So.  The semester is nearing it's end, less than 3 weeks now.  I can only hope that the turn-around I managed before can continue.  I'd really like to go home with some good news.  "I passed everything" will definitely make me happy but, "I beat the crap out of everything" would be so much nicer. 

Fighting my way to the top is harder than I thought...

I really want to have better grades, but I've definitely learned while here that bad grades do not equal a bad student.  I work hard and I feel like I have aptitude, but that isn't all that goes into grades here.  Comprehensive understanding of test taking strategies, ability to control information flow, time management, less need for sleep, comprehension of what the professor wants, and the ability to deal with life down here are all things integral to succeeding in exams.  It is what I've been working on lately.  If I continued on my original path (i.e. annoyed that my aptitude and intelligence weren't enough) I would fall further down my path to failure.  It bothered me that being good at the subject isn't necessarily the most important characteristic of a student down here.  But you know what?  Learning that and being okay with it, sooner rather than later, helps much more than lamenting the fact itself.  There are many capable students here, and we will be wonderful doctors even if we leave here without a single A.

Yep, so I forgot I have this, just like every journal I've ever had. But you know, intrinsically I am more inclined to write in such venues when sad. Lately, my life has been overall okay. Boosted my grades, managing my time, finally seeing some friends. So maybe not writing is a good sign? Let's go with that, and not "I'm a lazy bum."

I feel so pretty

I had professional photos taken of me today. Why, you ask? I am going to be one of those "random blurbs about why this school is super and you should come here" in the corner of our school catalog. And I agreed to it... I feel sick. Not that I will lie, there are nice things to say, but I want to be able to give the whole story and that's not happening.
Also to note, our school is over 80% female and I'm sure close to that percentage is white. So who was at the shoot? A darkish skinned Mediterranean woman (me), a black guy, and a Hispanic woman. Woohoo for skewed percentages.

Do they remember?

The consensus between my classmates and graduated friends is similar in one regard. The testing styles of our professors generally imply that they have no memory of what it was like as a student. I am not saying they are inept, nor am I saying I dismiss their abilities. However, the schism felt between what students can absorb capably versus what professors expect is an immense one.

The Hollywood Vet

So, we had an extracurricular speaker today. Love going to those, usually dry but I find they have interesting stuff to say. In this case, it was most certainly outside the norm.

The talk itself was a thinly veiled sales pitch for veterinary medical insurance by a Dr. Peddie, but I don’t care because it was accomplished by an overly animated display of two anecdotal stories to prove why he, the speaker, may have ended up needing the insurance.

One was surgery on a black leopard, in an empty hospital, on a Sunday, back in the 70s. He was explaining his 'pant-soiling' fear at how very unsickly this leopard could be if he came anywhere near. As well as how insulted he was at the guy who waited until a Sunday to call on this (after 9 days of the cat not eating) kept calling him “the new kid doctor.” And so, he used the original, mildly untested precursor to ketamine to down the cat and shove it in his pick-up. That was a spectacularly stupid idea. But thankfully this ended with removal of most of the cat's reproductive tract and the mummified kittens therein, a gigantic ego, and the much better title of “leopard surgeon.”

The second story was how he lost that nickname by becoming “that guy who gave an elephant an enema, then got stuck in the rectum and intensely shat on.” That is probably the extent to all you need to know. My favorite part was “… and I look over to my beautiful brushing bride by the fence, laughing so hard she is bent over vomiting.”

All-in-all, it was enjoyable, and afterwards I asked him his advice on military service toward loan repayment and job replacement. I am technically anti-military (as a pacifist), but I am willing to listen and he is not the first to point out that the military's help has gotten him the know how to find such interesting work.

Love from afar

And I don't mean romantic. I mean any and all.

I currently reside far from my family and friends, none of whom, in turn, reside near each other. I have a year left being abroad for my schooling and I consistently wonder where I will be placed. I have a variety of schools I could end up at, very few are near said loved ones. I also have a crippling inability to actively make friends. Those whom I do have, we are violently enamoured with one another. Those I don't have ranged from complete strangers to wishing they were complete strangers.

I go through periods of hatred, not self- nor focused towards anyone in particular. Just an overall sense of hatred at a situation which I have been in many times before, should be comfortable with, and am not.

There is a seeming bottle-neck effect here, not evolutionarily of course. A large population has had random assignment through the funnel that is this school into a condensed population. Over time the strongest, and often most awful, features begin to manifest. Animosity, hatred, paranoia, disingenuousness, pandering, oh! and alcoholism in many as well. We may be smiles in our classes, but I feel the seething underneath. There are friendships here, I have minor ones and major ones. But the rumor mills, the badly-hidden tears, the misguided assumptions, the veiled insults, all of these things paint the picture of a problem that overreaches my mere paranoia. A problem for which we have no help, and an unwillingness to seriously admit to one another.

And so, I dream of my loves: my family, my friends, my beaus. And I try, so very hard, to not remember that what I have just written is a daily reality here.