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junewalker
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Name: Amanda
Country: United States
State: Massachusetts
Metro: Boston
Gender: Female
Expertise: decorating cookies, glittering stuff (yes, glitter is a verb), and starting projects with no intent to finish them
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
AIM:  Ajax2115
Member Since:
2/20/2006
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| Reason's why it's hard for me to write on xanga these days...
1. I'm not very insightful. I think about very few interesting or meaningful things. I just go about my business, come home, go to sleep.
2. My creativity is inversely proportional to my age. It's sad really. That's all I have to say about that.
3. I've been sorta bummed lately because my pediatrics rotation isn't quite as cool as I thought it would be. I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician for a long time. But not so much anymore. The good thing is that I loved internal medicine (adult medicine) so I don't feel completely screwed.
But I can always update with facts. here are some bulleted tidbits of information:
- I applied for a research program for next year. If I get it I would move to DC. Then come back to finish my fourth year. Its very competitive, so not getting too excited
- I'm always cold. seriously, ALWAYS cold. ALWAYS. I am comfortable sitting in my huge huge winter coat anywhere. I sleep under a huge down blanket with long underwear under both fleece pants and a sweatshirt. Yesterday at the hospital, I had to put on a long underwear shirt under my sweater which is under my white coat because i was so cold.
- I was all excited to start cooking more now that medicine was over, but I now have about the same amount of free time.
- as this list of tidbits expand, I am realizing that I probably did have enough info for a solid entry that wouldn't be super boring to read. oh well, maybe next time.
Now I'm gonna take a bath with a "bomb" from LUSH and try to get rid of my headache with some coffee (that's the problem with sleeping in...it's been about 20 hours since my last dose of caffeinated elixer.)
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| I just finished my psych shelf exam. Last day of the rotation was yesterday. Unfortunately I'm in one those moods where I speak in short phrases. No fun to read. I was sad to leave Psych. I'll miss my patients. It was a hard rotation in the sense that 2 patients died - one was a inpatient suicide and one was a patient consulted for delirium. And one of the patients I knew from physical diagnosis last year died of liver failure. sad. so three patients total. The worst part was that it all happened in about a 3 day stretch.
I worked my first 25 hour day ever. There was no sleeping on my one night in the ER. That was cool. I felt a little bit like a resident. I celebrated the monumental event with a post-call breakfast at a diner. I loooove diners. I looove breakfasts. dinners are just ok.
We're getting ready to go to Freeport, Maine for the weekend. I've never been to Maine, so of course I can't wait to check off that state from my list. I checked off Connecticut last weekend because we drove through it to get to NYC to see some KY friends. None of this would be happening without a car, might I add. The little guy is good to me.
Oh, I got my board score back a while back - I couldn't have been happier! What a releif. It's cool when hard work pays off.
So now, starting today, I have a two week vacation. Gonna see my dad for a couple days then head to Cancun with my mom. I don't sound excited with my word choice, but believe me, I AM!! First, gonna organize and clean, then go to chicago, then to cancun. sweeeet.
Oh, and I'm training for the Boston half marathon in October. all I have to say right now is blah, blah. no joke...I lack anything starting with an M and ending in OTIVATION. but that was then, this is now. no more blah-ing around feeling slow.
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| First some pics of the yard (also known as the rock):
Yay! I get tomorrow off. I have a feeling some of my classmates are less fortunate. Today was my first day of my psychiatry rotation (a relatively laid back rotation), and my first day as a third year. woooo...what I've been waiting for since the first day of biochem a little less that 2 years ago. Today day felt long, but it was only 9-5. scary. the good thing is that I already ran this morning, so no guilt about being lazy tonight.
Update on the computer situation: I gave up on the laptop and bought a new desktop. best part being that it's a Mac. so far, I'm very impressed with everything about it. oh, and it came with a free nano. We managed to rescue all of my music and a few of my pictures from the crappy harddrive. I am setting a record for spending money I don't have. I'm good at it.
Happy fourth of July! But the truth is I just can't seem to get excited about the 4th. That exclamation had fake excitement behind it. I can't help but notice this voice in my head saying "welcome to adulthood, Amanda. your summer vacations are soooo over" At least my auditory hallucinations aren't telling me to do things like set the house on fire or swallow razorblades. Seriously, how annoying would that be? Anyway, to celebrate the eve of this holiday, maybe I'll assume my movie watching position - curled up on the end of the couch with a heavy blanket. no. first I'll put a movie in, then assume the position. I should probably do something outside or a little bit summer related, shouldn't I? naaah, the couch is better. Maybe eating ice cream counts as a summer-related activity. See..I'm festive. I'm actually feeling really tired right now. I am glad to have the day off tomorrow. very sleepy. the screen is making me go cross-eyed.
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| A few monumental events are underway or have already underwent. Is that even English? Ok, so I took the boards on Wednesday. It was everything I had been told: "some questions are sooo obvious, and there will be some questions about things you've never heard of and never even thought about studying." And they were right. I was ready for it though. I can't be disappointed in my effort. The last 3 days before the exam were an absolute nightmare. I couldn't focus on anything. And the mere act of studying was panic inducing because I kept wondering if I had time to learn more stuff. If I didn't already know some things I was freaking out, and when I would go over stuff I already knew I got annoyed because I was wasting time on material I already knew. But then not studying was even more panic inducing. It was weird. Anyway, the test day went well. I only took breaks to use the bathroom and eat quickly because each passing minute meant more opportunities for facts to leave my head. I got there early, so was able to start early. My usual tension headache set in strong when I had two hours to go...but hopefully it didn't have an effect on my performance. Oh, and I think I had the same question twice. That was really weird.
I kept thinking that this was all a dream. That I'd wake up and head to the library once again for a full day of studying.
I'm picking up my car in about an hour! It's a toyota yaris. A very very small car. But I love it. Silver. I'm soooo excited. The whole car-buying process was so much easier than I expected. Everyone was really nice. All of the "extra fees" I had planned on paying for were lumped into my payment. I didn't know they could do that! I was able to get my insurance through liberty mutual (who I picked because their commercials make me cry....ya know the one where the girl drops her little pink stuffed octupus and a guy picks it up for her), and they were really nice too. And I got 8% off through the IU alumni association! crazy discount for college grads.
And I'm working on my laptop that crashed about a month ago. It is right here next to me making all of these weird scary LOUD clicking noises after attempting to start up for the past two hours. I tried to forget about the repercussions of a "broken" laptop while I was studying, so now I'm dealing with it all. I think it's dead for good. I just hope I can rescue my pictures and my music. Tim keeps saying "Uh oh" :( that's not good.
On the upside, tonight I'm meeting Caroline for some drinks, then going dancing (hopefully) with some med school people to celebrate our reentry into civilization.
And my laptop is now shutting down. ewww. I wonder if this is it's last breath.
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| One thing that had been on my life to-do list since high school was to live in a big city. And even though Boston isn't really that big of a city, I'm checking it off my list. I am done with the downtown city life, and I'm moving UP in the world to the outskirts of city life. Here's what happened this week...
We moved to an apartment that's about a 15 minute T ride from downtown. It's close enough, yet feels sooo far away. We have a yard! sort of..it's more of a rock...I'll have to put some pictures up soon. we have a front porch! we have neighbors that don't look at us like we're crazy when we start a conversation (in fact, they actually talk to us!), we have a "garbage day," and an actual mailman, not just some government employee behind a giant wall of mailboxes.
Yesterday we rented a zipcar to get groceries. The best part of the whole trip was unloading the car. I didn't have to get a dreadful cart and take trips up and down 20 floors while hogging the elevator space. no one was watching me struggle to balance grocery bags on that stupid cart that's impossible to steer. Stuff is always falling off it, and I'm having to tell people "No, I don't need help with that box of tampons and 2 pints of Ben & Jerrys that just rolled off the cart." at this house, no one was assessing my purchases and asking me stuff like "wow, do you like coke?" (how do you respond to that anyway...uhh, yes, I like coke. I bought a 12 pack. woooow. that's like 1 diet coke each day for 12 whole days. someone actually asked us that.)
The first thing that amazed me about the place was that I can actually hear the birds chirping. And when I walk by the open windows I can smell grass and weeds and trees and dirt - the real smells of summer...NOT the downtown smells of steamy musty underground pipes and roasting nuts, frying sausages (bleeacchhh), and sewerish smells here and there. No more of the same homeless people asking me every single day, every single time I step outside the apartment if I can spare some change. No more people handing me flyers for palmreading or the men's suit store. No more daily offers to join the "windmill save-the-earth" campaign or the "save the children for a mere credit card number" campaign. No more stories about "only needing 10 dollars for the train." or only needing a "quarter for a phone call" (and no more resisting the urge to tell them that the cost of a phone call went up about 10 years ago) Anyway, the point is...it is sooo friggin' peaceful here. I am about 10% less stressed about the board exam I have coming up in three weeks. It's amaaaaazing. I wonder if this bliss is like the what you feel during a new relationship...everything seems so perfect. like, "who cares if there is no AC. that's what I like about this place..it's like a rustic log cabin!" Oh well, I'm livin up this new-ness. For now, I love the fans.
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