Pro-CRAS-tination

So I haven't gotten very much further on the personal statement thing. There seems to be no way to avoid the lameness that will ensue. Maybe I'm not really much better than this. I just like to think so.

So I have spent the last two hours sitting here, in my underwear, in front of my computer, thinking of how much I need to write this, and how good life will be once it's done. But I have not yet convinced myself to do it somehow.

I did, however, come up with some choice phrases last night. The brilliance that is me. Here are a few of the nifty quotables I plan to insert into my masterpiece. (Don't copy. That's called plagiarism.)

"I honestly thought "'tarry' stools was pronounced 'terry'. " (It's tah-ry).
"I almost said "Bun" during my first case presentation."
"I can't believe my attending noticed that stye on the woman's eye!"
"I hope to one day be able to palpate a Fallopian cyst."
"I enthrall in the humanistic and integrative nature of internal medicine -- seeing it as much as an intellectual challenge as a .... (suggestions??)"
"Someone once told me a patient often looks upon a doctor as a mystic with a crystal ball." (This is a lie. But it sounds damn good.)

I could tell this one's going to be a winner.

Let's get personal.

This is me warming up before the kill. I am starting with pen (my signature Pilot Precise V5 0.5 mm extra fineroller tip) and paper. This means something serious is about to be written. So far I have written "I need." Indeed. What do I need.

Admittedly I have procrastinated long enough. It's just that I loathe writing personal statements, with all of my heart and soul. It is because I love writing. I love the honesty, the non-judgmental face of an untarnished blank white surface. But personal statements are not about creativity; they are not about honesty. However, I do not write to sell myself. I write to expose myself.

I do not say this to appear virtuous; I have never considered genuine humility to be a part of my nature (rather, I too often exploit the fact that I seem so humble). I am saying there is something in my nature that forcefully resists accentuating the positive. It is like a reflex to think of the negative -- to find my own faults before someone else does. I live in fear of lacking introspect in anything I do. Because people, abiding by the tenets of social decorum, are functional liars. So it is up to oneself to correct foibles before they become visible, or worse, irritating.

So, in having to sell myself, I would have to let my guard down. The ideal would be to find a balance between my harsh honesty and whatever good I see in myself, so that I would not be compromising my instincts as an exposer, yet not playing muckracker to my own soul. And I have failed each time in the past. For the college essay. For the medical school essay. It is a source of frustration. Knowing I have the capacity to write. But having the capacity being stifled by the demands and goals of the assignment.

Part of it is, as always, the lack of passion. As trite as it seems, without this drive, any amount of work would produce something as lack-lustre as the will that created it. And this is not something you can forge - this passion.

Better,I suppose, to fill this empty page with the usual fluffy drivel and cocktail-banter than to procrastinate. Some of the saddest moments in life are when you have to sacrifice ideal for practicality. I will sell myself, and will probably succeed in doing a mediocre job of it. But it is difficult - this creation of something so detached from yourself.

Drosophilae. Part Deux.

This is what they look like when they're dead. I learned that in Genetic 256. It's what happens when you choloroform them for too long. Between that and having them rise from their inebriated state and fly away. To the time-pressed pre-med, needing to breed white-eyes with white eyes for the sake of getting into a good medical school a female escapee is worth crying over.

This is a classic example of desensitizing a fear of insects. The 4AM visits to the underground dungeon they call the fly lab. The smell of fly-fodder and choloroform. The chipped ceramic bowls of fly soup; unused and discarded corpses crowded in a thin layer of soapy water. And flies. Everywhere. Your skin crawled. Like formication in an alcoholic undergoing withdrawal. And under your microscope - every detail of the intoxicated, the sedated, the dead, and the smeared. Really you get used to it. That's the scary part.

And so they return. For round two, but this time in my kitchen. Drain flies - they call them. And surely they must be because there is no other source for them. I have taken out the trash, scrubbed the floor, poured 2 bottles of Draino down the sink. But they still return. Whence do they come? What do they want?

They have nearly driven me to insanity. Such that killing them has become a sport. Like darts. Or racketball. It has become an art. Some advice from them much-wizened? It is preferable to wait until they are on a surface, then come upon them quickly. When you catch them between your hands in mid-air, you must smear your hands together, to make sure they do not escape between the fingers. And the feeling of satisfaction at watching a dead fly roll off your hand and into the drain. Exhilarating.

According to the exterminator website they will leave by winter. But they've already mostly gone. Maybe then I'll take up rat-trapping. Stay tuned.

3 more days

Vicious
Originally uploaded by Daisy72580.

This is like the classical case presentation of kidney stones - a young patient (usually male) complains of blood in his urine and sudden back pain radiating to the groin -- he cannot get into a comfortable position and is writhing in pain. 3 days before the 2nd biggest exam of my life I don't know what to do with myself. I can't study well because the words are just flying over my head, and I throw a fit whenever I get a question wrong. It becomes traumatizing to keep doing these practice tests at this juncture. I can't relax because - hell, the test is in 3 days. I can't sleep, I am loaded on caffeine, I have intermittent subclinical panic attacks; every small thing irritates me. I just can't get comfortable, no matter what I do.

I am not one to get nervous over tests. And nor am I one who usually does unexpectedly poorly. Logically, there is no reason to worry. But this is where my neuroses come into play. This daisychain of what-ifs. What if I fail, don't get matched, and end up scrubbing floors in the hospitals intead. What about my loans? What if I have to sell my body to get rid of them? (Is the Bunny Ranch hiring?) What if I end up having to practice medicine in Wisconsin. What if my nerves kick me into PSVTs during the exam and I have to retake it? And why the hell can't I ever get those antibiotics right? Damn penicillin resistance. I never get those pneumonia questions right.

Bottom line. I don't know what to do with myself. Please someone shoot me up with some Ativan (or maybe pot) before I drive myself crazy.