what has happened since sept? i finished my first semester of med school and started my second. the second is goign much better than the first.. much more organized, and i did, honestly, pretty freakin' stellar on the first set of exams. i honestly just went in with the goal to pass, but i did better.. quite surprised. my conclusions? 1) going to class really does help. seriously.. and 2) i know deep down inside that the real reason why i did better was not because i became any more smart, any more diligent, or even any more lucky. God just saw that it was time to teach me the lessons that would come from better grades. so instead of sitting here and patting myself on the back for "my" accomplishments, i turn to God, smile, and say "i like this lesson. now teach me, please."

i've been falling more and more in love with God in the past days. sometimes i find myself sitting at the kitchen table, leafing through a magazine while reading or even reading some stuff for class.. and i think 'man, i really wish i was reading the bible instead.' i'm going through the minor prophets of the old testament, and let me say - that is soem awesome stuff. habbukuk has become the newest edition to the favorite books of the bible list, with the last three verses striking a chord of awe and.. that wonderfulness that only God could provide.. in me. more beautiful than the most beautiful literature, more meaningful than the most dire commands. the last figure of speech didn't quite flow, so i'm just going to blame my lack of sleep of late on that incoherence.

my dad passed away on nov. 22, 2004. acutally, he just died. he didn't "pass" away.. i think he more like fought, or went kicking and screaming as he ended his life. it pains me to think of this, and i didn't at first.. but how could i not when i saw the blood stains in the carpet of the room that i grew up in, right on top of the burn stains that my grandmother (who has passed away) left with a hot pot, perhaps over 15 years ago? a stain that is not even 3 months old, sitting atop a stain that is over 15 years old. so much memory, pain, suffering in that house. is there as much joy? no.. i don't think so..

i don't even want to relive the days i experienced right after his death. the intense confusion, the intense sorrow, and the intense frustration with those around me and especialy with myself. the desperation. and i think in an effort to push these intense feelings away, i forgot to mourn. jenny choi told me, "jeannie, it's great that you're doing well. but don't forget to mourn, too, okay?" since then i've been through a myriad of emotions. but that's not why i'm writing. i actually forgot why i'm writing.

it's unreal, someitmes i don'tw ant to believe it and sometimes i don't. but most of the tiem i'm okay, and i'm glad for the fact that this whole ordeal has brought me so much closer to God.. an experience i don't think i'd trade for anything. even though sometimes.. i think i would.. if only i could see him again.

but today was a good day. why did this entry end like this? bye.

just saw resident evil 2. very impressed.. even though it had the same idea of 28 days later (a movie i managed to despise, even though i saw it with an uber-cute guy and one of my closest girlfriends).. the acting was better, i think. twist at the end was quite awesome, as well.

earlier tonight, after comfortably waking up from my crash-session (post histology exam behavior - quite common) [comfortably waking up simply means waking up without thinking 'crap, i have to do (fill in the blank)..' or hitting the snooze button on my trusty yet annoying alarm clock. my alarm clock and i have this intense love-hate relaitonship. but wait, was i saying? oh yeah, so earlier tonight when i woke up from this glorious nap...

i turned on the tv and saw joan of arcadia. i love watching this show. it feel wholesome yet not entirely, has some good characters and character development. and i won't lie - the fact that it portrays God in the way that it does... it makes me happy and smile. it's all about personal relationships.. and the show is making a bold statement, even in this suffocatingly fake politically correct society that we currently inhabit. anyhow, as i was watching this show and watching the interaction (or lack of interaction) between the characters, a thought occured to me: in order for someone to open up to me, i must open up to them. and oftentimes.. i must make the first move.. or else, that's a potential friendship/relationship down the drain because of my own laziness or even worse, insecurities. blasted.

definitely something to work on, with my chronic hermit-like ways. i love people, but i also love my alone time, and i also love not having to involve people in my truly personal life. i just think that it would be so tiring, is unnecessary information, but most of all, i guess a part of me is scared of letting go. the roots for such a mentality are deep from childhood (a topic for another date that will mostly likely never occur). but i will admit one thing - those who i have blindly included in the secrets are extra special friends, simply because of the privileged information that they have. i can talk to them without having to explain myself, or be careful of acting a certain way that would confuse them and perhaps clue them in to what is going on in my head (oh, the horror... i suppose).

but my heart cannot be stretched in too many places at once, right? so once again, is the answer finding a medium.. or maybe not, this time.

i'm going to the first volleyball team practice tomorrow. i'm so excited. i know i'm goign to suck arse, but it's goign to be so much fun! yay~ embrace my suckiness.. embrace it!!

my learning process has degenerated to an episode of throwing velcro-covered balls, some large and some small, onto a dirty wall of velcro that is already crowded and really unorganized. i sit and read, and all i'm doing is throwing these balls of info at this wall, and most of the time, they don't stick. if i read the same thing over and over, then one instance will stick, and i'll be able to recall it during the exam. but who has time for this.. it's all about single exposure and praying that it'll all pull through, come exam time. this illustration is rather comical (or at least, it's intended to be), and it was the image that flashed into my head as i walked out of my practice practical, glad that i just barely passed but crinkling my nose at the distateful stench of preservative fluid (ethanol, formaldehyde, who knows) that seems to always be in my nose, at least lately.

as i was doing the practice practical, though, two major thoughts kept reverberating in my head: 1) i have my face about 1 inch away from this body's still rather juicy internal parts, and all i can think about is how hungry i am and can't wait to eat something at home, even if it is a tv-dinner, and 2) ugh, hurry up and get this over with, just write something down so you can leave (no, can't have this mentality during the exam... ahh).

and after the practical, before the image of the velcro wall flashed in my head, a renewed appreciation for the friendships that i have forged and will clearly develop into beautiful relationships with the people who have been thrown into the cauldron of chaos that is medical school.

ha, i guess today is one of those better days. they have been, as of late. i'm not goign to think about it too much, though.. just enjoy it.. and relax. chillax, yo.

the unjustified glorification of medicine

i haven't been in medical school for long - a little over a month, in fact. and i already hate it.

so perhaps hate is too strong of a word. no, wait, it's not. well then, maybe i should quantify this hate, if i choose to really use that term.. and i do. so let us quantify.

it's not the empirical science aspect that pisses me off. no, actually reading the anatomy textbook, looking at the histology slides and seeing it all come to life, or not to life, when my group and i dissect our generous cadaver, is pretty exciting and interesting. the intense memorization seems useless at times, and makes me wonder why people would bother memorizing latin names that can't even be pronounced correctly. does it give them a pathetic sense of empowerment? ugh. but during the aftermaths of exams and subsequent conversations with my fellow medkids, i realize that in order to create meaningful observations, one must understand concepts. while there are many ways of "understanding" these concepts, one quick and, albeit painful, method would be by memorizing some empirical facts. learn the jargon, if you will. so fine, memorizing is OK with me.

what, then, is it that's bothering me? contrary to popular belief, it's not the amazing disorganization of the medical school and its curriculum. perhaps i have been pampered by attending two enormous public schools, where i had to fight to make me, a mere number among tens of thousands, more than just a number that receives a letter of academic probation and then a letter of expulsion. maybe it's just me, but i learned to appreciate efficiency in studying, efficiency which is achieved by studying the right materials the right way. granted, it was ultimately up to me whether or not i was going to put in the time to actually study the material, but the question was never if i studied the right material, just whether i studied or not. in other words, the classes were organized. everybody knew what was going on, there was only one textbook and one set of diagrams to understand (which i have recently established as another way of expressing the need to memorize, yet again). this was not a problem. i could do any amount of work, attack it and not be frustrated, as long as the pile of work, whether it be a couple of papers or a mountain of papers and books that made mount everest seem like a stub in the ground, was clearly defined. it's true what they say about med school, too - there's a lot to do. but let me be the nth person (when n>infinity) to say that my study time (and frustration) would be drastically reduced if the classes were organized. don't just throw multiple books at us, a dozen diagrams, and expect us to emerge a few hours later, completely understanding everything that must be understood. guidance, perhaps? i mean, this isn't grad school. it's professional school. but no, even after this mini diatribe i cannot say that it is the disorganization of the school that frustrates me. or else, this rant would be labeled "the unjustified glorification of medical school." that is for another day.

it's all guess and check. medicine are shots in the dark, who knows what's going on? nobody. nobody really knows. people make assumptions, they order a series of expensive exams and painful procedures, just to identify something obscure that they cannot cure, anyway. but i'm not blaming the inaccuracy of the trade on the trade, though. no, that problem seems to be inherent in the subject matter, that is, the human. i once heard in anatomy lecture that, for the human body, two plus two does not always equal four. this is true. so, let's not blame the science. medicine is merely trying to deal with an imperfect subject.. in this case, props to medicine. but what really irks me is that people do not realize this imperfection. a surgeon might admit it in the dark, with his face blurred out and his voice changed by mechanical means. and why? goddamn. it's because all these physicians are too full of themselves to realize the futility of their skills. they think that because they spent all those years devoting themselves to this cause, cramming their heads with too many names to remember, going hours on end without sleep.. that now they are some sort of a deified human being, perhaps a demigod? are you freaking kidding me?

i seem to have blown off most of my steam. not sleeping enough can do that to you. but let me end with how these observations might have their implications on my own life. does this mean that i'm going to quit the lost crusade of medicine, leave med school, and do something that i would consider more worthwhile, at least in my eyes, for the rest of my life? that is a whole new personal conversation altogether, but for now, a no will have to suffice. this is because my life is not my own and my current perceptions are not indicative of the correct ones or even my longlasting ones - rather, just a result of a frustrating series of days in school and my need to put the blame on anybody but myself (when deep down, i know that the finger ultimately points back at me). maybe it's ok that medicine isn't perfect. yes, the desire to help others is still noble, although nowadays our advanced technology has made the drive to help others a quasi-obsession, leading to various ethical and moral issues. but it's not ok when some of the representative of medicine, like doctors, get so caught up in the mistakenly deified nature of medicine as the cure-all to every ailment under the sun, and the invincibility of themselves, that it makes my future colleagues jaded and cynics in the corner, like myself, sick to the stomach.

or i guess i can just take some pepto and i'll be ok.

and on an unrelated note, it saddens me to see how my writing skills, while only mediocre before, have drastically deteriorated in the past months of atrophy... come back, philosophy.

today is friday the thirteenth. it is also the last day of my first week of medical school. it still gets me to think that i'm in medical school. sometimes i look myself in the mirror, peer carefully and wonder how much time has flown, or not flown, to get me this far. i still remember being in elementary like it was yesterday. okay, so maybe some of the images are a bit blurry and the outlines of people and things are not that clear, but the feelings are as poignant as ever.. perhaps even more so, thanks to my dear old friend mr. imagination.

ha, one thing is for sure.. i still digress. terribly, i mean. but let's talk about the obvious - my first week. new orleans is growing on me - faster than berkeley grew on me. perhaps because this is not the first time i'm starting new, although perhaps the first time of truly starting new. also, the people are remarkably friendly and brilliant. there's a certain comfort to knowing that the person next to you went through the same hoops to get to that seat next to you. and when i'm in class wondering how i'm supposed to get around to doing all this reading, i'm comforted by the fact that my buddies next to me are all, for the most part, thinking exactly the same thing. some of us will actually do it, some of us will give up and go have a beer instead. i think i'll go home and sleep until i can think of another course of action. man, does misery really love company..

i cut my first cadaver today. i was the first to make an incision.. i think everybody was too shy, and i was too impatient. it was a tedious process.. after a while, i felt like i was chopping up chicken in my kitchen rather than dissecting a cadaver, in search of some obscure nerve whose name eludes me at the moment but i hope will not elude me come time of practical exams. i have to admit that i was a bit frustrated by the time lab ended, and when i couldn't get all my books from the mail room i had to step outside for a breather. and this is when i had my self pep talk: things can't be perfect, it'd be bizarre if they were. you've had a good day, you've had a good week... this isn't really a setback jeannie, so you just have to relax. it could be worse, significantly worse.. enjoy it jeannie.. please..

and by the time i went back into the classroom for the lectures, i was pretty content. yup, that's my goal nowadays - contentment, not happiness. happiness is too easy to break, is easily missed in any other circumstance, while contentment is an overall theme that is just.. "a good thing," as my elementary teacher miss duty used to say all the freakin time. "it's a good thing." like, totally, dude. totally. :) but more important than mere contentment is contentment in the right Thing for the right Reason. here's lookin' at you, God.

now my friend is going to buy me dinner so i have to skedaddle. maybe i can get him to buy me something really really GOOD. sweet.