J'ai Fini

Since I can't coax the internet into giving me a usable latin translation, I shall render it in the tongue of the Franks, "I'm done". Yes, I am done with the first course in medical school which here is Human Anatomy. The last test was gruelling and awful. No other description works. I felt short changed in my studying because I had to spend a week studying for embryology when I could have been mastering that section of anatomy. I think I passed at least. The last 3 weeks have been really tough, I've been studying non-stop and not sleeping well, and generally feeling pretty low. Now that I have slept 20 hours in two nights I feel much better. If you look in the literature, it's well documented that between 40-60% of medical students fit the clinical description of depression. I definitely know which side of the line I fall on there. The administration here is amazingly supportive, however, and do their best to mitigate the stressors in our lives. One of the most difficult habits to confront is that of comparison. I see how much other people study and how they seem to be doing, and it's discouraging to think that I seem to do more with worse results. I have to remember that appearances are decieving, and some gunners decieve willfully in order to subvert their classmates. Mercifully our class is not well stocked with gunners, at least they haven't shown up yet.

Completely unrelated: We are in the midwest, and folks are big here. Last night Mindy and I went to a church meeting for the adults in our stake. On the pew in front of us, there were 8 people whose combined weight was at least 1950lbs, perhaps as high as 2200. 3 of the females were morbidly obese, as were 2 of the males. In the congregation as a whole, 60% of the adults were overweight and 20% of them were obese. I was amazed. A recent study (the TFAH -trust for america's health) ranked Missouri as having 60.5% of the population being either overweight or obese, so my back of the envelope observation was spot on. I frankly wondered what would happen to the pew if they decided to shift on it, whether it would smash down on the ground, crushing my legs under it. I prudently withdrew my legs for the remainder of the meeting.