blah...

so i'm all done second year.
at this time last year i was getting wasted in the red room.
this year i didn't have a single drop. part of that was cause i forgot my id and couldn't get in. but the other reason is cause i just don't feel as ecstatic about being done as i did last year. i don't know why.

i don't think i did poorly. it's not that.
i dunno what it is... just feels so anti-climatic. ???
maybe i'm just tired. i'm going to take a nap. :)

0 days, 1 hour, 31 minutes.

why the heck am i blogging at this point in time?  to be honest, just to try and keep myself sane... :s

i could not sleep last night.  i went to bed a little earlier than usual at 10:30pm thinking i'd try and get a good 7.5-8 hours of sleep.  now normally i couldn't count to 100 before dozing off but last night i laid their for well over 1/2 an hour.

i'm not sure if it was the nervousness or the coke that i had during dinner (the kind that you drink through your mouth and not the kind you snort through your nose) but i couldn't sleep.  the only reason i think it might've been the coke is that my caffeine tolerance is zilch.  i don't drink any coffee, barely tea and the last time i had a coke with my meal was probably a few months back when pat was here.

i think i finally fell asleep just after 11.  but this morning, i woke up at 4am.  4!  i was so alert that i contemplated just getting up and reviewing some stuff but i forced myself back to bed.  i laid in bed for the next hour & a half, 1/2 sleeping and 1/2 awake.  so now i'm up for good.  and as alert as can be. just hope this adrenalin-induced buzz doesn't wear off until after 11am today.

:s

1 day, 10 hours, 56 minutes

not a whole lot of time left before my exams. normally at this stage i've given up hope and just want to get the stupid thing over with but this year i find myself still reviewing and still looking over stuff - dare i say still LEARNING. i don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing. maybe it means that i'm not quite as prepared as i would like to be and there is still plenty of stuff to learn. or perhaps it means that for some reason, i care just a little bit more than usual. hm... i sure hope it's the latter.

had my MSATs (multiple station assessment tests) yesterday. i think they went ok. no major blunders.  my simulated stations were...

• history taking: patient complaining of chest pain
• clinical physical exam: patient with distended abdomen
• ethics/communication station: obtaining consent from a patient scheduled in for surgery
• clinical reasoning station: patient complaining of shortness of breath on exertion, examinations & investigations pointing towards some sort of anemia/hematological origin
• ALS/CPR station: demonstrating my CPR skills, as well as my ability to use a defib, use drugs (adrenalin, atropine, amiodarone), etc...

now i've just got these two big written ones on tuesday and wednesday.  wish me luck!

psych!

this afternoon, as part of our clinical coaching session we spent some time in the mental health ward of our hospital. it was a sneak peek into psychiatry. and to be honest it was exactly what i expected... fascinating but also quite scary.

we started off in our coach's office. it was a huge corner office, i was impressed to see that patient charts and folders overflowing with sheets of paper didn't cover every square inch of his desk or his floor or his chairs. our coach was probably mid-50s, well-dressed and like many in the medical profession, a blackberry addict. his crackberry must've went off about 3 or 4 times within the first 1/2 hour.

although very nice and clearly very well educated there was something about him that made me slightly uncomfortable. for starters, he spoke REALLY fast. he also kept saying "you know..." think of alicia silverstone in "clueless" from back in the day. now replace all the "like" with the words "you know". that was our coach. lastly, he just seemed a little... anxious. he didn't have any characteristic tics but he just couldn't sit/stand still. he kept fidgeting with his marker or the chair or whatever he could get his hands on.
i can't help but think that maybe his patients have rubbed off on him JUST a little bit.

after running through how to take a history on a psychiatric patient, we actually went to go see one. i'll be completely honest, i was nervous. and it didn't help with my coach saying as we started walking out of his office... "let's go see if we can chat with a few patients. should be fine. you guys will be safe." SAFE?!?!?! nobody mentioned anything about being UNSAFE! i was worried.

once on the ward it didn't get much better.  i'm sure we reeked of fear. all the patients stared at us as we walked by.  some of the patients were curious (?) audacious (?) enough to come over to where we were standing and strike a little conversation with us.  when we introduced ourselves to the patients i didn't even give them my real name despite my ID badge hanging conspicuously from my belt loop.  what a douche!  (in my defense, i was the last to introduce myself and no one before me gave their real names!)

the patient we interviewed was quite interesting.  he left home at a young age and has split time living on the streets, shelters or mental health wards like this one.  without going into too much detail, he suffers from schizophrenia and believes that he is a messiah. some of the things he told us: he used to speak with bill gates, stephen hawkin, bill clinton and many others on a regular basis on an internet forum.  he had powers of exorcism but these powers - along with his musical talents, have dissipated since he's been on his anti-psychotic meds.

i've always thought psychiatry to be incredibly engaging and interesting but i never really could see myself specializing in it. not to be crude but don't think i could work with crazy people all the time.  having said that though, i can't seem to strike psych off my "potential specialties list". there's something about it that i like which i can't quite put my finger on.

well, we get a 8 week block in mental health next year.  i definitely look forward to it - but with a healthy dose of apprehension of course. :)

36 days, 22 hours, 4 minutes.

countdown has begun for exams.
AAAHHH!!!

last week's study total: 25 hours.
this week's study goal: 30+ hours.

3rd year choices...

so i've put in my preferences for my clinical school for next year. you see, years 3 and 4 are "clinically oriented" meaning that although we still have some lectures and tutorials with a few PBL sessions, for the most part all of our learning happens in the "real world" - in the hospital wards. our clinical school is where we do most of our rotations - everything except the rural rotation.

3rd and 4th year consist of five, 8-week rotations in various fields. so for example... in 3rd year, you do 8 weeks in surgery, 8 weeks in mental health, 8 weeks with a GP, 8 weeks in general/internal medicine and 8 weeks in a rural location studying (duh!) rural medicine.

my first choice for clinical school would be RBH (royal brisbane hospital) which i'm at right now but who knows. if RBH is over subscribed then i could be bumped down to my second choice (Mater Hospital), or even my third choice (Princess Alexandra Hospital). worse case scenario would be that i don't get any of my 3 choices and i get balloted out to a hospital in the 'burbs. that would suck. i'm not hating on the suburbs - but everyone knows i'm a city boy. ;) it's just that with such a placement i would have to consider commuting from where i am or even moving to avoid this commute. this could get really messy really quickly. i think i speak for the house when i say we're quite happy with our current living arrangements. i don't want to have to find another place to live next january. on that note... i was planning to write my USMLEs in late-January. but if i have to find a new pad before school starts, USMLE might have to be re-planned and pulled earlier to december (not ideal) or pushed back to sometime during the school year (also not ideal). plus, if i get shafted out of the city and end up moving... i might have to find a new church too... :(

at this point there isn't much i can do about it though. just hope and pray that i get a little lucky...

to complicate things/make things interesting... there are options/potential opportunities to do some of these rotations outside of brisbane. i'd LOVE to do these whenever/wherever possible. so for example, the surgical rotation can be done in Brunei. that's cool. the school also has an engagement - not quite a marriage ;-) with the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans which normally houses med students from Tulane University and Louisiana State University. this isn't up and running yet, but we've been told it should be by the time we're done the first 2 rotations or so. this would be sweet too. and lastly... although VERY preliminary and unfortunately unlikely to occur in time for us, it has been mentioned by the school that a relationship with NOSM (Northern Ontario School of Medicine) is in the works to let us do our rural rotation in Sudbury, Thunder Bay or the like. this would be... would be... da bomb man!!! i am keeping my fingers crossed, but i'm not holding my breath.

*****
study totals - where did these tallies go??? :)
week ending on sept 13: 16 hours.
week ending on sept 20: 20 hours.
week ending on sept 27: 16 hours.
like the canadian goose that flies south during the winter months, it is now time for me migrate out into the living room to study. ugh..,

shooting my own foot.

last night we had a CaRMS information seminar put on by the SOM. our speaker was Sandra Banner who is the executive director and CEO of CaRMS. she basically talked about the process of matching and going back to canada once we're done, and what our chances were according to the stats.
i found it to be quite useful.
between this and the international students night a few weeks back, i'm feeling the love from UQ. it actually seems like they care!

now i know i shouldn't be complaining but... sandra had mentioned that the results on the MCCEE (medical council of canada evaluating exam) - the exam that all doctors who studied outside of canada have to write, is not always indicative of getting a residency spot. as a matter of fact, canadians studying abroad (CSA), tend to do worse on the MCCEE than say foreign doctors looking to immigrate to canada. however CSA, statistically speaking tend to have a better chance at matching. off the record, sandra went as far as to suggest that there may be some bias in favour of CSAs. yes. this is a good thing for me. BUT, if we're going to use the MCCEE as a measuring stick, shouldn't we stick by it?
there could be other legitimate reasons as to why CSAs have a better chance. these might be less quantifiable. for example, perhaps (in general) our english is better. perhaps we're younger & less likely to have families and hence have more flexibility in terms of where we go and what we do. or maybe we're able to connect with the interviewers better through common topics like... how much the leafs suck, how bloody cold it is in january or how there's nothing to do in the prairies (yes. that includes alberta). ;p
overall, the seminar was informative and fairly positive.

the only sore spot on the night was this complete tool that was sitting in the back asking questions. it wasn't the questions that he asked, but the way he asked them. he was bordering on belligerent. i thought sandra gave us a great talk and was incredibly helpful. he was just being ultra aggressive and unnecessarily defensive. i blame his faults on his parents. tsk tsk. it's unfortunate because it's idiots like him that are the most vocal and in the end he's a reflection of the canadians at UQ. worse part is that he introduces himself as being from toronto when he's actually from BRAMPTON. for all of you aussies out there, i assure you that he is not representative of canadians. nor of torontonians. he MAY be a correct reflection of bramptonians. i'm afraid i don't know enough people from brampton to confidently comment though. ;)

*****
slightly related, i have a friend in 4th year from toronto who has decided that he's going to stay here. he's been offered an internship spot in wollongong in new south wales (about an hour outside of sydney). this doesn't seem like such a bad option. although his circumstances are slightly different from mine, i can see where he's coming from.

*****
let's bash on surgeons some more. my third year peer tutor told me these two:
how do you hide $50 from an orthopedic surgeon?
you put it in the patient's chart.

how do you hide $50 from a plastic surgeon?
you can't.

strike pathology off my "potential specialties" list.

had the opportunity to watch a real autopsy being performed today. needless to say, it was quite the learning experience. i won't go into all the gory details here but i will tell you that it was a much different from the cadavers in our anatomy labs. this patient... this body... this PERSON was still... fresh. the blood was still red and her skin was still plump. sure the rigor mortis was starting to set in, but she still looked like a REAL person. like someone who's just asleep.

i'm glad for the experience. but forensic pathology is just not my cup of tea.

when NOT to compliment a lady.

had my well-woman workshop today. this is where we learn how to perform a medical exam on a "healthy" woman. it's like a physical but for women. so on top of the usual things like BP check, listening to the lungs & heart, you also have a breast exam, a PAP test and a bimanual exam. so basically all the stuff i learned during my elective.

unfortunately in classic SOM (school of medicine) fashion, they managed to suck all the fun and life out of the well-woman exam. case in point, in the student preparation notes it reads:
"avoid referring to a client's breasts/vagina/cervix as beautiful/wonderful etc. this description can be interpreted as sexual in nature. a better alternative is to describe the client's vagina and cervix as healthy or normal."

healthy or normal?? how mundane.
besides, women LOVE creepy doctors that comment on the attractiveness of their private parts. no? ladies, back me up here!
;p

Etihad!

don't worry. i didn't just swear at you in some foreign language. etihad is actually the airline that i'll be taking home in november! yay! it ONLY cost me a smidgeon over $2400. it's pretty direct, i fly brisbane to abu dhabi and then from abu dhabi to toronto.
i know what you're thinking. "i've never even heard of etihad before. and where the heck is abu dhabi???"
Abu Dhabi is actually the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and is the 2nd largest city behind Dubai. my layover is only a few hours but i've never been to the UAE so it'll be cool.
as for Etihad, it's a fairly new airline. it was founded in 2003 and is actually the national airline of the UAE. it's in direct competition with it's 'older brother' Emirates Airlines. from what i've read so far the service is quite good and flights are never delayed.

my roommates have been busting my chops for flying with Etihad. so i did a little research. according to JACDEC (Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre), Etihad (0.00) has a better safety index than Air Canada (0.04), American Airlines (0.22), British Airways (0.03), China Airlines (1.52) or Korean Air (0.87).
For completion sake, Cathay Pacific and Qantas also have a safety index of 0.00. without going too much into detail about the math behind the safety index, simply it is the number of fatalities/terametre. a terametre is 10^12m.

so if i survived a round trip on china airlines, i should be fine on etihad. right??? right.

*****
in other news. i took my photo for trephine (which is our yearbook - only the 2nd years get a yearbook). nothing fancy, just really casual. but i think i came out looking like a huge dork. i'm sure the hair was perfect :p but i think i had this goofy little smile on my face. oh well.

*****
did you hear? the "ice...cccoooooold...beeeeeeeeer!!!" guy (his real name is wayne mcmahon but everyone calls him the ice-cold-beer-guy) from rogers centre was fired recently. all you jays fans should know who he is. apparently he sold a drink to a 22 year old mystery shopper without checking out his ID. i'm told that the policy at rogers centre is to check all ID for anyone who looks less than 30. there's now a facebook group petitioning for his job back. it's now up to 18,000 members. that's impressive.

*****
haven't been running in the last few days. partly because the weather has been lousy and partly because i've had stuff going on right around my normal jogging time - around 4 in the afternoon. but mostly because i've been a tad lazy. the last run i did was on friday to the city. that was almost 11 clicks.

it's actually a really nice run. right along the river. should probably run it again today.

10 year moratorium.

yesterday the UQMS (UQ medical society) held an international students seminar/info night. with the increasing number of international students (mostly from canadia) they were kind enough to have some upper years and representatives from the school come and talk to us.

i found it really useful - yet slightly frustrating.
some upper years who recently wrote the USMLEs talked to us about the steps involved in arranging for the exam - which some would argue is a challenge in itself! we also got a timeline for writing the MCCEE (canadian boards) and perhaps even staying here in australia.

the frustrating part is that are there no hard & concrete answers. even the reps from the school of medicine couldn't give us straight answers. everything is fuzzy and all the information/rules are constantly changing. but from my glass-is-half-full perspective, this is what i got from the lecture. there are no guarantees with regards to internship/residency spots in australia, canada or the US. however like the adidas slogan, nothing is impossible. it may not be easy but NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE.

i can work with "not easy". heck, getting into med wasn't easy. and from what i've done so far, med school isn't easy. why should getting a job be. right?

*****
i've made up my mind. i'm writing the USMLEs this winter.

*****
when i first came to australia, i had full intentions of returning to canada. however, i was also open to the idea that if i really liked brisbane/australia, or opportunities unavailable in canada came up, or whatever, i would consider perhaps even staying in australia. but after friday's seminar this doesn't seem like such a great option. in australia, there is something called a "10-year moratorium" for people like me. people with a medical degree from australia (or hopefully will have one in 2010) but don't have PR status. this means that in exchange for a internship spot, they can control (to a degree) where you work for the next TEN years! in a nutshell, for 10 years after either obtaining my PR status or becoming a fully licensed physician (whatever comes last), i will be forced to work in an under-serviced region/placement. this general concept is not unusual per se. most places enforce a "return-of-service" or a "moratorium" on international graduates/non-citizens. this is done in an attempt to offset the huge demand for doctors in rural areas. what's unusual or RIDICULOUS is the length. for example, i believe the return-of-service scheme in ontario is only 4 or 5 years or so.

TEN years? i'll be in my mid-30s by that point! gosh that sounds old!!!

yo. check this out - part 2.

we got these clicker things for lectures this term. it's to encourage student participation & gauge student understanding/knowledge (and discourage napping!) during lectures. i think they're pretty sweet.

so how they work is the lecturer will occasionally put up a multi-choice question and you select your answer via your clicker. through the magic of technology you get an instantaneously bar graph with what all the students in the room answered/guessed - a la 'who wants to be a millionaire'.

i wish i could say that this is an example of the world-class, state-of-the-art education we're receiving but not quite. for crying out loud, even the FIRST year undergrads at UofT started using these LAST year!

weird.

yesterday we got an e-mail from the head of our year telling us that the board would be discussing our exam today and that our exam results would be released by early next week.
this simple little e-mail seem to put me into a bit of stress. subconsciously anyway. this morning i woke up after dreaming that i had just completely bombed the exam. i was glad when i woke up and realized it was just a dream. weird eh? i didn't think too much of it cause the results weren't going to be released until monday at the earliest and i would have at least 3 more sleeps to "undo" that bad dream.

BUT...
after lectures today, to my surprise i found out via a text msg from a friend that the exam results were posted already. i freaked just a little thinking that the dream i had might be real.

the overall pass mark was 58.
the average was 69.
with a standard deviation of 7.
me? just at right about average.
i think i'm content with the mark. not ecstatic cause OBVIOUSLY i can definitely do better. but feeling also slightly relieved because the more i thought about the exam, the more i felt uneasy about it.
but i can be better than average. i know i'm better than average...

*****
ps. i'm leaning toward writing my USMLEs this winter.

pps. kudos to the school of medicine for getting our marks out so quickly.

hit a wall.

got some good study in this week. right up until about friday. between sunday and thursday i was at about 43 hours and on pace for 60+ hours.
then friday hit. i woke up late and i just hit a wall. i managed to get a couple of hours of study in but otherwise spent the day cooling my brain. did some laundry, went out for dinner & ice cream for matt's birthday and hit the sack early.
got back on the horse today though. still got 4 good study days left until the exam. sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday. 4.

*****
hm... pat should be in the air somewhere over southern ontario by now.

*****
found this in the toronto star this morning. it's an article about plans to make it easier for foreign trained doctors to practice in ontario. sweet. but i'll believe it when it happens. it's quite amazing though... 850,000 people in ontario alone don't have a family doctor. the province is short 2,500 doctors and another 2,600 are over the age of 65+ (& hopefully retiring soon!).

speaking of doctors in ontario... a friend recently told me about some lousy GPs that she has had. and then by coinky-dink, one of my roommates brought up this site where you can rate your doctors. it's called ratemds.com. check it out. i looked for my doctor and dentist but neither of them were there. but i did find some of the doctors that i worked with during my first year elective and they were rated quite well. that's always good to know.

week's total: 52 hours.
alright i'm tired. i'm going to bed. good night.

a blast from the past & a cash infusion.

my PBL mates were in a big ball of excitement about the first krispy kreme store to open up in Queensland. yes. i know krispy kreme stores in toronto are going out of business. but this is australia where things are about a decade behind north america and where the obesity epidemic ranks only behind the great United States of America.

i remember when the first krispy kreme store opened up in toronto. well, i think the first one was actually in mississauga, and i was in grade 11. people would drive all the way out to mississauga just for donuts! DONUTS!
now i can't complain too much cause our grade 11 bio teacher was kind enough to bring us krispy kreme donuts and we devoured them like no tomorrow.

for those of you interested in brisbane i'm told the new store is on albert street (seriously) and is open from 6am (SIX IN THE MORNING!) until midnight.

***
i've been waiting on some funds from my student line of credit. there was a bit of a delay but they were finally released. thank goodness. i was worried i'd have to sell my kidneys or something.

speaking of selling organs, this aussie nephrologist by the name of Dr. Gavin Carney caused a big huff & a puff the other day when he suggested that the government pay $50,000 to those willing to donate/sell their organs.

apparently australia has one of the lowest donor rates in the world at roughly 9.4 donors in 1 million people.

dr. carney's argument is that because of the huge donor shortage, australian citizens are paying tens even hundreds of thousands of dollars to go buy organs on the black market - usually in 3rd world countries with questionable medical infrastructure.
where would the government get this $50k in the first place? dr. carney goes onto argue that patients often spend more than 7 years on dialysis waiting for a donor. THAT alone costs the government upwards of $500,000. so from a financial perspective, it could make sense.

of course there are huge ethical & moral obligations that need to be considered. i'm not going to open that can of worms. but if i may, here are my suggestions:
- as an extension of our donor cards that come with our driver's licenses... give people (financial) incentive to sign those cards. if your organs can be used after you die, and you've signed your donor card then you'll be compensated. if you don't sign it, then you don't get money. not a penny. if you sign it but your organs can't be used, you get a smaller amount.
- or similarly give everyone the opportunity to sign donor cards when they turn 18. you still have the choice to NOT donate. however, this excludes you from receiving a donor organ should you ever need it in the future. it's only fair that you should be given a second chance if you're willing to give someone else a second chance.

in the interest of full disclosure...
i don't think i've signed my donor card.
>.<
hahaha... what a hypocrite! hahaha!!!

good laughs.

just got home from jeff green's show. it was good. he flippin' killed it. went on for about an hour and forty minutes. he joked about all sorts of stuff - just to name a few... adelaide, queensland's drought last year, tubas, fatherhood, marriage, extreme sports, queen elizabeth, posh spice... were all poked at.
as "homework" i had watched some of his stuff on YouTube. but then, i was a little worried that I'd ruined my night and that i'd end up listening to the same material. but to my very pleasant surprise, he had a lot of new stuff. i was not disappointed at all.

it was at this venue called the "powerhouse". it used to be an old power station that's now been converted into a cultural centre with theatres and restaurants. the theatre itself reminded me of the panasonic theatre in toronto. it was a neat little place.

***
didn't get nearly as much studying done this week as i would've like to. am no where near my goal of 20 hours for the week. now i'm not here to make excuses but in my defense, i wasn't feeling so hot this week. i had the sniffles, a slight chill & a bit of a headache.
next week. will get there next week.

good stuff.

ok... so maybe i came down a little harsh on my UQ education last week. let me balance that out by giving credit where credit is due.

path tutors - blake and angela.
2nd year is a lot of pathology. in a nutshell, first year looked at how we function normally. this year is all about what can go wrong. each week we get a 90 minute tutorial to supplement our PBL cases and lectures.
each week is a different pathology tutor. i've been lucky to have blake or angela for a few tutorials now. they're great at explaining the material and keeping things interesting. in particular, they're great cause they don't make you feel like a major idiot. you see, the tutorial involves describing slides or pots (specimens of diseased organs/tissue), and most of the time we have no idea what we're looking at. just a bunch of dead tissue suspended in formaldehyde (is that what that liquid is?).

when you describe something incorrectly you're usually met with something along the lines of "yea, i can see where you're coming from. but..." or "hm... it's really quite difficult to tell isn't it?"

on top of all this, angela's got quite a thick british accent, so things like "thrombosis" come out as "from-bosis".
she is also incredibly crude. she's dropped the F-bomb on a few occasions now.
with angela, when you describe a slide or a specimen you're met usually with either a...
1. "shit yea!" if you're right. or
2. "fair play. fair play. i guess you COULD see that, but..." if you're wrong. haha. FAIR PLAY?!?! who says that? ahahaha!

clinical coaches - aida and dr.ong.
clinical coaching is where we get to poke and prode patients in the hospitals. arguably, it's the best hour and a half of each week.
our coach for the first 8 weeks was a GP by the name of aida. she was fantastic. what makes a clinical coach so great? hm... first and foremost has to be their knowledge. it does you no good when the coach can't explain something. aida knows her stuff.

last week we got a new coach - we switch clinical coaches after every quarter. dr. ong is his name. he came off a little... strong, maybe even a little belligerent. a bit of a kook. but he's pretty good. he's hilarious cause he's edgy and pushy. he has thick coke-bottle glasses and talks with his eyes closed.
>.<
seriously. that's what he looks like! he only opens them once every few minutes to make sure that we're still there.
despite all his kookiness, we had our first real coaching session with him today and he was really good.

PBL tutor - mal.
our current PBL tutor (also changes every quarter) is a GP/professor by the name of mal parker. he also happens to be our prof for ethics and professional practice. in case you didn't notice, no one really like ethics - recall ethics, schmethics! as a matter of fact this is how mal himself once described ethics: if med school is like climbing a mountain, then ethics is the rock in your shoe.
yea. whatever that means. i'm not sure why you can't just take off your shoe and throw the rock out! ;p

anyways, what i'm getting at is that poor mal gets a bad rap from the ethics. he's actually a great PBL tutor. he's also a GP so he's got plenty of clinical insight that he shares with us. best part is that he's not JUST a GP. for instance, today someone had brought up this article about how "anaesthetists, obstetricians and gynaecologists are more likely to euthanase terminally ill patients with less than three months to live compared with other specialists". we were just casually discussing it when he says "oh! that's my study". and what do you know. it sure is.

***

continuing on the topic of alternative learning resources from the last post, check what i found (well, a friend found and brought to my attention) on YouTube. this guy washingtondeceit has put up a bunch of histology lectures. how amazing is that?!?! and you thought YouTube was just a big waste of time. ;p

kiwi skins and pirated audio lectures.

i used to have a friend in undergrad that would eat apple cores. he'd sit in class and eat his apple. when he was done with the pulp, he'd chomp his way through the whole core - seeds and all. i thought that was pretty weird.

but now i have a friend that eats kiwis like they're apples - without peeling them. she'll grab them by the 2 ends and bite right into them. *blah* all that hairy fuzz on your tongue. every time i see her eat a kiwi, i subconsciously stick out my tongue & scrape the surface with my front teeth. and of course, i make fun of her.
;p

been listening to these mp3 files of this guy by the name of Goljan.
from what i know, Dr. Goljan is a pathology professor at oklahoma state university. he's also published several books and audio CDs on pathology - in particular pathology prep for the USMLEs. he's pretty good. he explains stuff better than 99% of my lecturers here at UQ.
it's a little sad that i'm paying all this money to UQ but get my learning from pirated mp3 files. oh well. you gotta learn, when you gotta learn. doesn't really matter how right?

speaking of which, lectures are utterly useless lately. you might have 1 good lecture out of 10 in a week. i've continued going to lectures cause:
1. it breaks up my day nicely - otherwise on mondays and thursdays, i'd never even leave the house.
and 2. i don't want to miss that ONE good lecture.
BUT at this point, i am seriously re-considering things.

speaking of USMLEs. i'm leaning towards not writing them at the end of this year. will re-evaluate this decision after mid-year exams.

was good about studying this week but need to do more. i'm going to start keeping a rough tally of the number of hours of study i do each week. last week (sunday to saturday), aside from lectures, tutorials, clinical coaching sessions, PBL group meetings, year 1 & year 3 tutorial groups... i spent about 17 hours of study.
goal for this week: 20+.

chalk one up for the little guy.

there was some confusion as to whether or not our tuition would be going up this year.
in one offer letter we were told that fees would remain fixed for the duration of our program. in another offer letter, we were told to expect a 3-5% increase annually.

yesterday we got a letter confirming that our tuition will NOT increase over the next 3 years. whew!
(we were all sort of expecting this but it's nice to have it in writing).

what sucks for the current first years is that they got a 13% hike in tuition compared to what we paid last year. THIRTEEN PERCENT!!! to make things worse, they are not under a fixed contract so they could potentially have tuition increases every year for the next 3 years at 3-5%.

what does this all mean in actual dollars? well, it means that being a 2010 grad instead of a 2011 grad could potentially save me as much as $32,545.25.

wow.

~8 weeks...

... until mid-year exams.
i'm not in PANIC mode (yet).
but i'm definitely in the NEED-TO-GET-MY-BUTT-IN-GEAR mode.

to continue with the car analogy.  let's say i was a 6-speed porshe 911-turbo... mmm... turbo... *drool*

currently in: 2nd gear.  
out of 1st gear and doing more than just the bare minimum.  slowly building the momentum. but plenty of gears still to work with.