Fighting The Fatigue

Hello my followers! I know...I know..it has been awhile since I have written and as I have come out of my hibernation which is called medical school, I noticed that I am getting about 45-50 views on D1toDR every day....wow..I will try and blog more I promise!

A lot has happened since I last posted, some good and some bad, but for the most part...things have been going okay. We are in Week 7 out of 15 of first semester, and things have definitely picked up a bit. Okay..things have picked UP A LOT AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON. Whew..okay...now that's out of the way, we have been learning some pretty complex medical processes but I have to keep telling myself to take it one day at a time. For the people that know me, I LOVE study sheets with colour...and I mean lots of colour. I am finding currently that I am running out of hours in the day to create my study sheets as the information is way too dense. I pick and choose now as to what I condense into study sheets and what I decide to print and highlight from the slides. What am I trying to say is that my study habits change all the time. With every exam. With every lecture. And that's OKAY. Some students have now decided to go to class, because it is very easy to fall behind with mediasiting lectures.

Our next exam is July 7th (My mom's birthday wish should bring me some luck!) and that is our 3rd out of 5 total exams. So far we have have had two exams which my grades reflected how hard I worked. I studied a lot...and I mean...about 12-13 hours a day. Every break is timed and factored in carefully and even skype calls are limited to about 30 minutes. Time is of the essence and my friends and family are more than understanding that my nights never end at 9pm, more midnight or 1am so quick chats are the best chats :) We had our lab practical last week as well and that was definitely an experience. Knowing me, I am pretty good under pressure, but the sound of those bell ringer exams get me very nervous and knowing you have only 60 seconds to answer a question before the next bell sounds off is pretty nerve-wracking. Ross University has an AMAZING anatomy lab and probably the best faculty, instructors, and Teaching Assistants. We have a 25 cadaver lab, and that is only heard of throughout only a handful of med schools in the U.S. Ross does an amazing job at preparing us for the lab practical with having the anatomy lab open from 7am to 11pm every day, even weekends. There is ample time to study and it is actually quite creepy being there alone...with 25 bodies..on a Friday night...and its the 13th..ok kidding...I don't think it was the 13th. But still...it's definitely creepy.

But let me be honest with you tonight and say that I am actually really tired. Week 7 is where I can finally say that I had to fight through the fatigue these past couple days. I actually fell asleep sitting up for who knows how long with my headphones on listening to a lecture...that's pretty bad. I think it's pretty safe to say that making it to Week 7 and now feeling this way is pretty good, but I know that I need to get back to my regular schedule. It is 9:20pm right now and I physically and mentally couldn't study, so I thought: "I am going to write tonight." It honestly makes me feel better, and I feel that you guys can get a sense of how I feel in times like these. Medical school is a whole new level. You think you know long hours. You think you know what tired feels like. But when you are $20,000 in and you mentally can't read another sentence, anxiety kicks in because you KNOW you need to know this by the next day as it is only going to get harder. You have to know when to fight it or when to let it be. Tonight: I am letting it be. I am tired. Really tired. But will wake up tomorrow at 6am and get back to my workout routine and hopefully things will kick back into gear.

Thanks for your support and following my adventure, don't forget to follow me on instagram: @d1todr. Off to bed and will hopefully wake up refreshed!

Bye for now,

-E xo

Pics:

First patient interview attire!

Oh how young I look and I miss my hair!

That NCAA life.

From one beach to another with this guy :)

I love him.

In the T dot!

It's Okay to be Okay

Hey everyone!

It is a beautiful Thursday morning here at Ross, and let me tell you...I haven't been able to enjoy it as I have been inside all this week studying my buns off! This week marks one month since the May 2015 incoming class has been on this island of Dominica. I know everyone says "time flies", but wow...when you are wishing you had one more hour left in you to study and it is already midnight, to wake up at 6:30am to do it all over again..you think the days would go slow..but it surely has felt the opposite. I wanted to do a quick blog post this morning before my lectures are posted online, so I thought..."I think I have time to blog!".

For those of you that just read that and questioned: "Lectures posted online?!" Yes. That is correct. I am officially a "mediasiter." What that means is that here at Ross U, classes are not mandatory, they already have your money, so they really don't care how you use your time to get the information you need. What mediasite offers is a way to watch the lectures on your computer, with options like play, stop, rewind, fast-forward, and speed up at 1.4X, 1.6X, and 2X. The biggest thing with medical school is finding your study strategy...and finding it quickly. After the first week of classes, I knew that it was consuming way too much of my day to go to class from 8-12pm and then do my study sheets per class, which was taking me another 6 hours. So I thought..if I could watch the lectures on about 1.6X speed and do my study sheets simultaneously, I could leave a couple hours a night to study that material. So voila...I am a mediasiter as of Week 2. By no means am I perfect at keeping a schedule and there are days where I feel so overwhelmed with material I just want to curl up in my bed and pull the sheet over me, but I take each hour slowly and try to absorb everything like a sponge.

That is why I wanted to title this post as such, because there have been many times thus far where I haven't felt rockin'..and that's okay. I have learned that everyone has their unique story in being here, and I have to stop comparing myself to others. Some people learn differently, some people can read a whole powerpoint presentation and just get it, some people can work on their cadaver in the anatomy lab and just understand all the origins, insertions, and innervations (*shakes fist at them*), and some people don't need to write everything down, colour-code, and then have to re-write everything on a white board like me. I am here at 26 (almost 27!) because I have realized that I love people, functional movement, health, and medicine way too much to settle for anything less. I may not have known I wanted to be a physician when I was 6. I may not have wanted to be a physician until about 2 years ago, but you know what? That is okay. That doesn't mean I will work any less harder, not get up early to workout before my lectures, go to suture skills lab to practice my skills, or enjoy clinical skills as much as I did yesterday if I didn't want to be here. Life is exactly that. Finding your passion, and even through those tough moments of not feeling 100% or even 50% for that matter, you still see light at the end of the tunnel. My light at the end of my tunnel has me owning my own gym, being the lead Physiatrist and educating in functional movement for people with congenital, or devastating life-altering events. Helping them walk again or strengthen their movements is what would absolutely give me joy going into work everyday. Find your light, and just know that it is okay to be okay...and that not everyone's light will burn as bright as yours, or may be burning even brighter at times, but you have your goal..and that's all that matters.

Bye for now! Off to listen to my Mitosis lecture..oh how I wish it was just as in depth as high school.

-E xo

Pics!

Oh how I love these pictures, such a fun day!

Love him

Pretty happy with this guy

Our favourite lake in NZ!

The White Coat Ceremony

Just getting the coat and walking outside for pictures!

Oh how I love them all!