Okay, I can understand failing a path exam, but parasitology? Oo, that stings. One of the classes that I really actually like and try to do well in. It really smarts, too, that my lab partner probably did perfectly fine, despite the fact she avows her distaste for all things gross and routinely leaves lab an hour before me.

On the other hand, for once I didn't fail path, so does that mean it all balances out?

EDIT:

Going back and looking at the score, I thought to myself, "Huh, that number doesn't look that low..." Upon reworking the math, I found out that I did not in fact fail the parasitology exam. I still didn't do stellar on it, but apparently my ability to answer questions about parasites is at least a little bit better than my ability to divide numbers in my head.

adjusting

One exam down, four to go, and then the cycle can repeat! After living in terror of the pharm exam for about 36 hours, it turned out that taking it made me the most emotionally stable I'd been all day. It's been really hard getting through days recently, between the prednisone preventing me from sleeping more than 5 hours a day and missing my fiance to a scary degree.

We're still working out how to communicate long-distance, so I never know if I'll hear from him on a given day. My life, after all, is very predictable (aside from the mood swings) and full of opportunities to check e-mail. He, on the other hand, is trying to learn to fit into an entirely new culture with a difficult language, and it's a complete guess when he will have access to the internet (technically he has it at his apartment, but whether he has time to use it is an entirely different matter). I think for me the harder part is knowing that he's going through culture shock and that the only thing I can do is wait. It's not something I can share or ameliorate (which my parents had to remind me; see, this is the problem with the mood swings, is that I feel like I've lost all rationality on top of everything else).

School at least gives me lots of opportunities to stay busy. It's hard to be too miserable when you're learning about the life cycle of lung worms! On that note, off I go to study a bit before class.

Don't eat frozen iguanas

Florida is having a cold snap, and apparently there's been a rash of dogs showing up at vet clinics with paralysis. After several weeks of this, vets are starting to think it's because of the iguanas. See, iguanas don't handle temperatures near freezing well; there's a lot of iguanas in southern Florida (who knew?), so there's dying iguanas falling out of trees and frozen stiff. Then dogs find them and think these are the greatest chew toys ever!

However, carcasses are also great incubators for botulinum bacteria, so the dogs get botulism (maybe...there's actually no confirmed clinical data, but it seems to make sense). Most of the dogs can recover, but it takes a week or two for the paralysis to wear off.

Oh, the joy of Promed Mail. Keeping me entertained when the snow plows wake me up too early.

Lots and none at all

Today I have accomplished lots and nothing at all!

A roll of verbiage, just to get it out of my system:

I spent a lot of the day buffering e-mails between the big organization and the visiting organization, both of which were very confused about the schedule. It took me three sets of e-mails (received and response) to figure out that the problem arose from the misplacement of a date, not the actual deletion of it. If any of that makes sense. I always come out of these things grateful for peaceful resolution, and fervently hoping that no one is going to be angry at me. I can imagine several very specific complaints of negligence to lodge against myself, but I think part of that is paranoia.

And then I had a nice long conversation with my fiance, via Skype. It was the first time I've ever used the video function, so THAT was an adjustment. It didn't feel at first like I was actually talking to him, since I was so very obviously talking at a computer. And then it was hard to draw the conversation to a close (although it was getting on toward 11 pm his time, and he still had homework to do). I think we'll probably have to schedule it like dating, not too often and with a set time to sign off. But overall, a very cool piece of technology.

One thing that really irked me, though--his host mother apparently made some comment about how we were talking too much, and how a previous study-abroad student had spent too much time talking to his fiancee "and that was why they broke up." It's one of those cases where my first reaction is "why would she even bring this up?" And my second reaction is wrathful indignation. So I went and played angry piano for a while, which helped (okay, so Mozart's Sonata in C doesn't really qualify as "angry").

Okay, back to studying! Or, I guess, just to studying, since I haven't gotten around to it yet today.

Study plans

My sister was in town the last couple of days for interviews, so we got to hang out and discuss important things like our complete failure to study enough. We're at different stages of education, of course, so the solutions we found are a little bit different. But I realized that I really just don't budget enough time to study. So the new plan is that I will actually map out two hour chunks of study time. Doing that for this weekend has revealed that I have already failed to plan enough time to study, and it's only noon on Saturday.

On the other hand, I had a wonderful two hour conversation with my fiance yesterday. (it was my congratulations-on-getting-there present for him: a couple of hours of conversation in English)

Hurrah for Skype! It's much easier to call foreign cell phones when you don't have to punch in twenty or thirty numbers to get through. This becomes much more significant when the foreign cell phone drops the call for the third or fourth time.

Whoops, that was an exam

Fortunately it was a small exam. I really need to figure out how to remember drugs better, though. The same thing happened last year. I learned the concepts of drug therapy, and then ran out of time and just sort of glissed over the drugs. I wouldn't treat bacteriology this way! I just need to find a way to anthropomorphize ketamine, that's all. That way, when I am confronted with a table to fill out of five different drugs, I will remember which one is which, instead of staring at it dumbly, feeling all the information I knew running out the back of my head.

Minor plaint

I want cake. I spent a very long time writing an e-mail, and I have an exam in the morning, and I have lab after exam, and who knows how many lectures. Also I am sleep deprived, emotionally wonky, and haven't gotten exercise today (snowing too much to go to dance practice, and my cranial tibial muscles hurt from overenthusiastic elliptical workout yesterday). I am struggling to finish going through the notes for anesthesia.

And I want cake.

*sigh*

Okay, back to opioid receptors.