Blue Coat Ceremony

We had our version of eighth-grade graduation for school today, where they told us all the wonderfully stressful things that will happen to us in our final year and how we are going to be lucky to get three hours of sleep per night. And any food other than take-out pizza. Thanks, all, that was very inspiring...

So I'm feeling the need to study even more than usual. So much need, I'm actually studying! (Until I started writing this blog post...) Except my lecture notes have been making me fall asleep. I took a break and set up pizza (good pizza, not silly take-out pizza) and bread dough. My favorite bread, too, a delectable oats&honey loaf. I took a break from making it because I was having trouble NOT eating it, and I was worried about gaining weight. As I have now gained weight anyway, even without tasty bread, there seems no point in making anything less than delectable. At least this way I stand of a chance of turning down the many less appealing foods that might tempt me, since they are just SO obviously inferior.

As for next year, though...eeeh. I will have to talk with my GI doctor, but I suspect if I try to do the no-sleep, lousy-food, high-stress routine they tell us we are in for, I will relapse and be miserable. I already feel like I'm balanced way too precariously on the edge of prepared/not prepared--like I am going to have to put more effort into relearning things because I only half-learned them the first time. It doesn't help that the last exam for large animal really, really underscored the

So it will be dependent on my ability to generate a sense of zen and peacefulness despite all the craziness, ultimately. No pressure.

I take comfort in the conversation I had with one of our professors, who said, "4th year doesn't have to be as stressful as people find it..." I'm not sure exactly how one goes about making it non-stressful, but the fact the bf is spending the summer off on his own special learning experience will definitely free up my time for rotations. I really slacked off on learning russian this last year, though, so it's going to be a tough time not talking with him--as part of his program, he is supposed to keep communication in any other languages to a minimum. I can still send him pictures, he can still write me letters (if they're in russian).

But in the meantime, I must figure out this zen thing. Hmmm, how to be zen while studying three years worth of material on top of daily lectures and clinics...

On 3 hours of sleep

This afternoon: Studying! I have to catch up on clin path and parasitology, not to mention pharmacy/anesthesia and toxicology. We had a great tox lecture today--emergency triage! Tox promises to be one of the stranger classes, because the nature of toxicology is that you mostly just treat the symptoms. Knowing the specific toxin is great, but it often remains a mystery. But at the same time, you need to know enough to not kill the patient with the wrong treatment. For example, if a dog swallows rat poison, you want to make the dog vomit, right? But if the dog swallowed drain cleaner, which is a nasty caustic material, you want to get it out quickly, all one way--because making it come back out the way it went in can kill the mucosa.

The three hours of sleep is working out pretty well. I was terrible about studying last night; I managed to read some parasitology while going through bellydance exercises (holding up the textbook during shimmies made good upper-arm work-out, AND I learned about pinworms). But then I got distracted by the State of the Union speech and by waiting for a phone call.

The phone call was much later than expected, so I was up really late. We (officially engaged! I hadn't expected to find it so exciting!) had a lot to discuss, including whether it's appropriate to fax letters to a study-abroad student at his school, if the letters are not in the target language. I mean, phone calls are great. But they have no physical presence, and no permanence. I like writing letters, I like having them arrive sooner than six weeks after I send them (or potentially as few as 2 weeks *gasp*), and I have a fax machine.

But...say, I've always wanted to learn Russian. I don't know that in the middle of vet school is quite the ideal time, but you have to start sometime.