Sorry for the lack of updates, readers. Here are brief recaps of the interviews I've had so far. I plan on posting more detailed accounts of each one, but those will be visible only to my LJ friends. The anonymity train has long since departed, and while I want to share my thoughts, I'm not going to broadcast my rank list all over the interwebs.

Interview #1: University of Alabama, Birmingham
AAAAAAHH, first interview!! It was lucky that this was right after Halloween. Because I was so preoccupied with putting my (awesome) costume together, I didn't have time to get worked up about this interview until right before. I must say, I didn't sleep very well in my hotel room the night before. I probably woke up every hour to hour and a half, terrified that I would oversleep. I was interviewed by a team of two residents, then one-on-one with two faculty members and the program director. Then there was a brief tour of the current labor and delivery unit, followed by a more extensive tour of the new women's hospital that will be opening up in February. The UAB medical center is dizzyingly huge, or at least I thought so, until...

Interview #2: UT Houston- Memorial Hermann
I was scheduled for the afternoon interview session, but got there so early that I was sent on the hospital tour with a group of applicants from the morning session. (My godmother really, really didn't want me to be late for anything!) It was a pretty traditional interview day; I had one interview with a resident and two with faculty members. I also got my first glimpse at the Texas Medical Center, aka the largest medical center IN THE WORLD!!! I didn't really appreciate that fact, until...

Interview #3: Baylor University
My second Houston interview. I was, again, the first person to show up, but better early than late! Luckily, there was a wireless network available to guests, so I was able to occupy myself with a little wiki-surfing and facebook-updating. Once other people started to arrive, I was social of course. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that one of the other applicants was a fellow Emory Scholar/chem major who I'd first befriended when we were both high school seniors. The actual interview day was pretty unconventional, with no initial Powerpoint by the program director or chair. It also involved "speed interviewing" and an activity requiring us to complete a task in small groups. The hospital tour required walking across the medical center, which really drove home how big it is.

Interview #4: Vanderbilt University
It's commonly said that starting at your home program as a good way to "ease" into the interview season. I wanted Vandy to be my first interview, but scheduling just didn't work out that way. To be honest, that's just as well. My first three interviews were full of all the nerves and feelings of awkwardness that go along with being judged/evaluated by strangers for a day. It was nice to have that broken up by a day of basically hanging out with people whom I already know (and, importantly, who I already know like me). Small things, like an interview starting with a hug instead of a handshake, made a huge difference. I feel like now I have a little emotional boost to get me through my next round of interviews.

Even with that boost, I'm pretty darn tired right now. I'm not meant to be a travelin' woman.

Good morning, world! I'm up this early because I mistakenly thought I'd set my bedroom clock an hour back before I left for Birmingham on Sunday. I had not, so when I thought I was waking up at 7:15, it was actually 6:15. If the sun had only had the decency to not be up so high and shining so brightly at that hour, maybe I would have realized my error earlier. As it stands, I'm up and ready for the day, when I should be just now getting up and getting ready for the day.

Anyway. Halloween was a great success, costume-wise. The Kerlix-under-metallic-ribbon didn't look quite as awesome and lacy as I'd hoped. However, as I predicted when I first decided on a costume, the headpiece was what really made it recognizable. Several people yelled out "Lady Gaga!!" upon seeing me. That's all I really wanted. I'll post pictures as soon as I get my act together and find my camera/cord.

A few months back, I watched MTV's Video Music Awards. And this happened:



Once I recovered from the startling effect of seeing that outfit for the first time, my 2009 Halloween costume was instantly and irrevocably decided. However, I didn't start working on it until Friday. I thought I would just buy some red lace and the thing would make itself, but that was not to be. I don't have red lace kind of money. What I do have is several rolls of Kerlix, a cottony porous (dare I say lacy?) material normally used... eh, never mind. I just knew that it would soak up red dye really well. And it did! I also had the money for a piece of red posterboard (crown), and a couple spools of red sparkly ribbon from Michael's.

In related news, I am seriously allergic to something in the Michael's craft store I visited twice this week. I'm guessing it was one of the Christmas scents they had permeating the place. My eyes itched, my nose was tickled, and I felt like I might throw up. Other than that slight inconvenience, I do love walking around in there and pretending that I'm actually crafty. I scrapbook! I create bead jewelry! I hold crafting birthday parties for my children, where their friends can paint birdhouses or make stained glass! Yaaaaay!

Anyway, one of the ribbons I bought stretches out to one foot wide. From it, I have fashioned a crude tunic. I've got Kerlix over my face and (probably) over the tunic thing. Overall, it will only be a cheap, sad imitation of her Ladyship (her Gagaship??). But I accepted that fate when I decided to wear a t-shirt and shorts as opposed to just a thong under the "lace." Gotta draw the line somewhere. I just hope that my finished product will be somewhat recognizable. I have a Halloween costume reputation to uphold!

Well, my emergency medicine rotation has come to an end. The final exam was nothing nice. It involved a standardized patient encounter that was pretty intimidating. I feel like I absolutely bombed it. I think I did well with the part where I had to run a code on the mannequin "patient." But the part where I had to do a history and physical on a real live person was disastrous. I was awkward, and bumbling, and there were nurses in the room to "help" me who really just stared at me (one of whom didn't even write down the orders I gave her, so I had to spend part of the timed exercise doing that!). And whereas all month, we practiced just spitting out orders-- in groups of five --like well-oiled machines, when faced with actual people to interact with, that felt really awkward. I tried to be more like a human talking to another human, but then I forgot stuff. Bah.

Now I'm back in the world of Internal Medicine, doing Infectious Disease consults. When I signed up for this rotation, my goal was to learn about antibiotics, particularly managing infections in patients who have a lot of other stuff going on. Looking at the list of recent consults, I see a handful of ob-gyn people as "requesting physician." Maybe for a few patients, "lots of other stuff" will include "a whole other person growing inside them." We shall see!

I had a really long entry ready to go, but I didn't like the tone of it. Too whiny, too rambly. I'll try to hit the highlights with some bullet points. Warning: it might still be whiny.

--Counting the four shifts I mentioned last time, I had a total of seven shifts in nine days, punctuated by hours of lecture and a day of BLS/ACLS training.

--One of those shifts was my first in the pediatric ER. It started off splendidly, I was seeing patients on my own, and it was fairly busy. Diagnoses weren't as challenging as on the adult side, but the patients were a lot cuter. I remembered just how much I love hanging out with babies!

--Towards the end of that shift, the ED got slammed with multiple traumas, kids who were victims of a car crash. One of the kids expected to come in died on the way. Heartbreaking.

--I left my shift so keyed up that I only got about three hours of sleep before BLS/ACLS training. In addition, I was so upset that I told Liz I'd rather repeat 5 weeks of colorectal surgery than finish out the last week and a half of Emergency Medicine. Since my acute emotional state has passed, I can say that was not a true statement.

--BLS = Basic Life Support, or typical chest compression/rescue breath CPR. ACLS = Advanced Cardiac Life Support, or running a code when a person has cardiac arrest. ACLS has several different algorithms involving different drugs, which can be very confusing. We'd covered them in class, but the format of our lectures is "interactive discussions," also known as "talking through cases," also known as "ranked absolute last on the list of ways I learn." To my discredit, I didn't put a lot of effort into studying them on my own, since I thought the ACLS class would cover things in a way that was better for me. I was mistaken. Imagine my surprise when, after a brief round of talking through things, we were thrown right into practicing for our mock code exam.

--I bombed my practice code. I was horribly humiliated, and had already been on the verge of tears since seeing all those really sick little kids the night before. I didn't cry, but I really wanted to.

--I managed to pass my real test, but only because I spent the rest of the practice round not listening to what everybody else was doing, but reading the notes I'd managed to write down.

--I'm thinking about starting a campaign for Read-Write Learning Awareness.

--I left ACLS training, not feeling great about myself, and went straight to the adult ED for another shift. It wasn't bad, but I stayed an hour and a half longer than I was supposed to because stuff kept coming up with my patients.

--I woke up Friday morning so tired that I stayed in and skipped the day's first lecture. That definitely helped my mood and energy level, but it didn't stop my classmates from commenting on how sad I looked. Because I was sad, and I have no poker face. I need to work on that.

--I had a true weekend off, and it was glorious. I didn't study as much as I should have, but I got lots of sleep and watched lots of football.

--Sadly, my roommate left for an away rotation over the weekend. Between her aways and my planned months at home, we're not going to see a whole lot of each other until February.

--I had my last ED shift today, out at the community hospital in a smaller town. It was fun! I got to sew up a couple of cuts.

--On the subject of residency apps, I have thirteen interviews scheduled now. Add to the previous list: Vanderbilt (finally!), University of Texas- Austin, Yale, and Emory (oh hello alma mater, nice to hear from you!). Ask anyone, they'll say that thirteen interviews is far too many, but I don't know how I'm going to decide which I'm not going to go on. For now, I can't think about it.

--It's highly likely that the Emergency Medicine final exam is going to demolish me.

Today I finished up my four ED shifts in four days marathon. Thursday and Saturday were in A Pod. Friday and today, I was in the B Pod where less seriously ill patients are put. We students have a little more autonomy on B Pod, basically getting to see and work up patients with only an attending's supervision. However, a commonly-repeated bit of ED wisdom is "There's always somebody trying to die on B Pod." In other words, there's always somebody whose condition is a lot more serious than it initially appears. It's the job of everybody working on B Pod to figure out who those people are.

One of my patients today was an elderly gentleman who wasn't exactly trying to die, but whose "touch of fatigue" was actually a pretty good touch of sepsis. I had to bust out that four-word phrase that never fails to get an attending's attention: "This guy looks sick." He got admitted for IV antibiotics and cardiac monitoring. My other patients included a couple of "flu-like illness" (wonderful, just what I need), low back pain, leg pain, and rashes. (All of whom would've probably said they were sick, but who were not, actually, sick like that first guy.) My classmate who was also working today let me have a patient who was listed as "genitourinary problem," since that's my area and all. He took a lady whose complaint was "abdominal pain." Guess which one of us ended up doing a pelvic exam for possible pelvic inflammatory disease, and which of us ended up treating a bladder infection. I appreciated the thought, though!

While I like the autonomy of B Pod, I think I like the action on A Pod a little more. That is, when there is action to be had. There was a Level 1 trauma yesterday, but otherwise my shifts on that side of the ED have been pretty quiet. Nothing makes time go more slowly than not actually getting to see patients on my own.

Coming up next week: I'm going to start studying for this rotation's final exam, for real!!

Dear Journal,
Feeling listless today. It started this morning, when I tried to make a smoothie out of beef bones, breaking my juicer.

If the above reference, and the entry title, are lost on you, then you NEED to start watching "Glee," or as I call it, "television's greatest gift to humanity in recent memory." You all know how I feel about musicals, especially those set in high schools. This one ups the ante by featuring contemporary pop hits and classic rock standards. To make things even better, it's also really really funny. Just watch it; it won't disappoint.

Moving on to even better things... Tuesday night at trivia, one of the questions required us to name both of the women who attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford. Both of them. Our answer was "Squeaky Fromme and... BUH???" Actually, I said something generic like Susan Williams, because it's always better to put some guess than nothing at all. But still. That was tough. The trivia moderators said that they're trying to make the questions a little tougher, and I'd say they have succeeded. By all reports, it's already the hardest (translation: least lame) bar trivia in town, so I'm not sure why they're trying to make it tougher. But we won, for the second week straight, so if that's tougher trivia, I like it! (During the final wager, I was subject to a little ribbing because, when told to name Shakespeare plays that start with 'T', my first thought was "Titus Andronicus." As opposed to, say, "The Tempest.") We also did the best on the "lightning round" question, netting a total of $70 in house cash for the team. Giddy up.

My emergency medicine rotation is still trucking along. I've only had a grand total of two clinical shifts so far (I'll have had six by the end of the weekend), but I have been to plenty of lectures! Honestly, as much as I whine about the travesty of mandatory lectures as a fourth year, they are for the most part very useful. We've covered things like life-threatening causes of common complaints, management of arrhythmias, and acid-base abnormalities. I can usually appreciate how much I'm learning. Occasionally, however, I zone out in lecture because of a wave of abject terror that I'll actually be responsible for taking care of sick people very, very soon. And sometimes those sick people will have another person inside them! I don't know what I'm getting myself into. But let's not dwell on that.

Since I'm no longer on surgical rotations*, I've been able to start volunteering in the med school admissions office again. (That's the only reason I'm still on campus right now, since lecture ended at 11.) Now I sit down with the interviewees for about ten minutes before they go on their tour, and give them a little talk about the clinical years. I remember when I interviewed, the fourth year seemed so wise and old. I could never imagine myself in that position, getting ready to graduate, confidently saying "I'm going to be a [insert specialty here]." And here I am! It's pretty fun to interact with people who are just starting the process.



*Waking up at 7:10 beats waking up at 4:45, but I miss the OR like gangbusters.

Greetings, readers. As you may know from my facebook status updates, I've been sick recently. I knew it was coming on Saturday, because of incessant, constantly-worsening throat scratchingess. I tried to ward off the imminent badness by drinking a giant green apple slushie from Sonic, with a TheraFlu chaser. You know, soothe the angry throat with cold, soothe the angry throat with hot, sleep it off. It sounded great in theory! Of course, that didn't work. I woke up Sunday morning in the depths of woe: achy, with chest congestion, and febrile to 102.6 F (that's a real fever, folks). I spent most of the day sleeping or just lying in bed. I got up a couple of times to make soup and tea, and at one point I attempted to sit up in my living room and watch "Cars" on the Disney channel. However, that was too difficult a task, so I went back to bed and slept more. Alas, I never found out what happened to Lightning McQueen, though if I had to guess, I'd say he learned the value of teamwork and friendship.

Anyway, late Sunday night my fever finally broke in a disgusting display of human physiology (translation: I sweat buckets), and I gradually started feeling better. But because febrile illness is serious business, I stayed away from the medical center until I passed the "24 hours fever-free" mark. Which meant I missed our Monday lectures, one of which was about EKGs, so I'm still clueless about those!! In all likelihood, this illness was not swine flu, but rather the same thing I get twice each year (as winter becomes spring and again as summer becomes fall). However, it's more fun to blame the cooties floating around the emergency room!!

For those of you playing along at home, I have 9 interviews scheduled so far. In no particular order (actually, in the order I got the invitations):

LSU- New Orleans
University of Washington
Baylor- Houston
Johns Hopkins
LSU- Shreveport
University of Texas, Houston x2 (two affiliated, but separate residency programs)
University of Alabama, Birmingham
Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte NC

I'll keep you guys posted as things change!

As I mentioned earlier, I am now on my emergency medicine rotation. The course consists of lectures every weekday morning, with clinical simulations and small group workshops some afternoons. On top of this, each student has ten six-hour emergency department shifts. My first shift was last night, in the main hospital's A-Pod. That's where more seriously ill patients get placed. During our orientation we were told that in exchange for seeing more complicated disease processes, we fourth year students take more of a backseat role in the A-Pod. For example, as soon as I walked in to start my shift, there was a patient about to go through the CT scanner with what turned out to be a hemorrhagic stroke. As soon as that acute stuff was done, a motorcycle crash victim rolled into the trauma bay. The whole time, I basically just hung out in the background, watching the various attendings and residents do their thing. Oh, and trying like heck to avoid the cameras from TLC's "Trauma: Life in the ER," which has been filming at the hospital for the past couple of weeks.

After all that initial kerfluffle, I did get to see a couple of patients on my own. I must admit, I was woefully out of practice with initial workup and management. Let's not forget that I am coming off eight straight weeks during which my initial patient encounters consisted of me introducing myself and then saying "I'll be helping Dr. Blahblah today. Okay, I'll see you back in the OR!" I'm not proud of the moment when, after seeing a syncope patient, I suggested a neuro consult before suggesting any sort of diagnostic test whatsoever. Rookie mistake. The patient still ended up with a neuro consult, but after a few other tests were run. That's why I don't have the degree yet, folks.

My next two shifts are tomorrow and Sunday. Saturday, I'll be out at a community hospital and on Sunday I'll be back in the A-Pod.

I ended up leaving the hospital about twelve hours after I posted that last entry. My GYN rotation definitely ended with a bang! I had two cases on Friday: one was pretty routine, but the second one was a doozy. Despite some complications that kept us in the OR until well into the evening, the patient was actually able to go home the next day. All's well that ends well, I guess!

I spent the weekend sleeping really late, until after 8 every morning! I spent most of Saturday trying to enjoy college football while dealing with a headache that was pretty annoying, but not quite bad enough to call a migraine. It was probably caused by getting too much sleep! Anyway, I felt better by afternoon and was able to go to a party hosted by a friend of mine who's a Medicine resident. Then I went home and went to bed early, eschewing a night out downtown.

On Sunday, I went to a local dog park to hang out with a friend and her puppy, Angus. He's a mastiff, so he weighs 50 pounds at just 15 weeks old. By the time he's full grown, he'll be over 200 pounds!! I have a deep, deep love for big dogs, so Angus is basically my new best friend. After the dog park, we found a restaurant that would allow Angus on the patio, and had a great dinner while enjoying the non-rainy weather.

My favorite thing about this weekend was that when I was done being social and was ready to go home, at say, 8pm, nobody gave me a hard time about it. Lately I've been pretty frustrated by the assumption of my more extroverted friends that their definition of fun is the only real one. So when I don't feel like going to loud, crowded bars and staying up until 3am, I get "Come on, have some fun!!" Now don't get me wrong, that has its place, and it's not as if I've never had nights like that. It's not as if I've never had fun during nights like that. But if given a choice, if I can't have alone time (my absolute favorite thing), I'd much rather have a low-key night of food and conversation at somebody's place, or at a restaurant. Why don't people understand?

Next entry: emergency medicine thus far.

Good morning, world. Today marked my last pre-5am wakeup for, hopefully, a long time. It's also my last day of gyn surgery until, hopefully, intern year. I'm more sad about the latter than the former. I'm not exactly looking forward to my month in the ED, especially since the flu is going to be in full swing. However, it will be nice not to have to pre-round. We've gotten our lecture schedule, an it's pretty impressive. Looks about on par with the amount of lecture we had second year, with the "bonus" of mandatory attendance. Huzzah.

So far this week has not had any cases that have gotten me quite as excited about gynecology as Friday's last case. On Monday I got scolded for not pushing the uterus in the right direction during a laparoscopic case. I'm getting better at not letting that stuff get to me, but it never feels awesome. However, at the end of the case I was allowed to close the trocar sites, and did so without messing anything up. When I was done, the chief resident even complimented me on how my work looked. That's the first time that has ever happened. Not to mention, easy speculum exam #2 of my life. That felt awesome.

Yesterday I got to operate with the same attending who scolded me yesterday, who, for whatever reason, was still in a bad mood. It was awesome (that's sarcasm). It was the first time in my eight weeks(!!) of gyn that I thought, good thing that I'm a fourth year. No wait, that's not true. I always think it's good that I'm not a third year. But what I mean to say is, impressionable students can be soured against an entire field based on a couple of poor experiences. If the same stuff had happened to me this early on in third year, I: 1) would have probably cried and 2) would have been less inclined to pick the "guilty" specialty, whatever it might have been.

Moving on...trivia last night was quite fun. We came in third, thanks to getting the final wager right, thanks to my pulling "Pink Floyd" out of my bum with minimal actual knowledge. In my mind, Pink Floyd is lumped together with other bands like The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Def Leppard* in the category "English bands that attendings always give me crap for knowing nothing about, when, generationally, I have no good reason to be able to name their songs by opening chords." That's a very unwieldy category name, but such is my mental filing cabinet. Anyway, I might be making a little bit of progress, since I was able to correctly identify David Gilmour. I still have a lot to learn, though.


*Def Leppard and Led Zeppelin fall into the sub-cateory of "English bands that attendings always give me crap for knowing nothing about, when, generationally, I have no good reason to be able to name their songs by opening chords, who also have misspelled words in their names." I'm serious; this is how I organize information. I know you all appreciate this glance into my brain.

Today I got to watch the repair of a major pelvic organ prolapse, one that was not only ruining the patient's quality of life, but her renal function as well. You see, the "water" of the ureters passes under the "bridge" of the uterine arteries, so uterine prolapse can cause major obstruction of the kidneys. My attending said that this case was the closest thing to a prolapse emergency as you're ever likely to see. So, he fixed it, using a technique so new he had the operation recorded for presentation at a national meeting. With the video camera being held by me, Unsteady McShakerson herself. I just hope the video turns out okay! Anyway, today's operation was only a temporary measure, but it will hopefully improve the patient's quality of life enormously. Not to mention giving her kidneys a chance to heal before going back for the major pelvic reconstruction. All this with a fifty-minute operation that didn't even require general anesthesia!

Still tired as stink, but I'm so excited about being a gynecologist one day, I can hardly stand it.

I was about to post an entry that read simply, "Dear readers, I am tired as stink." But that wouldn't be any fun for you guys to read, now would it? So I'll just fling some random thoughts up here and we'll see how that goes.

First of all, "adjective as stink" is an expression I've started to use more often recently, because a lot of the residents and attendings I'm working with use it. I'm such a verbal sheep. I should blaze my own trail, go my own way (and...song stuck in head). I should start trying to work "like gangbusters" into my vocabulary again.

Another week of urogynecology is drawing to a close. I've seen a ton of vaginal operations, which, as I've said, seem really cool to do. Luckily because there's both a fellow and a resident operating, I get a pretty good view of the operative field over everybody's shoulders. Most of the time. Other times, I was staring at a wall of other people's heads. It was during those times that I got some negative feedback, in the form of exasperated "Come on"s and the like, about my admittedly poor lighting of the field. After that happened a few times, it was only self-control in its purest form that kept me from blurting out, "Wear head lamps, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD." I've seen surgeons wear head lamps for big open cases with everything laid out before them, why wouldn't you wear one when operating in a dark recess of the body? Yet nobody does... I must be missing something. Maybe there's some study comparing the use of head lamps to the use of medical students who can't even see the field, showing that the students are 40% more effective. I don't know. Maybe I'll ask a resident. I'll let you know what I find out.

I have my mock interview coming up with a peds critical care attending-- none of the ob/gyn attendings volunteered to do the mock interviews, and I'm not sure it would be the best idea to practice with them anyway (since, hopefully, I'd be interviewing with them for real at a later date). I almost signed up for a mock interview with one of my former surgery attendings who always pimped the living daylights out of me. I thought that would accurately evoke the feeling of fear and terror that shall surely be present during at least my first interview. However, I'm just not that courageous. Just thinking about a mock interview with that attending has made me tachycardic (current heart rate = 108). Anyway, the attending I will be practicing with is a "tell-it-like-it-is" kind of guy, so I hope to get some accurate feedback about things I need to fix.

As far as real interviews go, I have three scheduled so far. One in New Orleans, one in Houston, and today, I scheduled an interview at Seattle Grace Hospital. Just kidding, Seattle Grace isn't real. But it is in Seattle, and I can't promise I won't blurt out lines of dialogue from "Grey's Anatomy" starting the moment I enter the University of Washington Medical Center. I am, after all, the same person who can't come within twenty miles of the city of Memphis without singing "Walking in Memphis" at the top of my lungs.

One more day before a lovely weekend off!

Something very big happened today. It wasn't accompanied by any fanfare, or any mention at all, but it was something I'll never forget. Today, for the first time in my life, I did a speculum exam and found a patient's cervix on the first attempt with no difficulty. There might be some hope for me yet.

I created a new Pandora station yesterday. The following is a list of the first ten songs that played:
"Summer of '69" -Bryan Adams
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" -U2
"Glory Days" -Bruce Springsteen
"Need You Tonight" -INXS
"Hit Me With Your Best Shot" -Pat Benatar
"King of Pain"- The Police
"Heart of Glass" -Blondie
"I Touch Myself" -The Divinyls
"(I Just) Died in Your Arms" -Cutting Crew
"Brass Pocket" -The Pretenders

I'm about ready to declare this the greatest station I've ever created. It even beats the one that I've been tweaking for years to get only songs that I love. The song seed for this new station?? The entry title probably gave it away, but it's "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes. Go ahead, try it out. You can thank me later.

In other news... this past Thursday, the administration held a meeting for my class about residency interviews. There was a panel of program directors for various residencies. They talked about the amount of weight they give the interviews (a lot, duh), questions that commonly trip up applicants ("What have you read lately.." really?), and unspoken "rules" about things like handing out copies of your publications and sending additional correspondence. In short, what I learned is that different program directors expect different things. Like the peds or anesthesia person who said, "Look up your interviewer's CV so you can ask them lots of questions about their research interests!" followed by the radiologist who said "Um, that's lame," and the internist who said "I can spot a brown-noser from miles away." Thanks for the tips guys! All in all, the meeting made me quite a bit more anxious about the interview process. Boooo.

Saturday was, of course, all college football, all day long. Vandy played LSU, causing many people to question my allegiances. I will always cheer for Vandy over LSU, since I am currently a Vanderbilt student (soon to be alum) and have never been an LSU student. No, the summer enrichment classes I took in middle school don't count. Rooting against one's own school is cheap, even when a loss is all but certain. The game was moderately enjoyable, if only because it wasn't the 41-3 blowout that I anticipated. A 23 - 9 loss isn't too terrible! It should be noted that I was the only person in the entire sports bar to do the "Vandy! Vandy! Oh hell yeah!" cheer when we scored our lone touchdown. Whatever, pseudo-fans.

Yesterday, Bette Davis Eyes Radio provided the background music for some serious urogyn studying. I was preparing for today, when I was scheduled to operate with an attending known for being very demanding. I knew the procedure forwards, backwards, and upside down. So of course, I got zero questions. Such is my life. Better to be overprepared than underprepared, I guess. I did get to drive the cystoscope a bit; that was cool.

Chief rounds at 6am tomorrow, that means I need to go to bed right now. Goodnight!!

I forgot to write about seeing Bo Burnham live on August 27! He performed at a local comedy club. Between my ticket and the two-item minimum, I spent about $40, but it was totally worth it. You can forget what I said here. Born in the 90s or not, I'm totally a cougar for Bo. He's tall, he plays music, and he thinks up lines like What's the opposite of ln x? / Duraflame, the unnatural log. Brilliant. Did I mention that he's really tall? Like 6'3". That's pretty good. Also, he handled would-be participants in the audience brilliantly. "We're not going to do a sing-along, okay, because I know it's fun, but trust me I do it better." Overall, good show. Unfortunately I was not willing to wait in line to meet him after the show, because I had to be at the hospital at 5:30 the next morning, or something ridiculous like that.

I forgot to mention that I had to go back to Gyn Oncology tumor conference last week, after moving on to my next rotation. One of the attendings (also the department chair) had wanted me to give an oral presentation as the culmination of my time on the service. Since there wasn't time during my final week, he had me come back to give it. My topic was gestational trophoblastic disease, and I think it went well. Hopefully nobody noticed that I was shaking throughout. Maybe it wasn't as obviously visible as it felt. I've got to get me some propranolol.

I forgot to mention that in addition to submitting my residency application, I also registered for my second licensing exam, also known as Step 2. This one comes in two parts. Clinical Knowledge (or CK) is a computer-based multiple-choice test, much like Step 1 which I took after second year. Clinical Skills (or CS) is already the bane of my existence. It's a full day of standardized patient encounters, in which I'll have to take a history, perform a physical exam, and write a note in which I come up with a differential diagnosis. I've already discussed how awkwardly forced and completely unrealistic standardized patient exercises are. To make things worse, the test is only given in a handful of cities across the country. I signed up for the Houston location, then found out that the family members I plan to stay with live a good 45 minutes from the testing center. Curse you Houston, why must you be so big???? But worst of all, I paid over fifteen hundred dollars for the "privilege" of taking these two exams. It's highway robbery.

I forgot to mention that in addition to paying for the exams, and for my residency application, I had to pay a separate fee to register for "the Match," the process that will actually assign me to a residency. Ridiculous. And all this is happening to thousands of senior medical students across the country, most of whom have already paid tens if not hundreds of thousands in tuition just to get to this point.

Anyway. That explains why my facebook status says I'll be living on saltines and peanut butter for a while.

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I forgot to mention that college football season began last week! I am pleased that my teams of choice (Vandy, LSU, GA Tech) were all victorious. I went to the Vandy game, which was fun. However, as I was standing there, surrounded by freshmen (seven years my junior) in various states of drunk (ranging from "very" to "extremely"), all I could think was "This smells bad" and "My feet hurt; I should've worn Merrells instead of sneakers." I might be getting a little too old for the student section.

I think that's all. Coming up in future entries: more tales of pelvic surgery!!

I'm not sure why, but I've been pretty homesick for Louisiana lately. The third year resident on my current team is from Natchitoches*, and I kinda want to hang out with her just so I can listen to her talk. "You sound like home" is a creepy and weird thing to say to somebody you just met, right? Also, the fact that a north Louisiana accent makes me homesick is a sign of just how sad a state I'm in.

Y'all can remind me of this homesickness between November 23 and January 31, when I've planned to be at home. Four weeks of that time will be vacation time, for interviewing, and four weeks will be my primary care rotation, with time for interviewing. I'm sure around January 4th or so, I'll be stir crazy from living at home with the parents ("LaKedra, don't you think it's about time you went to bed?") for such an extended period of time.

Speaking of time for interviewing, imagine my surprise when I saw an email titled "Invitation to Interview" in my inbox. I thought that wouldn't happen for a few weeks yet!! Anyway, I responded promptly, as we were taught to do, and have now scheduled my first residency interview. It's with LSU's New Orleans program (hooray Louisiana!!) and it will be in December.

Now, just for fun, I give you a few items from a list I found online.

You know you're from LOUISIANA when...
--You can properly pronounce Lafayette, Bossier Natchitoches*, Opelousas, Shongaloo, Pontchartrain, Ouachita, and you know that New Orleans doesn't have a long "e" sound anywhere in it. (I've never in my life seen the word Shongaloo before tonight, so I won't assume I know how to say that one. I'm Louisianian enough to know better than that.)

--You know whether another Louisianian is from New Orleans, North Louisiana, or South Louisiana as soon as they open their mouth. (True. And if they're from South Louisiana, I know which parish they're from, and/or which side of the Mississippi they grew up on.)

--You sit down to eat boiled crawfish and your host says, "Don't eat the dead ones," and you know what he means. (So, like lobsters, crawfish are boiled live. It's generally thought that the crawfish whose tails aren't tightly curled were dead when they went into the pot.)

--You don't learn until high school that Mardi Gras is not a national holiday. (Try freshman year of college. Try second semester of freshman year of college, when I realized that I actually had to go to organic chemistry on Mardi Gras.)

--You believe that purple, green, and gold look good together. (When the messenger bag I have now bites the dust, my next one WILL be Mardi Gras-colored. That's a promise.)

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*It's "NACK-uh-tish."

I've been using GMail as storage for all my documents and files and notes to myself for years. Today I began an effort to clean out my "Drafts" folder, which has a few hundred items, dating back to college. I found an unposted paragraph for an LJ entry, from Thursday, May 1, 2008 (second year. Remember, when I called our professors Dr. Neuro, Dr. Pharm and Dr. Path?):

"I love Dr. Path (ADORE her), but I that class ended on December 20, 2007, and I just got my grade TODAY. It's like she had to travel to a faraway land, establish a civilization there, wait for its inhabitants to devise a writing system, and use THAT to record my grade. That said, she did write an awfully nice evaluation of me. Apparently, my visual interpretation skills are excellent. Which is funny, because as I recall, I spent most of Path thinking, "Is that kidney, thyroid, or bone??" Also, I would've gotten honors in the class, if it weren't for those pesky written exams. Bah to you, written exams!! So let's recap first semester. Path- the class I went in trying to Honor: Pass. Psych- the class in which I said, "I am making a conscious decision not to try hard.": Honors. Oh, med school."

I thought that was amusing. Sadly, that's about where the fun stuff ends. I have a ton of stuff related to either my Emphasis project, or my undergraduate research, with a few papers for other classes thrown in. If anybody wants to read the 20-page paper I wrote on Tortilla Flat for my Arthurian Lit class, I'm happy to share it. But trust me, you don't.

I submitted my ERAS application last night after trivia. Before clicking 'submit,' I really had to screw my courage to the sticking place. However, I'm not sure exactly why that was. Maybe it was just the multiple warnings that once I clicked submit, under no circumstance would I ever be able to change the "resume" part of my application. Never ever. I hate final warnings like that; they always make me nervous. So I checked, and re-checked, and re-checked. I looked for typos. I tweaked content. I looked for typos again. On my last typo check (after I'd started and aborted the submission process twice), I found two mistakes. Minor ones, probably unnoticeable, but...yikes.

Now that I've submitted the application, the waiting game begins. I applied to 21 programs in all. My list was thought out a little bit more than my med school list, which was largely influenced by the presence of Division I sports. (That's a decision I still stand by, just so you know.) A summary of my applications this time around: 2 in Louisiana, 4 in Texas, 2 in North Carolina, 1 each in Alabama, Georgia (guess which one) and Tennessee (ditto), 6 on the Eastern seaboard, 1 each in Portland, Seattle, Chicago and Pittsburgh. There's a website where I can keep track of which programs have begun to download my stuff, but I won't be hearing back about interviews for several more weeks. So now I wait.