and I'm wide awake and creative and motivated. This might seem like a good thing but trust me Its not a good thing when you have to get up at 630 in the morning and you decide to paint the bathroom, watch all of the Harry Potter movies, attempt to make oragfami flowers, or have a sudden burst of inspiration for the latest term paper at 930 at night. So most days I get aroung five or six hours of sleep and then I walk around either over tired and giddy to the point of laughing histerically at thing no one else finds funny or practically collapsing from exhaustion for half of the day.

Thing two: I am hopelssly random and wierd. What I mean here is sometimes I think of things and it takes my mind this whole process to get to the thing I'm thinking of. But then I mention it in the conversation without explaining my thinking process and it comes out completely random. That may very well happen here, so expect it. Maybe I'll post an example of what I mean later. As for the wierdness I don't know, I guess I just get bored faster than other people, and this leads to those things that are not-at-all-boring-but-seem-completely-random-and-or-strange-to-other-people.

example of how I'm random. Note blue is me, green is other person, and lighter blue is my thoughts.

"so then, I noticed the candycorn was on sale and..."

Haha last time I had candy corn was Halloween, It was funny because we went to a party where everyone was supposed to bring a bag of candy and half of the party brought candy corn. Then CC fell asleep and we stacked phone books and boxes on her. And we are all laughing so hard we couldn't breath, but we were tring to be super quiet so CC wouldn't wake up. Hmm I wonder If you can die from laughing I did see a show on that once... i suppose you could at least pass out from lack of oxygen, maybe you could fall down stairs or something and indirectly die from laughing...

"Anyways I went through all that effort of looking for that book he wanted, and I didn't even get so much as a thanks!"

"oh that sucks, Do you think people can die from laughing...(goes into how I think It might be possible

*WTF looks come my way*

Anyway I figure the insomnia will be useful in med school, At least I'll be prepared for the lack of sleep. As for the wierdness, well it gets me through life. Ok speaking of insomnia now its really late, or early. And I do have calc in seven hours, so bye!

P.S. This is random but if you read this pleae comment, I don't really like feeling like I'm writing to no one.

Ok I guess I'll just jump right in This blog is about my efforts to become a medical doctor. Here I will be as candid as possible and tell you about the journey. I started this blog when I couldn't find many pre-med blogs, and I decided to make my own. I'm eighteen years ols and live with my mom. I'm in my first semester of  CC college, as a Biology/Premed major. I'm Biology because I truely like Biology. Some advice to others : for your undergraduate, study something you enjoy! That said if you like say Art History and Chemistry equally, take Chemistry. It will help you more. Let's see what else? Oh heres one- none of my friends are becoming doctors, or doing anything medical. So I'm pretty much working on making some new premed friends. This is harder than it seems because I'm something of an introvert. I get really shy when I meet new people. I can however do it if its part of a job, I worked a an Arts and Crafts director and a Counselor at a summer camp and had no problems, It's personal relatonships, and nonscripted converstaions that I seem to be socially retarted in. Anyways, I do make friends, It just takes a bit longer. Yes- I know this could effect my becoming MD journey and It's just another thing I'll have to overcome. Well thats about it for now, It's late I'm tired and I have Calculus at 9am tomarrow.