Sad day

Sigh. Sad. We have gotten rid of Netflix. Sigh. So...not a lot of movie reviews in the near future. Not like I was good at keeping up with them but still. Instead, for that same $14 a month we got mlb.com as for to watch the Mariners. We bought some cords and hook Matt's computer up to the TV. The image is great, and the signal is sometimes even before they get it back home. Woohoo. It was a tough decision, but I knew that on any given night, Matt would choose watching the M's over watching a movie. Plus, it is easier to study when the the M's are on than when a movie is. One day we may get Netflix again, but my nights shall be full of books for now.

Speaking of studying.......blah. We took our last final on Monday. It was kind of lame. I did just fine though. We took the "Comprehensive Basic Science Shelf Exam" today on the computer. These are retired (??) Step 1 questions; 4 blocks of 50. 4 hours total to take it. I took about 3h and 20min. The real deal is 7 sections of 48 each. It used to be 50, but they have added new audio questions. On the real thing we can also take breaks when we want to. On this one you had to be escorted out of the room, only one person at a time. Oh man to I get antsy sitting for that long. On my first 3 sections I had about 10min left in each block; on the last one...25. Talk about wanting to leave. I need to not do that though because that will only really hurt me.

You may be wondering, "Becky, what do you need to know for this test? What type of questions do they ask?" Well, to answer your questions: I need to know everything about the human body that I have (tried) to learn over the past 2 years. There is a bigger emphasis on the clinical type of things (such as was covered M2 year) and less on the "basics." I still need to know the basics (biochem, immuno), but they are often times tested in more of a clinical setting. As for questions...they are usually 2 or 3 "step" questions. What does that mean? I'll explains. So, they'll often give you a clinical setting - person came in w/ this and that and history of blah
1 step: what do they have?
2 step: what drug/treatment would you do?
3 step: what are the side effects/what should you warn against with the medication?
You have to make all those jumps in your head. From time to time there will be just a simple 1 step question, but then you panic b/c you are pretty sure it isn't supposed to be that easy...and then you start overthinking everything....ahhhhhh. Or at least that is what I do. I won't get the results from the CBSE for a few days, which is weird. It has been so nice at Creighton having my test results in my inbox the moment I step out of the computer lab. Alas, the wait for my actual step 1 score will be even longer because of some sort of new system or other. Blah.

Of to Denver this afternoon for Bo's graduation!!! Yay! Matt went to Seattle, so you don't have to feel bad for him! I took him to the airport at 445 this morning, so feel bad for me instead!

I miss lilacs

The biggest thing I miss from home in the spring time and early summer is the smell of lilacs. It really just takes me back to being young. Anytime I catch a small smell of them, I just melt. Sigh. Alas, I am in Omaha, who seems to have made a rapid transition to summer. I took a 2 hour bike ride yesterday and turned out rather pink. But it will look nice and tan in a day or 2. My rear also hurts a ton from said bike ride. It was great though. We have this 10 mile paved trail near our place. I took that out and back. I've been stressed and emotional (rare for me, I know :D) as of late, so taking this ride just felt awesome. I had to turn our AC on today. Matt doesn't function well (especially in terms of mood) when it is hot in the apartment. Sigh. Summer. It is supposed to be 84 today.

5 weeks from today I will be taking step 1. Oh. My. Gosh. I need to get my butt in gear. I feel as if I have some knowledge but no where near enough. We have our lame final on Monday and then 2 shelf exams 1 week apart. Other than that, it is going to be pure studying. And a weekend in Denver. And some other stuff :D. I just need to keep reminding myself that my future sort of is really on the line here. I am confident that I will pass (took a practice exam before starting my studies that had me passing, yay!), but I don't want to just pass. They posted Creighton's scores from last year. National average was 221; we got 224. National % of people scoring over 245 is about 14%; we had about 18%. Obviously my schooling has been above average; let's just hope Becky has gotten control of her bad standardized test taking.

Easter

Have I ever told you how much I love Easter Vigil service? Well I love it. While no church has been able to live up to Sacred Heart back home, I still love this service. The progression of readings from the Old Testament are great; the lights coming on are great; fire is great. I love the 'litany of the saints.' I think I always will enjoy it. You need a strong singer though to be the main cantor. Our woman on Saturday night wasn't very strong. I really had a hard time hearing/understanding her. I swear she was making up names. Still though I enjoyed it. Since Matt was still gone, I had no one with whom to go to dessert. So I just went home.

I am over this last class. This week hasn't been as bad b/c it has been more "hard science" than touchy feely stuff. Trust me, I am a touchy feely person, but not when I am tested and graded on it. I will admit that my Behavioral Change Project is coming along very nicely. The apartment is much cleaner, which is a great thing. I am very glad Matt is back as well. It was very lonely around here without him. I did surprise him with a dresser though - helping with the behavioral change. Like the table we bought, it was one of those rare, nice finds on Omaha Craigslist.

Quiz tomorrow in this class. Meh

And so it begins

Boards studying that is. Now, I've been studying for a bit already (mostly since spring break), but you can finally tell that the rest of the class is studying. Today, on the first day of an easy class, you would expect no one to be around school or in the computer lab. Not this time of year though. Pages of First Aid (FA) are flying. Blue and pink and yellow highlighters hit the page. Check Robbins...then give up and check wiki. Hang out on facebook. Panic when you remember you are supposed to be studying for boards. At least now I am not ashamed to say I am studying. I realized when taking the MCAT (and really with all my schooling) that I need a lot of "reads" of the material to remember it. I can read it once or twice and understand it, but in order to be able to memorize it, I need about 4-5 reads. Plus flashcards. Plus practice exams...this is my life for the next 2 months. Bear w/ me readers

Did I already say GI final went fine? Well it did. Friday afternoon I met some friends for lunch. When Amber and I went to leave, we had a true senior moment. We couldn't find her car for the life of us. She even beeped it; we still couldn't find it. I was cracking up, doubled over in laughter, especially when some wiser (read "in their late 60s) ladies asked us if we needed help. We politely declined and finally found the car. It took about 3 minutes though. Hilarious. Sunday morning we went to Annie's for a pre-Easter brunch. We also dyed eggs. I like dying and eating hardboiled eggs.

I don't like 24

I decided I don't like the age 24. Not because of aging or anything like that. I just think it is a very "in between time." Sort of like 19. At 24 you are no longer really "college aged" or "just fresh out of college aged." You aren't an adult yet either (at least not in my mind). At 25, I'll go ahead and call myself an adult. Maybe. It is hard to call yourself an adult when you are still in school. Sigh. School

We have our GI final on Friday. Ick. I just want classes to be over. But they aren't. And we our last class is going to blow balls. It is sort of a new class; mostly it is a combo of 2 classes, one of which was spread out over the semester for last years M2's. The man in charge of this class is...irritating to say the least. Not only do we have to do this "behavioral change project" (w/ a nice little 4 page paper), but we also have to do this site visit thing. After that visit, we have to prepare a PPT presentation AND write a research paper (3 sources) for it. Now I know you are all thinking that I am a whiner, and I'll give you that. The thing is, I wouldn't mind all this gosh darn busy work if it had been 2 months ago. Now, however, is the time to start to crack-down for Step 1 studying. Not to be writing about my feelings and how I want to change myself. Grrrrrrr

Matt leaves for Seattle this weekend for his Spring Break. I'm a little jealous but am also kind of glad b/c I can really start to look towards my step 1 studying. Not much else is going on. I am still trying to find a dresser for the apartment. For 8 months I have had a good # of clothes in boxes on the floor. Kind of like a college student (ie...myself during college). Omaha's craiglist, however, isn't awesome. It isn't that people aren't selling things, it is just that they are selling not such nice stuff for too much money.

MOVIE time
Tropic Thunder
This was actually pretty funny. I like it when Hollywood makes fun of itself. The movie was 2 hours in total, which is a little long for a comedy. They could have really condensed the plot at the beginning - no one is watching a comedy for character development. I ran out of words in my head to say about this movie. 6.9/10

The Happening
Sometimes I think M. Night Shyamalan gets some tough criticism. He set the bar really high for himself w/ 6th Sense, and when his movies don't hit that level (which they don't), he gets a lot of crap for it. While I don't think this movie rocked, it wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be. I do, however, have a hard time getting back into a movie once I have decided it is flawed. And it was. They were talking about a neurotransmitter/pathway in the brain that is there to keep people from hurting themselves because our natural instinct is to kill ourselves? Uh......no. That was said early, so from that point on, I had a hard time getting back into it. As always, he makes you think you are going to see monsters or poisons or what not, but you don't. It was okay, and at only 1.5hours, it was a good break from studying. 5.3/10

Hiatus

That was a long hiatus, but I'm back. Not much happened over spring break, so I wasn't very inspired to write. Then I got behind on GI from day 1 and had to do a lot of catching up.

So....GI. I don't like it. We already had our first quiz. I passed, but I still don't like the class. The gut is a tube. It should just be a tube. It should have no physiology. It should have no pathology. Alas, it is our last 'real' class. Wooohooo.

In other news, we had the tornado sirens going off yesterday. And while Matt and I probably should have gotten into the basement, we took pics instead. Oh my goodness people. That was intense. It was a fast moving storm that made it from Lincoln to Omaha in about an hour (that's about as long as it takes to drive there). For a while all we had was a little wind and tons of lightening. Then came the rain quickly followed by the biggest hail I have ever seen in my whole entire life. We also could see the "wall cloud" and "lowered cloud level" (all things that mean a tornado might form in that area) from the balcony. It pretty much went right over us. Let's see if I can get this video up. If I can, please ignore my screeching. I could barely hear myself when the hail was coming down, but my camera managed to pick it up just fine, loud and clear.



Oh, and by the way, as much as I love that it is staying lighter longer, it really messes w/ my studying. When the sun is gone, you know it is time to buckle down. Now the sun doesn't leave for a long time, and I have a hard time cracking down on the studying

Wow

The big news in my absence....no, not the MSI final. But.....MY BIRTHDAY! I turned the big 2-4. It is weird b/c I am a younger member of my class and group of friends for the first time in my life. In both Spokane and Denver I was one of the older ones. I guess I'd prefer to be the baby though. As a sort of celebration I invited a lot of people to Kona happy hour, which is totally awesome: half price sushi and pizza w/ great drink specials. Quite a few people showed up, and it was tons of fun

Not much else has gone on, other than the final. That went just fine. At clinic on Thursday I got hit on by a drunk guy and learned the important lesson of not answering drunk men's questions. That was...interesting. I am now on spring break though, which is great. I tried to be productive today and download Epocrate's (a drug program) onto my phone only to find out that the CDs Verizon gave me don't want to work on my computer. I don't know why, but they don't. I may have to drive to their store tomorrow and have some "words" with them. Too bad Matt has to work and can't come with me to do it :D