Plodding along the increasingly tortuous road

Hey everyone

So I haven't posted much recently, and that's mainly been because of both things at home and things here (ie, the course). The title of this post probably seems a bit negative, but it absolutely captures the present completely. I'm currently having a bit of burn out with regards to lecture and home study style learning, and literally can't wait until we move into the hospitals next year. So in that respect, it's just one foot in front of the other until then (hence the 'plodding'). And the road continues to get more and more tortuous as we continue -- it might be smooth-ish right now, but as we get up to those dreaded end of year exams the shit is going to hit the fan in a major way. The end of year exams are on not only this semester, but the first semester as well. By then it's likely I'll have about 200000 words of notes in my onenote document. How are we meant to study all of that and retain any appreciable amount...it's just going to be very interesting. So at the moment, it's one foot in front of the other as the world around us and the path under our feet gets more and more treacherous.

Anyway! let's revive this post before it just becomes a general rant.

Probably a week ago now my laptop out of nowhere died. It would boot, but it would go to something called the 'aptio setup utility' or something like that, and wouldn't continue on to windows no matter what I did. I took all sorts of advice but to no avail, so the next day I went out with a friend and bought a new laptop. That may seem rash, but I simply don't have the time to spare to get the other one fixed. I have like 4 lectures a day on average! There's no way I want to catch up on that many lectures if the laptop would take like a month to come back. So I bought a laptop. And...an ipad mini. Why did I buy that?? It was a bit of an impulse purchase, but I've been thinking of getting a tablet for a while and there was just a better app store with the ipad. At the end of the day I want my phone to have excellent pre-installed applications because they're what I'm going to be using most of the time (eg, the keyboard), but on a tablet that's not as important. I'm going to be spending probably 95% of my tablet time in third party applications, and the argument is there that apple has better third party applications for some reason.

The ipad turned out to be one of my best impulse purchases ever! It's nice to have a big screen to enjoy everything on, but the main use for me has been facetime. Now, I know that's really lame. I scoffed at the facetime ads when they came out, and said to myself 'why didn't these people just use video calling'. But there's just something about it that makes it super easy to use...anyway, so my use of facetime has basically been exactly as apple portrayed in the ads -- facetiming my girlfriend (long distance relationships suck), and facetiming my family. I shudder to think that I've been so...predictable to an international corporation. But facetime is indeed cool, and I've greatly enjoyed using it.

The laptop I bought is a sony vaio pro 13, which it turns out is actually a very new laptop indeed. It's a pleasure to use, and is perfect (aside from the absence of an ethernet port. But, ethernet really needs to update the standard because the heads of the cables are now much too large for this day and age of measuring thickness of laptops in mm's).

Well this didn't end up being much of an interesting post, so I'm sorry about that. Just an update, I guess.

Catchas!

Circle

Taking the steps

We had a practical lab today, and we learnt how to take blood pressure in a number of ways, both manually and with machines of various size and ability. It sounds mundane, and plenty of people in all walks of life can do it, but it sure was exciting for me at least to get out my stethoscope and use it on someone else for the first time! It was fairly hard to find the brachial pulse on most people, but I'm sure that with practice that'll become second nature. As part of the lab we are able to take part in a research project organised by the medicine faculty, investigating blood pressure. It's the largest study of it's kind in the world, so it's no small thing. Part of it is to do with changes in how long it takes for our heart to readjust itself after we go from laying down to standing. My blood pressure went below 25mmHg when I stood up...that's really not good. Then I took an anti angina drug and repeated the experiment, and the blood pressure stayed lower for longer, which was what we expected. It gave me a thumping good headache too, because it worked by vasodilation.

On another note, the pharmacology lecturer made us watch this video, because...here's the scary part...it summarises most of the drugs we're going to have to be very familiar with by the end of the year. Fantastic.

Regards,

Circle

Waiting Game

This may be All Hallow's Eve, but for me it's also the eve, perhaps, of finding out if I have been successful in gaining a place in an MD course. It was meant to be today, but the admissions people couldn't finalise the national student allocations in time. Thankfully they're getting up early tomorrow, so hopefully there will be some news to wake up to!

I'm not stressed. I'm not even particularly excited. I know that getting in will mean I've signed up for years of stress, and very little time for friends and relationships. It might mean leaving my family behind, as I move interstate. I am looking forwards to finding out though, but not in the fanatical way that other people are. It's important to not just want something because it's difficult to attain. There seems to be a philosophy in med applicants, that getting an offer means that you've 'won'. Better to always remember the real reasons why you're there, so that you can stay objective about whether it's for you or not.

In other news, we were given free pizza today in a unit, so life's pretty great! Aside from a splitting headache, and quickly worsening vision in my left eye, and all the assignments I still have to do (I really need to give my eye a rest, but there's no chance if that any time soon).

Wish me luck!

Cheers,

Circle

It's Snowing...

...snowing assignments.

In the free time that I've had in the past few weeks I've watched a program that I've taped called 'Living With the Amish', and it has been truly eye opening. There is a teenager on the progrom from England that I have felt I can partially relate to -- he is heavily educated at Eton and has enormous pressure on him to succeed, which is more my scenario than the others, who seem to have been chosen simply because they don't represent the best of English youth -- so it has been great to see them from his eyes as well.

Basically, the Amish for the most part live as though technology doesn't exist. They hand make all of their clothes, they work the farm by hand (not a hard and fast rule, but some of them do), and they drive around in horses and carts. They do use dollars, but I presume they don't need to apply complex economics to anything. And while on the face of it you might reel in horror at the thought of living without say, electricity, these people are the happiest group of people that I have ever seen. It may be that I have a hidden side where I actually love getting in the dirt and working a hard day, but it has made me think on numerous occasions that living with the Amish actually wouldn't be so bad.

It has been interesting to watch something like Living With the Amish at a time when my university workload has been dialled up to maximum. I yearn for that simple life, where you can take things on face value and the amount of money you bring home depends on how hard you work, not on the relative demand for your work (these things are intrinsically linked, but in reality they are far apart sometimes). I yearn for the simple life, but I'm propelling myself into certainly not an easy profession to either get into or stay in. In the name of passion? Passion may yet prove to be the most dangerous fuel.

[interesting title]

*static* Come in, come in, this is *static* to Earth, paging... anyone *static*


This is the mandatory first post. Hello there! I'm a student in Australia, currently 20 years old. I've got a keen interest in medicine -- that's what my undergrad degree's been about, and I'll maybe be starting in an MD course next year. What makes this blog different to all the other medical school student blogs out there? Nuthin! I'l try to write about things that are interesting enough that you might stick around though! Since I have about 15 years of education to go before I'm fully qualified I anticipate being able to share a great many interesting things in the years to come. One little thing I hope about starting this blog is that it won't just be another of those blogs you see that fades into obscurity due to neglect by either the author or audience...

Since life continues outside of studies too (sometimes that's hard to imagine!) this blog will be a place where I write about other things too. It won't be a day to day this-is-what-I-ate-for-breakfast ordeal, but will feature some things (time permitting).

So, here's to the years to come! Sleepless nights and life changing moments, coming right up.


Cheers,
Circle