Med School Tap Out, Wedding Tap In; Med School Wedding Planning Rule #2

Well I'm day 3 of medschool back after break.  I have many to-dos but at least got many of them checked off of my list over break.

Initially I planned on using break to review micro (which I am terrible at) but by then end of the semester I was so burnt out that I wasn't even stressed about my inability to motivate myself to study for finals.  Not the greatest place to be.  With that in mind, I decided I needed a serious break.  I didn't look at any school related email, didn't touch my computer, and most importantly, didn't crack a single book.  Would there have been a benefit to me doing some studying over break?  Sure, but it probably would have come with the greater cost of being totally and utterly burnt out by the end of second semester, i.e.: Step I prep time so I opted to take a much needed vacation from school.

I did not take a vacation from wedding things.  My fiancé came down after Christmas and we jumped head first into wedding planning.  My goal was to, by the end of break, be in a place with all of my vendors (and my mother) where everyone knew what I wanted and we could essentially run on autopilot with little to no input from me.  I'm happy to say, we got there.  Aside from finalizing the guest list and sending out save the dates, everything is pretty much under control.  This would be my second major tip to anyone who is busy and planning a wedding:

Med School Wedding Planning Rule #2: Pick vendors that you trust to do a good job, then let them do what you are paying them to do.

I am very fortunate to have wonderful vendors (and a wonderful mom).  The intention was to use this trip to make sure they understand my vision.  I did this mainly with Pinterest (discussion for a later post).  My planner showed me some great pictures that improved on my initial ideas (some pulled from my Pinterest, some from her archives), the florist seemed to "get" what I was going for, the tasting with the caterer was a home run, the wedding venue was as nice as I remembered, and the rehearsal dinner venue got a full approval from the fiancé.  Mission accomplished.  I think the main indicator that my major work on the planning front is done is that I haven't looked at a single wedding idea themed image on the internet since our return.  

Welcome to Crazy Town, It's been a while

Well I started this thinking I'd actually have time to keep it up!!  Wrong.  Actually, if I wrote as much as I thought about writing, I'd probably have a pretty significant set of entries.

MS1 is over, last summer is over, MS2 is almost half over, and we are getting married in June!  The last tidbit was actually what made me pick up the computer again and have another go at this.

When we got engaged, I turned to the blogosphere to see if I could find some experiences of people who had gone before me in this whole conquer MS2, take the boards, plan a wedding thing.  Turns out there wasn't much there.  After watching 2 friends at med school go through the wedding planning thing during MS1, I was a little terrified.  It seemed to take up a lot of their time and mental energy and frankly, at least at our school, you have even less of those precious commodities in second year than in first.

What I have learned is this: weddings are only as stressful as you make them.  Now, I'm not going to sit here and lie and say that our wedding planning has been perfectly zen, but I think, overall, it has been pretty low stress because I've approached wedding planning like a triage.  Take care of worst, most potentially disastrous things first, take care of less pressing things later, and if it's dead, move on.  I think the last part is the most crucial.  I will elaborate on these points over the next few days but will start with number 3:

If it's dead, move on- My Venue Saga

In wedding planning, whether you are a medical student or not, there will be things that are completely out of your control, and no matter how hard you wish, there is no way you can change the outcome.  Stressing about these things is wasted energy, so recognize that it's a bummer then let it go.

The best example would be our venue hunt.  At first, we had this grand idea to have a huge wedding up at my fiancé's family's property in upstate New York.  We were going to have a giant tent, I was going to walk across the bridge that is next to the waterfall into a chapel of trees then we would have a lovely dinner and would dance the night away under a giant tent.  Here's what killed that one: Problem #1: Wedding in New York, even if it is upstate are super expensive.  Problem #2: Portapotties.  Now, I love camping and roughing it as much as the next girl, but there was no way in hell I was going to have honey buckets at my wedding.  I understand that there are super lavish portable bathrooms but that brings us back to item number 1.  There were many other smaller issues: lodging, transportation, land improvements…. but really, the straw that broke the camel's back was the honey bucket situation. Solution?  Kill the whole idea, and have a wedding at a vineyard in Virginia (where my family is from).  Why a vineyard?  My family are southern WASPs so they love wine, my fiancé's family come from an Irish Catholic lineage so they like wine ergo, the wedding should be at a vineyard.  Not ideal, fiancé and I have only been to Virginia together twice, but the price is right, and more importantly, it's where my mom is so when I tap out of planning, she will be in her comfort zone when she has to pick up the pieces.

So then we started looking for a venue.  This was in my first week of MS2, so late July/early August, planning a wedding for June 14 the following year.  No bigs, just another day in You-Are-A-Crazy-Person Town.  Then came Problem number 3: b*%ches plan weddings hella early!  I called my dream venue to ask about the date and here is how that went:

Me (M): Hi, I was hoping to book your venue for my wedding on June 14?

Wedding Consultant (WC): yes, you are so lucky.  This is our last date in June we have available.

M: Great!  Let me just put that in my calendar: Super Nice Virginia Vineyard, June 14, 2014.

WC: Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you meant 2015.  2014 has been booked for the past 10 months (she said with a nasty hit of "oh child, bless your poor ignorant little heart")

M: Oh, ok.  Thank's for your help. (I said with a hint of "Seriously!  WTF!  Who plans their f*%king wedding 2 years in advance?!?)

So that happened.  It was dead, move on.  The above scenario more or less happened with all but one vineyard that I contacted.  It turned out I really did get the last day in June they had available.  At least it was 2014.  Problem was, I wasn't totally in love with the space and felt sad for a while (by a while, I mean about a day, but this was before an exam so time perception gets messed up). This was when I had to sit myself down and examine the options:

Option 1: Cancel the "meh" venue and book the wedding for June 2016 (because let's face it, I'm not going to have time for a wedding in third year, or the beginning of 4th year.)

Option 2: Get over it, get excited about getting married, and learn to love the venue.

That's it.  Those were the options.  It was June 14 or wait 2 more years (we are getting married right after I take the boards, right before I start 3rd year).  If I wasn't in medical school (but I am) or my parents were loaded (they aren't) or if we were willing to do a small destination wedding (we weren't) then there would be plenty of other options but given the situation, the "meh" venue was the best I could do under the circumstances.  Ruminating and being disappointed and trying to find another viable option were a wast of time and energy.  Yes, if I wasn't in med school, I probably could have gone down to Virginia, driving around to a bunch of different places, and maybe, have found something else.  This would have taken time I didn't have and prolonged the find a venue stress for longer than necessary only to maybe reveal another option.  Absolutely not worth it.  Meh venue is fine by me.  The beautiful dream venue is dead.  Move on.  That's exactly what we did.

Today, about 3 months after booking the venue, I have managed to find other things I love- my dress, my caterer, my wedding planner, my rehearsal dinner space, oh yeah, and my fiancé!  You know what? It'll be great.  The venue is the shell for the wedding, and it's still a beautiful venue and the price is right.   Honestly, in retrospect, there probably isn't a huge significant difference between the venue we picked and my dream venue.  The space is different, but the only person comparing the spaces is me, and the place we chose, has many wonderful features.  So there you have it.

The key is this: Be happy about the things that are good, let go of the things that are disappointing and can't be changed, and find the positives in everything.

 

Long Weekends and Friday Night

Last week was our white coat ceremony.  It was lovely and my parents came and we hung out with my boyfriends parents so the whole weekend was one big family fest.  It was awesome seeing my parents and I was super sad when they left.  What didn't happen was studying.  Now, I did probably get in about 4 hours or so of studying over the entire weekend, which any medical student will tell you is peanuts.  The sad truth is I've spent most of this week catching up (as have most of my classmates).  Super unfun times for us all.  However, the silver lining is this weekend is a holiday weekend which means we have an extra day.  Now most people's minds go like this: "yay!  I have a day off!!"  for me the thought process is more like this, "Ha ha ha (continue maniacal laugh) they can't make me learn any thing if we don't have to be at school!!!!."  So, while it's not really a day off, it is a day where they can't shove hours and hours of more material down our throats.  Which makes me envision those geese that get force fed so they develop delicious fatty livers.  That's how I feel most of the time.  Like a tortured, force fed goose.  At least my school makes a special effort to make sure we have natural light in our study spaces.

I would like to close with a conversation between my friend (F) and I (Me) at the end of the day Friday.

M: What are you up to this weekend

F: Flying to california to see my girlfriend.  

M: What are you doing in cali?

F: Studying mostly but we might actually get in a whole 22 minutes of tv too.  You know, on the internet so there are no commercials.  What are you doing this weekend?

M: Studying mostly, but also moving.  My boyfriend wanted me to come into the city tonight for drinks but I think it's a bit much with trying to catch up from last weekend and also moving

F: Yeah, going all the way to the city for drinks sounds pretty awful.

M: Totally, way too much time and effort.  That's what I told my boyfriend, but he's not in med school so it's difficult explaining these things some times.

F: Yeah, he'll learn to just not even ask.  Asking just makes you sad.

M: Totally.

End

The MCAT really was useful!!

I just wanted to write a quick little post about how the MCAT really does come back in med school.

When you study for the MCAT, the studying is more about dissecting questions and coming up with the correct answer based on basic information than it it is about stuffing facts into your brain.  You have to be aware of words like ALWAYS, NEVER, NOT, ect.  For pre-meds suffering through the MCAT, I promise all your work and toil will not go down the toilet when you get to med school.  Med school exams are not comprised of simple questions.  You have to be able to break down the terminology, decide what is really important in the question and what isn't.  (ie. you see the name of some random disease you have never heard of in the question, but you need to replace it with "some pathology" in your head to make the question make sense).  This isn't because the professors are trying to trick you (once you are in, they are all on your side, they want you to graduate and become a good doctor), it's because, for the rest of your life, you will need to be thinking through complex, multi-step questions. 

As many of us are preparing for this first exam, I keep hearing people say "oh I feel like this is MCAT time all over again."  Most of us probably lived out 3-5 months of really intense study time.  You will need to sustain that when you are in med school, so not only is the MCAT good practice for dissecting questions, it's good training for developing effective study skills.  Remember, med school is about organizing a lot of material in your brain in a short amount of time and then being able to turn it around and apply it to real-world situations.  Sound familiar?

Med School, The analogy

Someone in my class posted this video on our facebook page as an analogy to how we feel trying to learn all this content.  Couldn't help but share:

MS1, day 1

Today was the official first day of classes at med school.  I think we were all expecting an easy day with course introductions, lab protocol instructions and the like.  The beginning of the day was pretty relaxed.  We started out spending 30 minutes hearing about histology, then went upstairs to meet our "first patients."  I was surprised as I was quite nervous in the moments before they removed the shroud even though I have seen 3 dissected cadavers and countless surgeries.  After lunch we had 2 hours of anatomy lecture.  The first lecture was pretty low key.... just basic anatomical terms.  The second lecture was where the pace picked up.  We learned a lot of material in one short hour.  It was the most fascinating, engaging lecture I have ever attended.  Our professor is awesome.  Even so, everyone was in a bit of a daze at the end, and my brain was more than fried.  My plans for an easy, low key weekend are shot, and I will definitely be spending the weekend in library.

Here we go.....

Shock and Awe

Two weeks ago, I found out I got my dream gap-year job: I was going to be a full time research assistant for a prominent surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery.  For a pre-med with dreams of ortho, this is the most ideal job ever.  I would get to watch surgeries, I would do research, and I would get to network with some of the best orthopedic surgeons in the country.

A week and 6 days ago, I found out I was accepted to medical school.  After about 24 hours of deliberating, freaking out, and generally trying to convince myself that this was, in fact, reality, I accepted my position at New York Medical College, and informed my no-longer-future employers of my regrets.  

It is amazing how one e-mail can change the entire trajectory of an entire year.  I was in the middle of re-applying to medical school, and luckily, had only spent money on my primary application.  Mike and I had accepted the reality of continuing to live in a studio apartment for another year, and I was going to work full-time and finish my master's degree in exercise physiology.  We were going to take leisurely weekend trips upstate, and spend the year completing little projects that would ultimately lead us to entry into this next phase of our lives.  Now, we have signed a paper stating that we will be out of our Upper West Side apartment by August, we are looking for a home in the suburbs, and I will be a medical student in less than a week.  It feels sort of like walking across a nice bridge, knowing that you will get to the icy river after a leisurely hike, and when you get there, you are aware of the steps you will take to ease yourself into the frigid waters for a nice refreshing swim. Then a gust of wind pushes you off the bridge and you land in the water, reeling from the impact, and your partner has nothing to do but jump in after you.

All of this said, I am thrilled with the turn of events.