april is the cruellest month...

I'm sure almost every April in my eight years of blogging I've made a post entitled "April is the cruellest month," because, well, April sucks hard. (Sorry T.S. Eliot, I have not your way with words.)

Yes, April is the perfect, opportune, most SADISTIC time for professors to lay one last awful hell week on you before the hell week of all hell weeks: May finals. It's like clockwork.

I was looking at a text doc of things I had wanted to blog about nearly 2 months ago, and unfortunately half of them don't make sense to me anymore:

1. med school formal
   
2. valentine's day
3. hell week for studying (...which one???)
4. got the job i wanted** (I put two stars next to this one because it probably merits more than a few skimpy sentences.)
5. a word on healer's art
6. spring break -- home and california**
   
7. flight delay
8. the white tiger
9. sam adams brewery
10. starting at project trust 4 hrs/week**

Let's just say for numbers 1 and 2 that they happened, they were lovely, and they involved brilliant views of the Boston skyline (no. 1) and heart-shaped pancakes (no. 2).

Nos. 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9 are too long to hash out entirely, but they did involve Disneyland, an unplanned overnight stay in DC that I spent sleeping at the airport (thank you, United!), some beer with AMSA pals, and "fuzzy hearts" from old Jewish folks, though not entirely in that order of events.

But in all seriousness, Spring Break was an incredible mash-up of seeing my family, bringing Andrei to KC again, celebrating my 21st birthday (no I don't feel any wiser nor do I drink any more alcohol than I did before I was 21, sadly?), and lying poolside in sunny California in-between medical talks. (Sign me up for the next conference!) And no, I have not yet posted pictures. Just thinking about it gives me a headache.

Sidenote: At the national AMSA conference I did get a chance to meet and chat with Dr. Tao Le and Dr. Goljan, of First Aid and Rapid Review Pathology fame, respectively. Like, seriously, students were GEEKING OUT and asking for autographs and photos with these two docs. It was surreal, and slightly--no, tremendously--pathetic. In just one year, will I also be worshipping USMLE Step 1 review book editors? (!!!!) I shudder to think of it.

Other thoughts: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Just read it and you'll be glad you did. You'll like this if you liked Slumdog Millionaire or any type of tongue-in-cheek social commentary. One spoiler: the first person narrator tells his story entirely in letters addressed to the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. Good, no? It is hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time, and well worth anyone's time. (Also the winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize, if you like that kind of thing.)

More details on the starred ** items for next time, hopefully soon.

(I have been THIS close to opening a Twitter account because usually my thoughts need to be put down immediately or they get sucked into the black hole of forgetfulness... but I'm still super Twitter-wary and for good reason, so I'm still not convinced.)

happy holidays!

Happy Chinese New Years and Valentine's Day!

Just got off the phone with both sets of grandparents and we got to catch up with what's been going on the last month. We talked mostly about their upcoming visit to the US for my college graduation (dad's side only; mom's side says they'll come over when I graduate medical school since that's what actually matters--spoken like the true doctor side of the family, HAH). We also talked about my cousin's upcoming wedding (dad's side), how my cousin is doing in college (mom's side), and the fact that I will probably be the next person in my family to get married (both sides; ...also a bit horrifying).

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have both sides of the family so whole and intact. Since I've been born there's only been one death, and that was my great-grandmother who died at age 92. There's also been only two weddings and two births (the birth of Kevin, the marriage of my cousin and cousin-in-law in NZ and the subsequent birth of their beautiful spunky baby Anita, and my cousin Xu Hao who just got engaged to this super cute guy in November). Apparently this constitutes very few "major events" for one family over the last 20 years. Then again, that one child rule does explain for a lot of it...

Anyway, today I'm feeling really grateful for all my friends, family, and other loved ones. And of course tomorrow is both Valentine's Day and CNY in the US time zone, so it should pack an even mightier punch of sentimentality in me.

healer's art

I mentioned a few posts ago that I'm currently taking an elective class called Healer's Art, and I don't know if I like it or not. The reason why I'm on the fence is because of the touchy-feelingness of the class. It's a "course" that only meets five times over the next two months, there are no reading assignments, and they gave every student in the course a free book written by the woman who started the course many years ago. I have yet to look at the book, but I get the feeling it doesn't fit my type of reading; I'm just not into inspirational, life-affirming non-fiction. And I kinda wonder what type of person is.... the big Mitch Album fan or religious Oprah-watching type, I suspect.

The first time the class met was last week, and it's a HUGE class. I think a lot of first-years signed up not knowing what to expect and feeling curious about a course that has no expectations of you other than asking that you show up. We sat in a circle of chairs, did some deep breathing, some calming exercises.... and then the course director asked us to grab a pack of crayons and a sheet of construction paper from the pile in the middle of the room.

He asked us to draw things that we feel have gotten "out of balance" in our lives since medical school started, i.e. things that we missed or had to push aside to deal with our more immediate education. People drew mountains and beaches to represent travel, other people drew pictures of their family, and one guy drew this REALLY BIG, elaborate four-poster bed with luxurious-looking sheets that took up the entire size of his sheet of paper. This made me laugh, even though I've been sleeping plenty in medical school because I'm an old lady who loves her sleep. But I can appreciate the humor in it.

Later we broke up into small groups of six or seven to talk about what we drew, and it felt like elementary show-and-tell all over again, except now we were sharing the most meaningful things we've given up in the last semester. It was actually really nice to get to know and talk with classmates that I hadn't exchanged more than a few sentences with prior to the class, but I felt pretty awkward telling near strangers about my family and friends and my personal life. It's probably something I'll get more used to as the course goes on, but right now I'm still on the fence about the class because it seems more like a therapy group than a learning experience. Or, I guess the course philosophy is that learning can come from introspection and sharing of stories, feelings, and mush you wouldn't even admit to your mother.

For the next two times we meet, the theme of the class will be "Sharing Grief and Honoring Loss." I'm anticipating lots of tearing up and stories about death and dying. I'll update about the class as the weeks go on.

hectic weekend

This weekend was the production of the Vagina Monologues on the med campus (undergrad production forthcoming). It was a fun show, and it came together seamlessly. Amazingly, Friday night's show was the first complete run-through with full microphones and stage pieces.... needless to say, grad students are INCREDIBLE at winging it. Somehow it all came together at the last minute and everyone was completely on cue and perfect in their delivery. A++ impressed.

We raked in a bunch of money for our beneficiaries, the BMC Domestic Violence Project and Casa Myrna Vazquez, and had a lot of fun to boot. Lots of people exiting the show were so amazed to see normally dry, rather boring medical and SPH students transformed into hot, sexy, saucy actresses :) Hey, we're not just academics.

More good news this week: I've been placed at the STD clinic for ProjectTrust volunteering, along with two other volunteers in my class. The STD clinic was my first choice because of the high traffic through the clinic and the availability of comprehensive testing. I can't wait to get started doing testing and counseling. For some reason this cause has really galvanized me, probably because I feel risk reduction/screening/preventative medicine is so important and yet so glaringly absent in most of my medical experience so far.

Final piece news: I'm officially going home for spring break for a few days before flying to Anaheim for the AMSA 60th Annual National Conference. Yes, Anaheim, as in DISNEYLAND! Not sure what I'm more excited for: finally visiting Disneyland, or being around a massive group of medical students from all over the country (and Canada) for four days. I know there will be students who are more active and involved than I am, and I'm looking forward to getting fired up by their enthusiasm for activism. (That makes me sound like such a do-gooder, but mostly I am pumped to hang around cool people who will no doubt knock me over the head with awe for their achievements.) Plus, California is a BIG, BIG bonus during dreary March weather.

Speaking of dreary winter weather, we're expecting 8+ inches of snow tomorrow afternoon, which is just icing on top of a long Wednesday I'm sure... Expect me to come home immediately after class and refuse to leave the house for 48 hours.

the art of breaking bad news

As of Sunday I've been a Massachusetts Dept of Public Health certified HIV counselor and tester, which was pretty gratifying after nearly 2.5 full days of training. It was a long process, but mostly fun (talking about sex in an academic setting is always awesome, right?). Over the next few weeks we're going to do some shadowing on the wards with current counselors/testers and then we'll be cleared to do the counseling and testing by ourselves.

We did some role-playing at the end of the day yesterday, and I was to deliver a positive HIV test result to my "client," who was being acted out by a girl in my class. It was definitely one of the hardest things I've ever had to say to anyone, and it wasn't even a real situation....

It could have gone a lot worse (this girl in my class didn't ham it up and go over the top with grief; actually, if anything, she was pretty muted in her response), but it was still a terrible scenario that I hope I'll never encounter in real life. Apparently one of the 2nd year counselors has gotten FOUR HIV-reactive test results since he started volunteering last year. I can't even imagine that.

It's experiences like this that make me think that medicine is more about knowing how to talk to people and deliver bad news than finding a cure. That's more along the philosophy of the "Healer's Art" class that I'm taking as an elective for this semester. I'm a little skeptical of the class, but more on that in the next post since I really need to go practice for VagMo, unless I want to look like a complete fool on stage tomorrow.