I Want a Cupcake. Freakin' Now.

Dude. This week has pretty much blown.

I'm supposed to be studying the lectures we had this morning, but after an 11 hour day on campus and 2 hours of onerous neuroanatomy, I blog now. 

First of all, I'm back from the dead. And by "dead" I mean "unrelenting onslaught of cooties that descended upon me last Friday." So I was expecting a good day. A day involving a lot of happy, "Hey you're back"s, and probably a unicorn at some point. Didn't happen.

We are edging closer to the end of neurology and I say it can't come soon enough. And yet, paradoxically it can. Oh, yes it can. Because I don' know nothin'. Through the wonders of test challenges, mis-keys and dropped questions, my abysmal 61% on exam 2 has morphed magically into a swarthy 64%. Yeah that's right. Now I'm only failing the course by 1%.

I ran into the Dean today, who was all smiley and hugsy because it was a guest day for military physicians (he's a retired Navy anesthesiologist) and he likes me because I won the Presidential Society Award last week. I'm too embarrassed to say anything when he sweeps in with a side-hug and asks how things are going. I usually mutter something like, "Oh, good. Good. I'm good, thanks." Then I try to distract him with questions about the new school in Oregon, while in my head I'm shrieking, It's 'well', dumbass! You are not 'good', you're 'well'! (insert dramatic collapse to the floor here) I'm a total retard and a fraud! I'm failing neurology! Why did you EVER LET ME IN HERE? WHYYYYY???

But I'm cool. 

Then we had OMM exams this week. This picture is of me practicing techniques on Thuy. The thing that's really tough about OMM is that it's always cumulative. Even at the end of next year, they are just as likely to test you in a practical or on a written about concepts from first semester of the first year as they are from the current semester. I got lucky in my practical and nailed a 96% (hoop-ah!), but the written was another story. Despite studying through the weekend, I found myself time and again reading a question and going, "Uh, when did we ever talk about THIS?" We sat that exam on Tuesday. Now it's almost Friday and the scores have yet to be posted. The OMM department's policy is never to curve. Under any circumstances. But we received an email today about a 4% (!) curve, 2 dropped questions, and a host of multi-keys. And yet both the average and our scores remain ominously missing. The catch here is that if you don't pass each individual practical and written final (worth 50% alone!), you fail the whole course. So it doesn't matter a lick that I walked into the written with a 93% in the class. If I got a 69.9% on the written I get to remediate this summer.

Finally, just to piss me off at the end of this week, I found out today from the Girl Scouts of LA County that the seminar about Women's Health for Teens that my group is scheduled to deliver on Saturday morning has one registrant. ONE. So our Service Learning project on women's health is down the tubes. All that work for nothing. The group paper is due on Monday and we will have no seminar and we have no data. Months ago, when we were supposed to select our Service Learning projects, I went to sign up for Girl Scouts and fellow ISACer Casey says,

"Hey Stannard, you need to do Lambda & Friends with me." L&F is the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender awareness group.

I was all, "Neh. Imma do Girl Scouts and teach me up some women's health to the youngsters."

"No. Lambda," he says.

"NO. Girl Scouts," I retort. Within 2 weeks the L&F project was wrapped and their papers written.

The universe is punishing me for not enhancing community LGBT awareness. Punishment via Girl Scouts.

And so that brings you up to speed. So, so angry... Lindsey SMASH! But just so I don't bum you out, let's end on some positives:

• Men Who Stare at Goats is frickin' hilarious. Oh I do love it when George Clooney plays the weird.
• Gunther got a clean bill of health at his vet follow up today. And lots of new fans.
• Submitted the final design for the book cover on Friday and the manuscript for interior design on Monday. Gak! No more changes!
• I wrote a thank you to a professor--a recent Pie Heaven fan--who wrote a letter of rec for me and in said thank you card I remarked, "I may have to start filtering Pie-Heaven, now that I know that those with recommendation-writing powers are reading..." I get an email the next day with subject line: "Don't". Body of the text read: "...filter Pie-Heaven. I assume that was a joke but just in case, don't. Seriously." Someone actually threatened me to maintain my freedom of speech! This new information has confirmed what I've long held true: my blog is famous and credible.