’til I take the glorious, or not-so-glorious MCAT. Cue fake enthusiasm now. Advice from a few good friends: Sarah, stop studying!
It is hard, but since I received a pretty awesome Facebook message from an even more awesome soon-to-be first year med student , I have been met with an uncanny calmness. I may not be able to explain it, but it is very welcome. I have tried throughout this process to remind myself that this test is not the end of the world and will not determine whether or not I have a good life. However, I found myself falling into the state that most pre-meds seem to get into: the OMG state where anything and everything evokes panic.
For instance, I was trying to relax by watching a made for t.v. movie. Don’t laugh, but it very well may have been a Lifetime movie. (If it wasn’t, it should have been.) This commercial came on advertising some form of blood pressure medicine and I immediately started attempting to recall the lab flow chart from hell. Essentially this was a flow chart from my animal physiology course that traces what happens in all of the organ systems when there is a change in blood pressure and how they work to regulate it. So as I was busy thinking about angiotensinogen, ANGI, ACE (found in the lungs), ANGII etc., my movie had progressed through nearly a half hour of plot development and I was thoroughly baffled.
By the time it ended, I had deduced that the mom had been hounding her daughter about sexual responsibility. And while one would expect that it would have been the daughter who would get pregnant, the mom became pregnat..definitely a Lifetime movie (I just searched their website to see if there was anything that fit this description and this is what came up.
So that is the MCAT journey thus far. After the MCAT I will be going to my family’s Lake house in Mississippi for some R & R with the whole crew. The whole crew being my dad, stepmom, sister who will be 5 on June 4th, and almost 16 year old brother.
It will be fun, sunshine, water, bikes, boats, tubes, really it’s the life. And, this place has some of the most beautiful sunsets that I have seen. I went up there alone this weekend to get some studying done sans 5 year old and I only wish I could be this undistracted and undisrupted in my residence hall sometimes! I was extraordinarily effective and I got to watch the sunset three nights in a row, each one of them different and each one of them beautiful. I kept wishing that I had a real camera and not just my iPhone. Though my phone takes decent pictures, it couldn’t capture it the way I was seeing it.
In just over a week, I will be back at Rhodes researching with the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies which is part of the CARES program. I have talked about this before and you should expect me to talk about it significantly more in the coming months! I will be researching protective factors against various neurodegenerative disorders using rodent models and their implications in society. In addition, we will be working on a Neuroscience Roadshow to bring around to Memphis City school children.
I am so very excited! However, as a science person I am a bit hesitant about this more historically based parts of the program. While that is most certainly the point of the regional studies aspect of the program, I do worry about my ability to truly discuss history with others and have enlightening discussions. I am sure that it will be fine despite my apprehensions.
Lastly, throughout the year I have run into people who say, I’ve been reading your blog! Sometimes they continue to talk about what they may have read, but sometimes it ends there leaving me with many questions. All of those natural human insecurities running through my head: How many typos were there? Which post did he read? What did she think?
My most loyal readers has been Stephen’s mom, Betty (Photo below courtesy of Stephen Rintoul). We’ll be talking on the phone and he will say, “My mom said that you haven’t updated your blog recently.” It is great because it always makes me want to update when I know people are reading. So, thanks, Betty (and all of you other readers), not only for reading, but for encouraging future posts!
Anyway, loyal blog readers, this is just as much your space as it is mine. If there is something you want me to blog about, let me know! If you have questions, comments, funny song lyrics, or life goals you want to share feel free to comment, Facebook me, e-mail me, and if you look really hard you can even find me on Myspace. (You need to friend me to see me on myspace though, so there is a bit less anonymity :-)).
Looking forward to hearing from you!
(And feel free to send some good thoughts my way on Saturday morning!!)
Until next time,
Sarah
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