I passed my exam that doesn’t count comfortably - although I’m not out of the water, my inherent laziness has put me a little bit below the class average.  So my new goal now is to pass the barrier with the average - I’m likening it to a marathon in my mind where I’m one of those slow movers initially who then turns it right up into the final leg of the race, but leaves enough time to catch up.  I was surprised at what I didn’t suck at though, here’s are my best subjects (not in any order):

Evidence based medicine (hahahahahaha this is stats and my least favourite!)
Personal and professional development (but I’d be surprised if anyone failed this)
Physiology (not surprised because I love it)
Pathology (utterly surprised)
Pharmacology (deeply amused because I hate it)
Anatomy (even more amusing because the way it’s taught is so bad!)

There are others but when you get 1/1 on something, that’s hardly a good sample!  And my worst ones?

Cardiovascular (not surprised, I hated it)
Biochemistry (hard to learn in this course if you’ve never done it, I’m hoping after renal it will make more sense)
Immunology (no surprises there)

Anyway I’m not out of the woods - this is a great starting point but cockiness can send you well backwards from any good start.  Time to do a study plan now and really work towards getting through this stage of the course.

7 tweets in blog form.

1.  We bought a car today.  It doesn’t blow up when it goes over 80km/h and it plays CDs.  I am happy.

2.  I don’t feel like talking much, or going outside and participating in the human race.  This happens from time to time, I have no idea why but put it down to being an introvert.  Who is extroverted when excited.

3.  Uni is back on Monday.  I didn’t study anywhere near as much as I planned to, but appreciated the rest.

4.  More idea stealing from serp, I am also going to do this.  I can’t even do one pushup - perfectionist medical student I am not.

5.  We celebrated the car buyage with going to the Maccas drive-through and playing my Chilli Peppers One Hot Minute CD.  I don’t care if you think that album was lame.  Now all I need is King for a Day and my rock-for-the-car collection will be complete.

6.  I have completed the first week of the Couch to 5km run without any trace of cold asthma or resultant bronchitis.  I love Sydney so much!

7.   My short term memory has evaporated, I can’t focus, and my attention span is about a second - not sure what’s going on there.

It’s somewhat shocking to me that I’ve read a non-science fiction book in such a short time, but the whole thing was serendipitous in that there is a shelf on my level where someone has left books, with a note explaining that the residents here can read them, and leave their own for others to read if they wish.  Perhaps some karma was involved too - upon discovering this, I immediately found a number of books at home and put them on the shelf.  Then, three days ago, I found A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

There are two protagonists - Mariam, a girl brought up in rural Afghanistan, out of the site of society as she was born out of wedlock, a harami, or bastard (although I much prefer harami).  The second is Laila, a girl brought up in Kabul, to educated and progressive parents.  Their lives are brought together when Mariam is given to a man much older to marry, and later, Laila’s parents are killed by rockets in Kabul, and is also married to the same man.  The book covers thirty years in Afghanistan - from the golden age, where women practice medicine and law, through the Soviet occupation, the subsequent uprising, and the oppression by the Taliban.  I picked it up out of curiosity because all I knew about Afghanistan was from the news which amounts to lots of bombing and not much else.

In the story I found a rich, beautiful, and at times heartbreaking culture and I can honestly say I’ve never read a book that had such strong female characters.  My heart bled for them, tears were shed, and all this is to me, is the hallmark of exceptional writing.  The ability to evoke a response from the reader without them getting lost in the layer of technique or style is such a rare one these days, as writers try to outdo each other in defining themselves (and not their story) in their style.  The language used in this novel is simple and eloquent - the events and the rich characters tell the story, and the words don’t get in the way.

I’ve never paid much attention to women’s rights before.  I’ve taken for granted what I’ve had and closed my eyes to the rest of the world.  This wonderful book has changed all that, and sparked something as yet indescribable.  I highly recommend it if you’re interested in the Afghanistan behind the news, or if you just want a book that you absolutely cannot put down.

5/5

It’s so strange being a (former) arts person in medicine.  As I watch my creative practices shrink further and further away, the rest of what I’m about is compelled to step forward, and I’m a little sorry to say that I’m somewhat undeveloped.  Design concepts, user experience theory, postmodernism, software, media policy, it’s all nothing I can talk about with anyone up here.  And while I know I’m not, reader, I feel downright dumb talking to some of these people who reside with the majority privy to a world I’ve not seen.  I’m sure if you sat a med sci down in a sociology class, they’d have the similar sort of glaze over their eyes I had all through last year too - but the point is, I am here, they are not there so it’s me that has to adapt and I’m doing alright.

However, I’m finding that I need to have different groups of friends for different things, because I’ve been through possibly every subculture at some point, so have a somewhat wide range of hobbies and interests.  Sure I love science fiction and can recite entire scripts of some films and can tell you what season and episode number my favourite next gen episode was, but I really love dressing up from time to time too and doing really girly stuff (just not all the time, it gets tiring).  I love to talk about clothes, but I also love to argue operating systems.  I can fix most of your computer problems, or build you one, or I can take you shopping and make sure you don’t leave looking amazing.   I’m reclusive as fuck but should I feel relaxed around you (which isn’t often), I’ll be out and dancing every time.  Sometimes I like people and sometimes I need to not leave the house for days at a time.  Socially needy I am not.
I can learn anything you want me to but I can still say the dumbest, idiotic things too.   I’ve been a tomboy for most of my life yet the older I get, the more I like dresses.  It’s weird.  So much of who I was is just evaporating, lost to lack of conversation about it more than anything, and now I find myself silent a lot more, listening to personalities I need to catch up with.  When you’re non-science, it’s not only your first degree that doesn’t match, it’s your social literacy (to borrow from my old life).  It’s not a bad thing, I’m making some lovely friends in my slow way, it just feels a bit strange, like all the paint has been stripped off, like I’m a bare wall that’s being redecorated.  Adapting yourself to a new set of people is a challenge, and you do feel like you have a split personality sometimes.  Especially when you go home and catch up with people and slide so easily back into who you were (are?) and speak the language of your past.

For now I speak the language of my future, and it contains no postmodernism, no filmmaking, no web 2.0.  It’s good for someone like me - I used to feel like I knew my shit when I spoke to people, and I’m sure I made others feel like they knew nothing.  Now that the shoe is on the other foot, I can appreciate this a lot more.  There’s a sense of security in knowing your field and speaking its language, and now that’s gone.  I’m new, green, and its humbling.  And I like it.