OH MY GOD THIS POST. This post, you guys! The day I'm writing up was literally the first day of the semester way back in January, and now here we are with the semester all wrapped for the year and it still hasn't been finished.
I really am too lazy for my own good sometimes. Especially when it comes to things like blogging.
Anyway. This day was technically from January. We were still in MSK doing anatomy lab, so it's a pretty good example of one of the "busier" days from the year.
I try to wake up sometime between 7:00-7:30 every morning, but some days get the better of me and I hit snooze until almost 8:00. Prior to moving, I lived about 2 miles away from campus so it thankfully wouldn't take too long to drive to school in the morning [traffic permitting, of course]. I usually shoot to leave home about 30 minutes before class/etc. actually starts; on this day we had an R&A [weekly review and assessment quiz] at 9:15, so I had a few extra minutes to get my act together in the morning. Here I'm packing up scrubs for the week's anatomy labs to leave in my locker at school. Depending on what all is going on with our schedule, some days I wear regular clothes to class and then change prior to starting lab, whereas other days I arrive wearing scrubs and just go from there. A lot of students seemingly love to wear scrubs for every random occasion ever [like... a random Tuesday when we're just sitting in lecture all morning], but I don't fall into that camp. You can go on and on all you want about how scrubs are basically just pajamas, it makes no difference to me - I still like wearing regular clothes. And technically our dress code states that medical students are not allowed to wear scrubs except for certain particular situations, like anatomy lab and on specific clinical rotations. So. Yeah. Obviously the dress code isn't exactly enforced.
And off we go! I'm a big believer in breakfasts I can eat while driving to school in the morning. Poptarts and avocado toast are particular favorites. This morning I also put in a little extra effort to make myself some tea to take with me.
As mentioned earlier, we have a quiz this morning on the lecture material we went over before leaving for Christmas break. This second exam for MSK is all about the head and neck. Since I like to get to class at least a few minutes early, so I don't feel like I'm rushing to not be late, I kill a little time looking over some of my notes before our module director officially brings everything to order.
Side note - SofTest is the devil. We used to take quizzes via clicker, which was a particularly slow, painful process because they give us too much time per question, but this year we've undergone a bit of an evolution with the testing methods. At first they tried switching clicker programs, which backfired miserably when no one could connect to the server. Then they tried using our Sakai website to host quizzes [like we do for independent learning activities]...but then it turns out the first years were taking advantage of that to snap pictures of the quiz questions on their phones. And of course you had people trying to skip having to show up at school once a week by taking their quizzes from home, where they couldn't be monitored. So finally we ended up here, taking quizzes with the same program that we use for exams. It's overkill in a lot of ways.
After our R&A wraps up, the usual ~75% of the class vacates the classroom while the remaining loyal few of us stick around to actually attend lecture. We only have 2 scheduled for the morning, and one ends up getting bumped because the lecturer gets stuck in clinic. Instead, the tech team uploads the previous year's recording of that particular lecture to Tegrity for us to watch independently. Our lecture on head and neck radiology proceeds as planned, however; the radiologist who's been working with us during MSK is actually super awesome. She's full of "clinical pearls" on things to look for in real life and on board exams.
Then we break for lunch. I try to bring my food with me most days, and today is no exception - behold, last night's leftover salmon! Thankfully we have microwaves and refrigerators in our student lounge, so it's super easy to feed yourself during the day. A lot of students who like to study at the library for most of the day actually pack big bags full of meals and snacks to tide them over for both lunch and dinner and whatever in between; I'm not quite that hardcore about things, haha. I do usually try to use our lunch hours to review bits and pieces of something, like the material for anatomy lab that afternoon or something from lecture the previous day.
Time to prepare for anatomy lab! I grab my scrubs from my locker and do a quick change in the bathroom. Our lab for the day involves dissecting the face, which is a particularly obnoxious process since most of the nerves and blood vessels are so tiny! I was not looking forward to dissecting our donor's face and skull when we first started MSK, as adding a face to the body makes the experience take on a whole different feeling, but all in all once we get started it ends up not being quite as horrifying as I built everything up to be in my head. I've been planning to write a post about my experiences with gross anatomy lab and the autopsy I watched in the fall, so hopefully one of these days I'll get around to actually making it happen.
All done for the day! Thankfully this didn't end up being a long lab - the dissector was only 2 pages of material, which is always a good sign. I'm ready to head home for the afternoon and relax for a bit. I'm not great at being productive during the afternoon, for whatever reason - I can do mornings and I can do later at night, but I really struggle to stay productive during mid-afternoon.
I end up stopping by Lenny's Sub Shop on the way home to pick up a little something to snack on because I'm STARVING. Lunch was already too long ago. Half the time when I'm home I'm sitting on the floor of my living room using my coffee table as a desk of sorts - I usually like to move around, and can't stay working in the same spot for too long. Ignore the post-Christmas mess that's taken over my apartment, haha; this is a particularly messy day. I kill some time in between arriving home and going to a Barre3 class by reading a few blog posts for the day and messing around on the internet.
Last year I was big on taking some of the free fitness classes at the rec center at school, but when we started up again in the fall they had changed both the class offerings and the schedule such that I lost access to some of my favorites. I ended up signing up for a Barre3 membership in September [three cheers for student discounts!] because I love this style of active group Pilates-yoga-ish mishmash exercise. I usually end up working out mid-late-afternoon, as the other time offerings don't really align with my schedule on an average day. I try to go at least a few times a week, but that can vary depending on what all is going on with school - weeks when we have an exam on a Friday, for example, I tend to skip out on exercising more because there's so much else I need to do during the day.
Boyfriend is out of town on a residency interview and I'm feeling lazy, so I swing by Whole Foods after barre wraps up to pick up a quick something to eat for dinner. My mom and I were big fans of Whole Foods soups when we first got one in Colorado Springs back in the day, and even now I frequently pick up a cup whenever I stop to pick out groceries.
Pretty sunset on the drive home. :)
As gross as it probably sounds, I don't really like to rush into taking a shower when I get home from working out, Some days I like to make myself a smoothie or eat dinner or read something on the internet - just spend maybe 20 minutes relaxing before jumping back into the day. I received a sample kit of a few different Origins and Sephora maska as part of my Dirty Santa gift at my friend's party this year, so I decide to try one out today and read a chapter of something fun while I wait for it to dry. Then I pop in the shower and re-heat my dinner a bit before digging in. I recently discovered Whole Foods macaroni and cheese nuggets and OH MY GOD those are amazing. They're not available in the hot foods bar very often, but when I do find them I get super excited. I start to get pumped that it's Monday because Monday = Jane the Virgin night...but of course it's the beginning of January and none of the TV shows have returned from winter hiatus yet. Womp womp.
I usually like to take a bit of a dinner break regardless of what day it is and watch a little bit of something - some days it's an actual show on TV, whereas others I might pull up an episode of Friends or Parks and Rec on Netflix and let that play while I chow down and delete unwanted emails and blah blah blah.
Eventually I have to get back to work for the day. I download the lectures from that morning and print off my lecture slides and our ILA assignments for the week. I then also update my calendar for the semester; I'm a bit old school and I like to have the schedule for each day written down in my planner [in addition to having our class Google Calendar synced to my phone]. I also watch our missed lecture from this morning, on developmental milestones in children. Mondays are usually a pretty slow day for me on the productivity front, honestly, and I push back reviewing that radiology lecture until the next morning since we have a light schedule for the day.
I also talk on the phone with Boyfriend for a bit to hear about his interview dinner with the residents and his first thoughts so far; I don't remember what program he was interviewing at this time, but he was pretty committed to staying here even before I met him so the kid is a bit difficult to impress on that front. Anyway, of course I wish him good luck with his actual interview tomorrow and we say goodnight. I usually aim to go to bed around midnight every night, so after wrapping up Dr. Swingle's recorded lecture I brush my teeth and do all the getting ready for bed type things. If I don't have an assigned reading for the next day, I usually wind down by reading a chapter or two of a non-school book before turning out the lights and going to sleep for the evening.
And there we have it. Now that I'm in the thick of studying for Step 1, I kind of miss the busy-ness of MSK...never thought I'd say that while I was actually in the thick of it, haha.