Bride Day!

As any med student can tell you, losing a full day of studying can feel horrible... Losing multiple partial days can feel worse.  Most brides will tell you the bachelorette party is probably one of the best parts of the wedding festivities, and bridal showers are a great way to spend time with your nearest and dearest. Because I have finals and boards coming up, I couldn't spare multiple weekends so I had my shower, a wedding dress fitting all in one day. It was exhausting but such a fun day!! It was great too because my sister, who lives on the west coast was able to be there for all of the festivities.  My friends rented a sic room at the Dream downtown hotel in the city.  It was awesome- great photo ops, delicious cocktails, and morning after poolside basking. 

Spring Break!

This week has been spring break, which translates to a week and a half of uninterrupted study time.  With my fiancé in Mexico for the past three days, you'd think I would get in a ton of study time.  Well, it's good to make plans.  Work has gotten done, but there have definitely been a few days were instead of working the 10 hours a day I intended, the hours add up more to a modest 5.  One day I spent the entire time on the couch watching House.  It turns out that the house writers in season 1 LOVE vasculitis…. apparently its in the differential for everything.  Also caught a pretty blazing error in the first season, they refer to Toxoplasma (Toxoplasma gondii) as a fungus.  It most definitely is not a fungus, and in fact is a protozoa that spreads through cat feces.  It's generally not a problem unless you are pregnant or immunosuppressed.

In other news, my mom, brother, and sister (who flew in from Oregon) are driving up from DC for my bridal shower/bachelorette party tomorrow.  I decided to put them both in the same day because 1) I couldn't afford to lose two study weekend this close to finals/Step I and 2) My sister/maid of honor lives in Oregon and I wanted her to be able to attend both without breaking the bank of air fare.  Because the wedding is so close to my Step I date (5 days after), I couldn't put the events in the wedding week due to fear of being massively hungover on my wedding day.

3rd Year Clerkship Order

We got our clerkship order for next year yesterday. Our school assigns clerkship with a computerized lottery system. First everyone ranks 90 different scheduling possibilities from 1 to 90 then a computer works some magic and assigns everyone their own schedule. Generally, if there is something that you think you might want to pursue, you want it in the middle. There is some other general wisdom, like having Internal Medicine first prepares you for the rest of the year, but having it last is really great for Step 2. My schedule is near perfect. 

The only thing I would change is to have Neurology between Surgery and Medicine. Those are two pretty intense rotations, and at 8 weeks each, having them back to back can be rough. I'm SUPER happy I have my electives last. Either I will pick really easy ones sonOncan study for Step 2 or I'll pick something in OBGYN so I can get more letters. Peds is first which is excellent- have absolutely no interest in Peds and I'm not a huge kid person so will be glad to get that out of the way. OBGYN is situated dead center which is awesome. Next up is rotation location lottery.