The Breakfast Club

 My study group CW from L: Dr. P, 

Jeff, Dr. G, Moi and Casey-as-Dexter (center).

Photoshopping courtesy of Casey.

The theme here is "exhausted."

Last year was awesome. Sure, it was stressful. Yeah, I know I bitched a lot. But the bottom line is that I loved coming in to work each day--and I purposely use "work" instead of "school" because despite the fact that we're paying them, what we do here is sooooo much more than "school."

So I expected this year to be the same. While I still like coming in most days, that's where the similarities end. The last five months have been a roller coaster of agitation, because of this new curriculum thing. I am no exception because I continually fail to pin down any one method that will bring me consistent success. Identical study strategies can offer me as much as a 40% change from one exam to another. Is it my learning method that's failed? Is it their teaching method? Is it failure of the assessments? Or is it just the profound nature of the second-year level material? Probably some of all four, but the gist of it is that my assessments of my own skills rarely seem to correlate with the objective assessment of my skills--when I think I've tanked a test, I find out I was a top score, or if I think I did a thorough job in preparing for an exam I find out I'm in the bottom third. It's really starting to piss me off, too. My brow furrows deeper, my grays require more frequent covering, and I'm hitting the comfort foods a lot harder than ever before. The body is not designed to live this way.

Thus, I can not wait for this week to be over. Because if I can survive Friday's final exam--and by "survive" I mean score within 1 standard deviation of the average--I get 2 weeks off. 2 weeks of NOTHING before starting over with a clean slate in Spring semester. 2 weeks before I have to face the music of starting studying for Boards. 2 whole weeks without Harrison's Internal Medicine, Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment or pop quizzes that I seemingly can't pass, no matter how I study. Or don't study. No Goljan, no clinic notes, no standardized patients, no lectures, no tests.

I must add, though, that pretty much the sole redeeming quality of the last few weeks has been The Breakfast Club (see above). A few pals and I converge on one of the dozens of study rooms with a hearty assortment of cereals and milks (soy, soy light vanilla, and almond--the official milk of Breakfast Club) and study for 15 hours while gorging. Remember that part about comfort food? Yeah, that's what's happening here. And we are all plumping accordingly. Breakfast Club is punctuated with lots of laughter, magic tricks, krumping and "That's what she said"s. It keeps us alive.

Breakfast Club cozies up to the e-fireplace for pulmonary physiology.

Note the blanket at bottom right for power naps in the corner.

But the best part about Christmas break? The anticipation of my Aunt Janet's once-a-year-only butterscotch pretzels and chocolate PB balls. Oh, man I can not wait to put my mouth around those (yes, it is safe and you should click that link for a quick travel back in time).

Matt and Gunther, however, are already on Christmas vacation. They left on their tour of the western states on Saturday morning, and are currently hitting the slopes in Montana.

Embarking from So-Cal to Seattle by way of NV, ID, & MT. 

And for the grand finale, recall my post from Thanksgiving time, that I had a Christmas wish to catch a fleeting glimpse of one Mr. Downey. Well, Tanya (fellow WU colleague and co-president of The Hollywood Posse if you remember) and I agree (with ~90% validity) that we indeed visualized the target last Monday evening, walking to his car near the Intelligentsia Coffee house in Venice. It was a superbly well-timed quasi-encounter, as it occurred mere hours after an utterly devastating midterm exam. We celebrated with cake at Sweet Lady Jane's on Melrose.

German chocolate cake is the official post-celeb sighting food.

So, you see, Christmas wishes really do come true.