the perils of

       There's something about this weekend that is making me absurdly happy.        Maybe it's that my duty schedule is permitting me to sleep in on a Sunday. Or maybe it's that the busy street near my condo is closed to cars, and is currently populated by only happy families riding bicycles and stupid teenagers trying to show each other up with skateboard tricks. Wow listen to me, calling teenagers "stupid" and openly resenting them as an age group. How grown-up sounding!        Maybe it's that I had the time to go out and get a decent breakfast (pancakes, a sausage, and some iced coffee from McDonald's in case you were wondering). Or that afterwards, I got to watch Gilmore Girls on Netflix while simultaneously practicing watercolor painting.        I think the magic of this weekend really stems from me finally having the time and space to just work on being  myself . See, my rotation...

        Week two of the musculo-skeletal module is over, which means that we're halfway done with the module. And the semester is half over as well! Wow. Time really does fly when you're constantly cramming for exams, freaking out about SGDs, cursing the name of your Management professor, studying, splurging on a new Stabilo highlighter, taking a break from studying by discreetly sniffing your new Stabilo highlighter, buying microwave dinners from the downstairs Ministop, getting your car scratched by an old lady, looking at yourself in the mirror and crying a little, rocking yourself to sleep in fetal position, regretting several past personal decisions, eating breakfast the next morning while crying a little, and secretly promising to never return the hangers from a certain horrible laundry place because they delivered your uniform late, consequently forcing you to wear the an old dirty uniform for three days. While crying a little.     ...

(Picture unrelated to the post. This is a harmless cerebellum slide seen beneath a microscope.)           The day started with a mass held in honor of our cadavers. Afterwards, we all gathered outside the anatomy lab for the blessing ceremony. "I'm prepared to see the body," said Dia as we lined up outside, "Just not the face." I felt the same way. I don't know what it is, but seeing a dead person's face is just so different from seeing a dead person's arm or leg. Extremities belong to bodies, but faces belong to people.                    Before I knew it, it was my group's turn to enter. I breathed in and walked calmly, taking in the sight of twenty dead humans. They were invisible - beneath the blue sheets, all we could see of them were the outlines of their head, feet, breast, and knees. Each one was a different size and shape from the other. As my group gathered around Cadaver #3, I could see that he...

    Hello, little blog of mine. I'm sorry for having forsaken you, but the pressures of med school are quickly building up and there are not enough hours in a day. There is also not enough coffee in my cupboard, so thank you for reminding me to add it to my grocery list.     Anyway, it's been about a month into med school. What's it like?     There are exams every week (although maybe that's just for this month) and each exam covers what would normally, in college, be covered in a month. And in equal detail. I still have time to do things other than study, like exercise, tweet, or play the guitar. My roommates Bel, Micha, and Pat even take the time to cook their own meals (which I seldom have the patience for). Actually, Pat's currently doing a jigsaw puzzle whilst watching Miracle in Cell Number 6, Micha is napping, and Bel is playing the violin. My point: We all still have time to unwind.     Context: we just had a killer exam ...

Right now, the inside of my head feels all fuzzy and my eyes are impossibly puffy. It's because I've been crying and crying and crying these past few hours, and the reason for that is that around 8 PM tonight, as I was about to dig into a salad, I got a call from Mr. Peabody. Mr. Peabody works for the financial aid committee of the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health, and when I saw his name flashing on the screen of my phone as it rang, I was not expecting good news. I knew the scholarship results were supposed to come out tomorrow, so the fact that he was already calling me at this hour probably meant something bad. It probably meant that I didn't make it, and that he wanted to break the news to me gently, before the list came out and before the scholars started celebrating. Our conversation went like this: Hello Aimee? Hello? Yes, Sir. Hi. Hello. So we've made a decision already.  Yes sir? (Internal dialogue: HOLY CRAP THIS IS IT. LET ME DOWN EASY. D...