What is a weekend?

1000 points if you call tell me where that's from.

This was the most relaxing weekend I've had since we started. On Friday night, I went over to my lab partner's house so we could watch the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy. (I can actually pick up on the few medical references, ha!) On Saturday, I had lunch with an MS3 friend at a little French cafe. On Sunday, I went to clinic in the morning and a Lebanese festival in the afternoon. My stomach is content.

Clinic was great! It's been my favorite clinic so far, and I think I will stick with it. I saw two patients, took the lead with the history, helped with the physical exam, presented to the preceptor both times, and wrote the SOAP notes. I'm feeling more and more comfortable with each part of it, so I am happy.

So many shows premiered this week. I sure hope I can keep up with everything. We all know how much I love my pop culture trivia. :)

What a week!

We had our usual biweekly exam on Monday and our first anatomy practical on Friday. Suffice it to say that I triaged other classes to make sure I had everything down for anatomy. I felt like I knew the material lecture-wise, but it might be tricky to identify structures on other cadavers. I haven't been doing a good job of going around in lab and viewing other people's work. I mostly stick to our cadaver and know her super-well. But I looked around the night before the practical, hoping that was enough.

Of course, by the random luck of the draw, my group was the last one taking the practical so I had plenty of time to just hang around. :/ Oh well; we actually get to go first next time and get it over with! I came out of the practical not feeling good at all. I felt very pressed for time and kept second-guessing some of my answers. I kept thinking about it throughout the night too. I was so anxious that I even woke up extra early on Saturday morning to go to school and pick up my results from my locker. Imagine my surprise when I saw my score. I have to learn to be less hard on myself and trust that I know the answers. I think a big issue with knowing so much material is that you keep thinking of the what-ifs and overthink questions.

But, on a lighter note, to ease the tension of the very first major anatomy exam, our instructors had us wear hats! It was even a question on the exam! Here's what I wore:

As one of my classmates astutely pointed out: Of course you would wear this hat. ;)

No, I actually do not own such a contraption. Thanks to my friend S for letting me borrow this. I made sure to bobby pin it to my head so it wouldn't accidentally fall into a cadaver, ha!

And then I went to clinic on Saturday. This time, I went to Clinica Tepati, which is definitely much bigger than Bayanihan. But I felt okay. I still need to practice some more blood draws before I feel comfortable doing them on patients. Next clinic appointment in a couple of weeks!

Of course, non-quiz weekends means dinner prep consists of more than heating frozen meals and/or leftovers. Here's cilantro-parsley-pine nuts coated tilapia with garlic-rosemary potatoes (with the skin on!).

It's been a year!

09/14/12 - interviewed at UCD
09/14/13 - volunteered at clinic

I dare you to find a cooler program

This week I took out a beautiful right lung and held it in my hands; scraped out clotted blood from the chambers of the heart and great vessels; and participated in a surface anatomy session with 50 other med students in which we took off our shirts and drew out the lungs and heart with markers on each other.

Yeah, med school is the greatest.

LA weekend

Wow. It's been a while. I think I'm finally in my groove with regards to school. It's still a lot of work, but that's not going to change anytime soon! I've just learned to adjust and prioritize certain things over others and just go with it. I can't know everything 100%, and that's okay. (Shoutout to my Big Sib for checking on me every couple of weeks.)

Since this was a long weekend, I decided to go home! I had never been away from LA for this long before (perks of attending college in your home city). Got to see friends and fam and of course, my minions J+C.

As a surprise, my mama spent hours making my favorite meal. It's basically a wheat and beef porridge, with heated oil/cumin/red pepper powder as garnish. Needless to say, I stuffed my face.

Herissa is the best.

Since we're on the topic of food, here is the eetch that I had made for our Doctoring class on cultural competency a few weeks back. It certainly doesn't taste as good as when my mom or grandma make it (does anything ever?) but it was satisfactory.

Food pics are obviously Instagramed. Obviously.

Already on Week 5. FIVE.