Success

Well, I'm ridiculous. There's no way around that. I think the last time I wrote, I had just finished my first module. Now I'm about halfway through the second, which has presented new challenges, many of which I think are here to stay because they are just a fact of life when it comes to med school. However, I have adapted and I feel confident that with frequent adjustments based on determining what is effective and what is not, I will be able to continue being successful. One of those obstacles wasn't much of an obstacle at all: it was the fear of knowing I wouldn't be able to study over this past weekend because I went to Oregon for Nicole and Grant's wedding (congratulations, kids!...and more on that later) and that proved to be an incredible motivator. So if anyone wants me to be in a wedding or has some other sort of all weekend-long plans (oh, and wants to pay for me to get there since I am broke as a joke!), bring it on because it forced me to be a dilligent studier (student?!) these past two weeks! Many of the study habits I picked up out of this fear of being ill-prepared come September 19 (the day we flew out of DC), like reading last year's MNTS notes on the bus to class and writing out notecards, I think I will end up retaining because they were just good ideas. It's just that now it's possible for me to be doing this blog entry at the moment because I have de-emphasized the study-like-a-lunatic-in-the-afternoons aspect.

Earlier I used the word success and I just thought I'd take a moment to reflect on how that word has now become a sort of relative term for me. For those of you who don't know (and I promise you, I ain't bragging, I'm just trying to provide a framework), I was one of my high school's valedictorians and I played three sports for most of my high school career as well. Then college came along and while it took me a while to adjust to the new challenges it presented, I was eventually able to make those improvements and continue to be successful academicallly (I graduated with honors) as well as balance extracurricular activities and a part-time job in a lab. Before I got to med school, I envisioned things progressing in much the same way because until now, that's what I have always done. I quickly realized, however, that if I were to hold myself to that same standard of getting one of the best grades in the class, I would be entering into a group with which I have no desire to belong.

Oh, the gunners. If you're unfamiliar with that term, a "gunner" in med school is one of those crazies willing to devote their ENTIRE waking lives to getting those few extra questions (seriously, like two or three!) right on the exam that separates the high passers (which does not even appear on your transcript, I might add!) and honors from the passers. Because unlike in college (or at least the university I went to), getting a 93% on an exam does not even grant you high pass (A- to B+ range) privileges when the average is an 88%. My friend Liz joked a few weeks ago that they should put a disclaimer on her transcript indicating that "pass" actually means that she got >85% of the exam questions right and I could not agree more. In college, if 8 people in a class earned an A, they got As. If everyone in the class got an A (which did not happen, I can assure you!), everyone got an A. I knew med school classes would be graded on a curve, but I did not anticipate just how much I would miss the grading scale I grew up with!

To make a long story longer, my point in bringing all of this up is that I will now be defining success a little differently than I have previously in my life. For me, I will continue to strive to correctly answer 90% or greater of the questions posed to me on an exam. The grade I get (which will most likely be one of those "mediocre" passes), does not really matter. I don't feel the need to honor or even high pass all of my classes and if that means not being the world's youngest neurosurgeon to become chief of surgery, I'm okay with that (I don't even want to be a neurosurgeon anyway). I am confident that I will be able to do what I want in medicine if I stick to that. So, that's Patty's new philosophy on how to succeed in medical school while still hopefully making plenty of room in her schedule to spend time with a boyfriend who makes her very happy, to take care of a puppy who borders on driving her completely nuts (though in a very adorable way), to keep in touch with all of her friends and family, both near and extremely far away, and to occasionally eschew studying the weekend before an exam to be there when one of her friends leaves single life and takes up a new one with a man who makes her very happy (and both of whom write such wonderful vows, it makes you [want to] cry).

I have put off studying the urea cycle for too long now, I'm afraid, so you'll all have to wait in suspense to hear how it was in Bend!

Hello Weekend!

Well, I made it. One module down, nine to go (until first year is over, that is). I don't really feel super great about the exam, but I also doubt that I failed it ("failing" at Georgetown is getting a score more than two standard deviations below the mean or 60%, whichever is higher). I could be wrong though- the average of the last exam was an A- (with a SD of about 4). That means that if you got a B-, technically you failed, but our course director assured us that no one who answers 80% of the questions correctly on an exam will fail the course. I highly doubt that the average will be anywhere near that high on this exam, considering that everyone I talked to before was feeling nervous about the material and most people I talked to afterward felt about as confident as I did (which is to say, not very).

In addition to putting that module behind me (and enjoying the evaluation of each of the lecturers I had probably more than I should!), I have been relishing this completely free weekend, a rare situation in med school. Yesterday, God came down in rain/flooding form, so Alex and I went on a cleaning spree and the house looks fantastic! After that, we braved the rain to take care of some grocery shopping and then enjoyed some relaxing down time (complete with nap!) before heading over to my friend Jon's house for stir fry/game night. We only played Apples to Apples because it was kind of a large group (which is very fun in and of itself, but the game night portion of the evening was definitely downplayed), but the food was delicious and it was nice chitchatting and getting to know some of my classmates a bit more. Plus, Alex and I have had very few opportunities to go do things with a big group and I have to say I enjoyed showing him off!

Today we slept in and had a relaxing brunch (our old standby of Crescent rolls and five-minute eggs...always so good!). In a bit, we're going to head to the beach (which will hopefully go a lot more smoothly this time) and Alex has a work dinner in the evening where I'm going to meet at least one of his labmates, another postdoc named Michelle, so hopefully that will be fun.

I'm Sorry!

I'm not sure if anyone out there is still reading this blog of mine since the comment situation, which already was not awesome (FYI: not awesome is a phrase of mine and the two words should always be considered together...otherwise it just sounds like I am using poor English, which would be unacceptable), has become pretty much nonexistent, but I am still alive and well! Further apologies to those of you out there whose emails I haven't yet answered and whose phone calls I have yet to return- I have not forgotten about you! I have simply had my first real brush with a poorly organized lecturer and it could not have come at a more inconvenient time. Last week was pretty crazy getting ready for Alex's move and Tricia and Justin's brief visit. Add in some relationship drama, a dog, my first Starfarer experience, a restaurant that doesn't indicate on its website that it's closed for the holiday weekend, a trip to Ikea, four consecutive loads of laundry, wandering around Annapolis trying to find a beach, locking the keys in the trunk of the car, trying to have your boyfriend pose as your dad on the phone (related to AAA and the last item on the list), God knows what else, and trying to teach yourself all the material you covered in a week (which was a lot more than we have covered in previous weeks, let me tell you!) and you have a lack of blogging on my part.

The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel: the exam is on Friday and it marks the end of the first module as well. The bad news is that the exam is on Friday and I still need to do a lot of studying until then. Let this be a lesson to me: I really should try to pre-read lecture notes so that I come to class with a vague idea of what the professor is trying to communicate and clarify any questions the day of the lecture so that I don't have a scary cloud of unknown concepts floating above my head...I'll let you know how it goes.