Life by PJ

Spring break is coming up next week (thank the sweet God above), and such as what happens with any break, the temptation to lay around and do absolutely nothing is oh so strong. Who needs tropical paradise when I could just cuddle up with my blanket, my dog, and Bravo for a week straight? But as we all know, this isn't an option for us pre-professionals, and even if it was an option, the guilt that we have to deal with from not accomplishing anything is persuasive enough to get us off of Netflix and into our books. (Just me?) Holding ourselves accountable for our own success is something that has been instilled in us since day one of college, when our BIO 101 professor  refused to put the powerpoint slides up online. And as it very well should be. In the "real world" (don't you hate this phrase?), we'll only have ourselves to rely on when we're doing procedures and conducting our typical day-to-day affairs. The ability to persevere on despite the temptation to...

If a girl doesn't post a picture of the gift her significant other got her for Valentine's Day, did she receive a gift at all? In my Psych 101 class one day, a couple of years ago, my professor presented us with the quote, "I share, therefore I am." (Obviously, this was a parody of the famous Descartes quote, "I think, therefore I am.") He asked us to explain what the quote meant to us, and its significance in our lives.  "I share, therefore I am." With our ever-increasing use of social media, we cease to exist if we stop updating. We become virtual ghosts enshrouded in a degree of mystery that can be summed up with the question, "Whatever happened to so and so?"  Social media has made it so that the first thought that pops into our heads upon receiving a gift is "I have to take a picture, and share this with all my friends." Not, "Oh wow, thank you (insert name here.) I'm so thankful to have you in my life....

When I last left you, I was optimistic (if not worried), about the upcoming week. Well, the week is done and now I'm reporting back on the crazy, hectic past couple of days I've had. And when I say crazy, I mean crazy. Tuesday was my Cadaver Lab exam. It was more like a practical in that it had all of the bones laid out around the room, with 26 stations - two questions each and 90 seconds to answer them. I felt pretty confident after the exam and even got one of the extra credit questions right! (You had to stick your hand inside of a box and identify a bone without looking at it - it was the Axis (C2.) I could tell by it's odontoid process!) Wednesday was my psychopathology exam. I am in love with this class. The professor is an actual clinical psychologist as well as a professor, so she sprinkles in tons of personal anecdotes about the disorders that we cover in class (all completely anonymous of course!) A lot of different people told me that she was a hard profess...

Anatomy Lab exam Tuesday. Psychopathology exam Wednesday. Physics exam Thursday. So, it's about to be a great week, right?! But isn't this how your exam schedule usually works out? I know this is true for me. I haven't had an exam once this semester and now I have three in three days. When finals week rolls around and everyone's complaining about all of the exams they have at the same time, I usually just laugh and say that's how all of my exams have been. (I guess it is slightly different since finals are all mostly cumulative, but I digress.) I also have the first pre-dental club meeting of the semester this Tuesday. (It would've been last week but catastrophic snow storms delayed it a week. Thanks, snow.) We're going to play a pre-dental Jeopardy game that I made a couple of weeks ago. We did this last semester and had a great time, so I'm hoping it will go just as well this time around.  On Friday, I get to shadow my research mentor doing a...