Today’s inane image of the day:
I am pretty obsessed with mini-post-it notes… and leaving little surprises for people to start their day with [since I get to work way before anyone else]. Hence, today’s inane image of the day:
Today’s inane image of the day:
I am enjoying the fact that this blog is giving me an excuse to take pictures of the frivolous things of my daily life — this being said, here’s today’s inane image of the day:
If you couldn’t tell by the time that I generally post each day, I am a morning person. It took a number of years before I recognized and admitted to the fact, but now that I am in-touch with myself [or something like that], I now complete a number of tasks as the sun peeks above the horizon each day.
But hey, give me a weekend and I’ll sleep until 1PM. I just said I was a morning person, not that I could pop out of bed at 5:30AM without reservations!
If you’ve been following my Twitter, then you might have seen my tweet about breaking into a new paper planner with pretty pens… well, I wasn’t kidding about being “old fashioned”:
Thanks to Axl Rose for the comment on my last entry and a couple of others who emailed me asking about secondary applications that inspired the content of this entry!
I thought I’d make this entry full of general tips first and then provide a quick word on the OUWB secondary [keep in mind, I am not affiliated with the admissions committee whatsoever and do not claim that my advice will help you gain or guarantee admission].
I was perusing the SDN forums as I like to sometimes do and found a gem of a post [DISCLAIMER: this was intended to primarily be a humorous post, but the checklist does really provide some good suggestions for things to try to look out for in a more well-rounded shadowing/volunteering experience]: Gnomes’ Guide to Shadowing.
Honestly, I’d suggest that if you could get a good number of these items during your shadowing or clinical volunteering experience, that you have a good basis to go into interviews with. I personally did a quick run-through of the checklist [where I actually included experiences from both shadowing physicians and while volunteering] and sadly ended up in the “Shadow more” category. Uh oh…
If you’ve already completed a successful application cycle, what category did you score in? Do you think this could be an accurate metric to gauge shadowing experience on?
You might notice some changes around here — I decided to take the plunge into serious blogging by purchasing the domain name that so nicely resembles my name. Make sure to pass on the whole amanda-“x”-“i”-dot-com thing along to anyone you know that may enjoy my ridiculous [square brackets] and other such things.
One of these days, I’ll have the time to actually use a non-built in Blogger template… but today, is not the day.
Alas, it is 2 in the AM and I am in need of some REM sleep.
Having done mostly academia and academia-related activities for the past 15 or so years of my life, it seems that a much needed vacation is in order. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am planning to road trip out to California with Mike right before orientation begins. While there isn’t much to say about the first part of the trip [we are aiming for the approach of getting out west as quickly as possible then relaxing once we get there], I am getting super excited about the last part, since we recently booked our lodging in Palm Springs at the Colony Palms Hotel.
I’ll definitely blog about the experience while I’m there [woohoo Wifi and endless hours of free time! Now I just need the iPhone to hop over to Sprint so I can blog while we’re driving through the heart of the Midwest…].
On the note of my pre-M1 summer, one thread topic that tends to appear quite often on the SDN forums is whether or not to study during the pre-M1 summer. While I cannot say I subscribe to any one school of thought on the matter, I can say that I haven’t been studying at all. Instead, my days are filled with work, working out, eating and sleeping — which in a way is actually pretty draining. Honestly, I have never worked a steady full-time job prior to this one and while there are definitely perks [set hours, consistency in scheduling, free-time, a paycheck], I find a constant reminder of why I am pursuing medicine instead of a full-time engineering position.
But more on the whole engineering intern and medicine thing at a later time.
Here’s my take on pre-studying while you’re a pre-M1 looking forward to being a pre-resident then possibly a pre-fellow and finally being able to almost touch the $ as a pre-attending: take a moment to stop looking forward and just look around. Then breathe in, breathe out, and enjoy where you’re at in life.
There are a lot of good reasons to continue looking ahead and working for something, but if your life revolves around “what’s next?!” then you will never be satisfied. That’s the reality of it. While I agree that it can be hard to put a pause on the instinct to plan your whole future [you’re reading the words of someone who has every moment of her day blocked off on Google Calendar and is already planning on getting engaged after medical school, married during residency or right after, and then hopefully popping out 2 or 4 babies before the age of 35 — yes, I have to have it all], I noticed that taking the time to actively enjoy my current place in life has slowly unloaded weight from my shoulders.
[If you didn’t get it yet, I won’t tell you what the best way to spend your pre-M1 summer is because we all need different things. Maybe pre-studying will help you clam your nerves. Maybe it won’t. But, I do believe that the rest of our lives will be heavily intertwined with medicine and this is the last opportunity to experience life without the weight of Netter’s Anatomy Atlas or patients upon our chests.]
In the end, taking time to reflect on the present has been a positive thing. Regardless of my stressing over the future, I don’t know what life has around the corner for me and accept that the perfectly laid plans of mice and women will often go awry.