A word on the title

I had a friend wonder today if my blog title mentioned scalpels because I was planning on going into surgery. No, my dear readers, this pocketdoc is not destined for a spot in the OR, board scores nonwithstanding. I plan on doing other things in my life like having a family, and being a surgeon doesn't really allow for a lot of that. I just thought that 'scalpels and cephalopods' had a nice alliteration-type ring to it, happened to incorporate a symbol of the medical profession and some of my favorite creatures, and present a contrast between surgical steel and the jelly-like malleability of octopi and their brethren. I suppose it could have been 'stethoscopes and cephalopods,' but I like 'scalpels' a bit better...it sounds a little more edgy, no?

IBKC

If you like baby animals at all (and if you don't, you don't have a heart) and especially kittens, go to the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee link to the right. You will have a cuteness seizure from the all the cute.

First Day

Today was my first day of school. Last night, I lay in bed for hours jealously listening to the boy's even breathing and nocturnal chewing (he's the only person I know who chews in his sleep). I stared at the ceiling and wondered what today would feel like. I swear I barely blinked and the alarm went off.

And I went to school. It wasn't so bad, although predictably I showed up in the middle of a lecture and didn't have a clue what was going on. I steeled myself for the inquiries and I had already crafted a not-lying-but-still-not-admitting-I-failed response to "How did the boards go?" (answer: "I didn't do as well as I wanted to"), but a few people threw me a curveball I didn't anticipate.

See, our rotation schedules are posted. For medical students, schedules are everything. Well, grades and scores are everything, but schedules take a close second. We want to know what is going to happen and when, and we'll bitch up a storm if you don't tell us in a timely manner. The fun of asking people what their rotation schedule looks like lies in identifying who you'll be thrown into the scut with, who you'll be paired with on-call, and basically who in your class you'll be getting to know a LOT better for the next 16 weeks, if not the entire year. Also, there's the added fun of bitching about how hard X rotation is or how crazy Dr. So-and-so is. (In case you hadn't figured it out, medical students LOVE to bitch.)

I wasn't prepared for the "what service are you on?" wrinkle. I'm caught up in this dilemma because I don't want to outright lie but I also don't want to tell just anyone (and therefore, everyone--medical students also LOVE to gossip) that I failed. I could just tell them what my first rotation is and omit the start date (August, not April like everyone else), but what if they have that rotation in April? Then they'll be excited and want to talk about it, and I'll feel like a total liar and my guilt will probably get the better of me and I'll end up telling them anyway. That might not be too bad especially on a one-on-one basis, but today a guy asked me in front of four other people (that I don't know particularly well) what my first rotation was. I lied. I said I didn't know yet. And then I secretly resented him a little for being so cavalier with his question.

Somehow, I think this feels like being in the closet. I KNOW it's not nearly the same level of life-impacting, relationship-altering, reality-shattering truth as figuring out that you're homosexual must be, but I can kind of understand getting rankled at others' assumptions of your status. "Oh, are you married? What does your husband do?" must be an aggravating set of questions for a lesbian. It's almost worse when you know that people aren't trying to be insensitive; they're just ignorant, and you can't really blame them.

Nostalgia

I've been wasting the last few hours in front of my computer, perusing Facebook. A certain group of people who lived in my freshman dorm formed a pretty tight clique during college, and my friends and I resented them and their sometimes out-of-control antics. I knew at the time (but wouldn't admit then) we were insecure and kinda wished that we could be part of the whole dynamic.

I bring this up only because since graduation I've constantly felt as though my college experience was a kind of dream, something I vaguely remember but didn't exactly experience. That is partially due to the non-cohesion of my group of friends--the aforementioned group still stays in touch and participates in each others' weddings, but the people whom I considered my closest friends in college either don't talk to me anymore or are far away and doing their own things with people to whom they have grown much closer. (I'll write about the "not talking to me" thing in another post. I've got issues there, too.)

I'm not wallowing in self-pity here; I'm amazed. I'm impressed that some people can maintain their friendships over distance and time and foster that "group identity" feeling even when the group doesn't physically exist anymore. And I'm envious and a little sad.

I'm trying to grasp why I even care about this and it's difficult to define. Here's an attempt at what I've got thus far:

We all crave validation for our existences; we have to feel as though we matter, and the only way to do that is through other people. You only gain meaning when you share what you feel and what you experience with others. When you're part of a group, your life becomes bigger than what occurs in your skull and is now an inextricable part of other people's existences, of their lives and their experiences. There's a sense of security there, of having your life linked with others'. If you lose those connections (or worse, you realize they're invalid), your experiences untether and you lose meaning.

So that's why college has no meaning for me. I think. It could be bullshit.

Reasons

So I've decided not to let this beat me. I don't really believe in God, per se, but I do think that things happen for a reason. I don't mean that fate or destiny or some invisible hand guides our every action; I think of it more as finding your own meaning in the events of your life. Things don't just happen to you--that's a victim mentality. Yes, sometimes shit happens, but shit happens to everyone and if we all just laid down and said, "Poor me," then nothing would get done. And really, in the grand scheme, how much of that shit is just minor details anyway?

Before I took the test, I was freaking out at my parents' house. My mom sat me down and said, "What's the worst that can happen? You fail, right?"

"No, actually," I said, "the worst thing that could happen is that I barely pass. Then I can't retake the test, so I'm stuck with my shitty score."

And what happened? I missed barely passing, I missed the worst outcome by one point. That means that I'm not stuck with that score, that I have a second chance to fix it and really blow the test away. If that isn't a reason to kick some serious ass this time around, I don't know what is. I'm taking it as a sign that I can do better, and I know I can.

So yesterday I went to financial aid and figured out how to pay for the remedial course that I decided to take after talking to the learning counselor person (who, by the way, is an angel) for 45 minutes. I went over to my parents' house and told them the news and what I intended to do about it. They were surprisingly supportive and very pro-active, basically saying that shit happens. And my mom told me that she failed her pharmacology boards the first time she took them. I guess we're more alike than I thought.

I have a meeting with the Dean on Thursday, and I'm going to tell her that I'm leaving for Illinois in May to go to studying boot camp. I hope she'll see that I'm taking this second chance for all it's worth. It'll be a month of non-stop lectures, tutoring, and studying that I have to pay a pretty hefty amount for, but it's supposedly the best program, and I guess now I've got something to prove.

First Post

So...
I've given in to the cyber-demons. I have always thought that blogs were ridiculous; venues for the self-absorbed and under-noticed to vent their little grievances and feel vindicated. I guess I've joined their ranks.

I've been inspired (you could call it) by two of my fave bloggers (found here and here), both of whom are strong women and have been through a lot, emerging with writing skills and humor intact.

I definitely don't claim to have seen a fraction of the hardship either of the two above ladies have experienced; in fact, my life has been damn near a cake-walk compared to the amazing stories of V and W. However, I've always loved to write and I've been woefully negligent to my hand-written journal lately, so I thought that I might try dragging myself into the 21st century.

That said, I was wondering tonight as I washed dishes and stared vacantly across the "Central-American ghetto-esque" landscape that stretches outside my apartment if anyone else I knew was, at this moment, screaming in anguish at their test scores. I imagined the cut scenes, rapidly flashing from one cramped apartment to the next, focused on the gaping mouths of my colleagues as they read their cruel results on impersonal monitor screens across the city. Surely I wasn't alone in my agony? I didn't wish failure on anyone, not even the smug, too-cool-for-school assholes that sat in the back and smirked at the profs, but surely I couldn't be the only one who failed, right? And what do I do now?

I'm in the 99th percentile of failing. It's a "High Fail." That's like winning first prize in the shit-eating contest. And all because of one measly point.