The snow gods are good!

Last weekend, Tay and I and a friend from school made a quick trip up to Sugarbush to get in a bit of skiing and relaxation. Although our arrival was delayed until 2:30am due to snowy roads - my car just barely made it up the steep Sugarbush Access Road that leads up to the mountain - the entire mountain was in outstanding condition the following day. Now tonight, after a weekend of studying for a test that was scheduled for tomorrow, I have learned that school is cancelled tomorrow due to the massive snowstorm that is supposed to drop up to 14" on Long Island. As a result, I was able to catch an episode of Platinum Weddings (quality television) tonight and can spend tomorrow catching up on the work that I had put aside in favor of studying (and, if Tay has tomorrow off from work and can play outside with me, build a snowman).

Besides the glorious snow, much has happened in the past two months that bears mentioning. During the first four weeks of the semester, I completed an entire course in neuroscience. It was somewhat less than my favorite experience. I entered the course unready to end vacation, excited about being engaged, and with sort of a bias against the subject as a result of a short-lived experience working in neurology before I got my job at the cancer center at Dartmouth last year. The course was also poorly organized and the lectures were incredible scattered and involved long tangents, although that doesn't excuse my lack of motivation. Also, the second-year students led my class to believe that this course would be much easier than our fall curriculum. (Not true!!) I survived, although my enthusiasm and pride took a bit of a beating.

Now I am studying physiology (how the different body systems work) and histology (the study of different body tissues). The professor is phenomenal, both in terms of organization and teaching ability. I truly wish he could teach every single other course in med school!! I also find these topics much more interesting; in studying, for example, how the heart functions and what goes wrong in congestive heart failure or aortic valve stenosis, I feel like I am truly a medical student! I do have to admit, though, that even with my interest in this class, I have a love/hate relationship with med school. I know/think (it changes with my mood and the day's events) that I want to be a doctor, but this part of the journey is hard and not that much fun. The information actually isn't that difficult to grasp, but there is such a enormous amount that trying to learn and understand it in a meaningful way given the time constraints is a neverending battle. Part of me is very concerned with grades and wants to achieve the highest scores I can in everything, but another part of me doesn't want to give up absolutely everything else in my life in order to do that. So you see, there is an opportunity for frustration and unhappiness regardless of which path I choose. (I vacillate often.) Further, it has been disconcerting to discover that, although it is the path I have chosen, I don't always like med school. I am learning, through my mindful meditation practice, to come to grips with that and accept the situation and do the best I can.

On a lighter note, with the help of Tay and our friend Bill, I presented a poster at an academic conference in New Haven, CT, last month. It was the culmination of a project that we completed while earning our masters degrees, and we submitted it to this year's meeting of the North American Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynecology. We developed a decision tool intended to assist women who are pregnant with triplets in deciding whether to carry the full triplet pregnancy to term (which involves health risks to both the mother and fetuses, in addition to heightened risks of handicaps such as cerebral palsy and Down's Syndrome in the children) or to undergo selective reduction (which carries risks of its own, although it lessens the aforementioned risks). Here we are at the poster session:


The poster was well-received, and we spent a fantastic weekend catching up with a variety of friends in New Haven. A definite highlight was the fact that I got to go shopping for a wedding dress with one of my closest friends!

It looks like I have been my verbose self once again. Back to the books for a bit and then off to bed so I can be well-rested to enjoy tomorrow. I think we are never to old to relish a snow day!