assignments

Day 251: Where’s the “pause” button?!

Amanda Xi

Today’s series of inane images:

[To make up for the serial silence, I thought I’d post a series of images that represent what has been going on in my life…]

While in Miami, I had the opportunity to meet the Keynote Speaker: Gloria Steinem!
This was the view from our Sofitel Miami hotel room [except we didn’t spend any time outside…].

Dessert at the Anniversary Gala was amazing…

We’ve started our last block of the M1 year: Respiratory.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the AMWA 97th Annual Meeting in Miami, FL — I had a wonderful time getting to know one of my classmates, meeting other AMWA members from across the country and listening to the insightful words of the session speakers. Dr. Remen‘s soft-spoken words from the Friday evening reception really stuck with me — she noted that many see the world as broken, as something that needs to be fixed… but suggested that we see the world is hidden and needs to be discovered. Additionally, another talk entitled “How to succeed in practice” started out with some basic advice: don’t burn out. The speaker then proceeded with minimalistic slides leading up to the main piece of advice: in order to succeed in practice, you have to love it. Although he essentially stated the obvious, the session was well-presented [i.e. comical and lighthearted] and I find that sometimes we just need to be reminded of what’s important to keep going when the going gets tough.

With the end of the M1 year quickly approaching, I keep wondering where I can find the “pause” button — I seem to need every moment of the day to attend lecture, complete assignments and keep up with extracurricular commitments. This essentially translates into our Respiratory material taking the backseat until [maybe] this weekend. Although I understand the need to test our competency with written assignments, sometimes I wonder about whether the timing of due dates was considered — we have a 4-5 page Literature Review paper due Monday and another 2-3 page Position Paper for PMH due on Wednesday. Sure, this doesn’t sound like much, but when I sat down and started to look into the assignments, I realized that they would take much more time than I seem to have.

The frequency of updates will be sparse in the upcoming weeks — we have 5 weeks left in the semester, but our block of 5-6 exams (depends on if you count the Anatomy Lab Practical) start in a little over 3 weeks. I’m sure that everything will magically work out and summer is right around the corner, but right now, in this moment, the future looks daunting.

Happily, I’m sure I’ll take some stress off tonight at our Med Ball — Social Committee has been working hard the last couple of months to make this a reality and I’m really excited to see all of their hard work pay off!

Until next time…

Day 242: Feeling overwhelmed

Amanda Xi

Today’s inane image of the day:

This salad was a wonderful surprise — adding fruit seems to make everything look and taste so much better!

Similar to the end of the Fall semester, the end of this semester is jam-packed with exams, assessments and assignments. I wish I could say that my many years of experience with this end-of-the-term-phenomenon prepared me to tackle this last month and a half with poise — but the reality of medicine is that you cannot really predict how things will be until they are. Being someone who likes to feel in control of any and all situations… this is a terrifying position to be in.

Alas, I have adapted over the course of the year. Medical school seems to send you into a perpetual state of feeling overwhelmed — it feels like you increase your threshold for stress and studying exponentially as you spend more time in medicine. Even though I’m used to this, school is still challenging. At times, it feels like being dropped off at Mt. Everest and told that you have to make it to the top; although we’re inexperienced amateur, we were selected because a committee decided that we are capable of scaling this challenge called medical education.

Being conditioned to handle stress doesn’t mean that I don’t have moments of doubt. Often, the following questions creep up in my mind: How will I memorize all of this material? How will I have enough time for all of my extracurricular commitments? Will I have the strength to get through this all? And then I reflect upon the trials and tribulations of the last academic year, and I feel accomplished. Our class has made it this far — we will make it through the last month and a half!

In the meantime, the only way to really address feeling overwhelmed is to actually do stuff [nothing compares to the satisfaction and relief of seeing the checkmarks next to a bunch of completed tasks!]. At this point, we have PMH and Capstone assignments due in the coming weeks in addition to keeping up with Respiratory lecture material. Then there’s that whole trying not to gain 20 lbs from eating junk food [Sweet Onion Kettle chips for the win], coffee beverages [if that warm weather would just come back for a visit I could start drinking Frappuccinos again…mmm], consuming inordinate amounts of energy drinks [I’ll be honest — Red Bull is my drink of choice; 5 hour energy = flushing, Monster = too much liquid] and Lunch and Learn food [yeah, uhh cheesy pizza and oily mac and cheese are not conducive to maintaining a healthy weight]. Additionally, I seem to have taken on a number of extracurricular commitments that require some serious time management on my part to maintain [e.g. AMWA elections are around the corner — eek!].

Anyway, look forward to future entries on trying to stay healthy, commuting, stress relief and anything else that pops into my mind!