Le sigh...

I love my car, but this is silly. I'm engaged and live with my fiancee now, so Teslagrl's car is an option most of the time. And I commute by train. I literally have started my car twice in the last week, to move it off the "street cleaning today" side of the street... and that's just because it was street-cleaning week.

One sure way to know I don't really need it is that since it went all freaky and broken and refuses to obey simple instructions, I've been able to adjust quite happily to not using it.

So... wanna buy a car? (This used to be a Craigslist link, but the car sold and the listing expired.)

I have some pretty significant ennui about ditching the VW. It's been fussy and expensive, but it was my first "grown up" car. It was my first non-junker car since the divorce, mid-1990s, and the new car we'd bought way back then was a damn Geo Metro, for cryin' out loud. My Passat has twice as many cylinders. It's honestly true to say that

Geo Metro : VW Passat :: VW Passat : Jaguar XJ12

This is the car that gave me independence, symbolically. It gave me power (of the "horse-" variety) I had never had before. It gave me a whole list of things I didn't know I really liked in a car, and won't do without in the future, if I can help it. It took me out east, to school, and helped me start this new chapter of my life. It was the car I always drove, for as long as my future wife has known me. After a string of crappy 'college cars,' this was the one that made me feel legitimate showing up to a business function (or a first date), and it was the most fun to drive. It's just that gradually, it turned into a college car, albeit a nice one.

So that's how I'm billing it on Craigslist.

And whatever I get next, about two years from now, that sucker will have a really $!#@ good warranty.

At least it's organized chaos

Here's what I have going on in the Fall term:

General Medicine & Infectious Disease
-- a huge, year-long course that covers... kind of everything. Right now it's Neurology... plus infectious disease. Ask me about the many different classes of antibiotics! (On second thought, don't. Not yet.)

Pharmacology
-- merely a two-quarter-long course. One more arena in which I can demonstrate a lack of excellence in memorizing enormous quantities of data. (Although, having taken Microbiology, Biochemistry, Cell Bio, and what turns out to have been a very decent Physiology course already, this isn't that bad. Not yet.)

Interviewing and Documentation
-- where we learn to do stuff like write up a clinic note (like the ones I typed as a transcriptionist) and do an interview (like the hundreds I witnessed in the ER). I like this class.

Psychosocial Aspects of Care
-- where we, essentially, learn not to be a-holes whilst speaking with patients and administering care. Fun class.

Research and Statistics
-- where we remember that being in a Masters program entails a special kind of pain. I need to decide whether to a) jump onboard a faculty member's research, b) convince a faculty member to sponsor (read: be the first author of) research I come up with myself, or c) just do a series of smaller papers on anything I want. I am actually struggling with this, because I have areas I'd like to do publishable research in, and my school has really good resources. Plus I wrote a lot of papers in undergrad.

Clinical Laboratory
-- which does not take place in a lab, but a classroom. This one is all about all the tests we might order, and how they work. So far it's been "fun stuff you kind find out from a cup of urine."

Complementary and Alternative Medicine
-- where we, essentially, learn not to be so obnoxiously patriarchal and stick-up-the-bum about the alleged superiority of Western scientific medicine. A nice touchstone and reality check.

Intro to EKG
-- given the size of this list, and the fact that Winter term starts in November(!) with a whole new slate of punishments, I figure I can be really truly good at one course per term. I've decided this one will be my good course for Fall. EKGs rock.

Am I insane? Not yet, but ask me again in a few weeks.

How do I keep it all together? How do I keep from going completely sideways?

Oh, I have my ways.

Med School Microcosm

Sigh...

95%


And meanwhile...

Yes, I'm being blog-lazy by reprinting stuff, but it's all about efficiency these days.

Now there can be no doubt

The sorting hat says that I belong in Gryffindor!

Said Gryffindor, "We'll teach all those with brave deeds to their name."

Students of Gryffindor are typically brave, daring, and chivalrous.
Famous members include Harry, Ron, Hermione, Albus Dumbledore (head of Hogwarts), and Minerva McGonagall (head of Gryffindor).

Take the most scientific Harry Potter
Quiz ever created.

Get Sorted Now!