Relativity

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
-Albert Einstein

When you somehow manage to study glycolysis, PDH Complex, TCA Cycle, Beta-Oxidation, and Glycogenolysis all in one week - for just one class - then the amount of work feels like a month of undergrad. But throw an ever increasing histology study budget gap (well, I'm working on paying that down) and then the never-ending anatomy on top of it, and well, I can appreciate what relativity means a little better. The time has gone fast but I feel like I've been here for a long time even though I have felt there is never enough time. It's an odd feeling of going forward on a jet at hypersonic speed and the gravity pushes you back at 5g... you're making up a lot of ground but you feel slammed at the same time...

That's just a long way of saying working/studying 100 hours/week starts to wear on you. The key thing becomes time management of balancing pacing your studying, breaks, sleep and proper eating. Exercise has been helpful - I think the time sacrificed to it makes you feel better and at the same time improve concentration when you are studying.

At this level you become really conscious of your efficiency. Sitting down for 5 hours to study you want to make sure you set out reasonable goals and get them accomplished. It starts to get real obvious what reasonable study goals are for an evening or weekend are after a few times of over-reaching. Then once you find this average, the times when you don't get that much done you have to analyze why and see what is dragging you down.

For instance, I went full out last weekend and didn't take the usual Friday evening of only doing 2-3 hours of studying instead of the usual 5-6. I was able to plug through the weekend but once Monday night rolled around I really couldn't get much done. Nevermind Monday morning I couldn't wake up and so lost maybe 6 hours of work total because I didn't give myself a 3 hour break when I needed it. I think some of my classmates need to learn this... though others apply the breaks too well...

This is probably not very interesting.

I learned that hemorrhoids can be a sign of liver cirrhosis, and so possibly a sign of alcohol abuse... is that neat? I also was taught about the transverse colon - with a real one - and the hindgut, midgut boundaries - 2/3 through the transverse colon - while the professor picked up the colon to show me the spot. He got poo poo on his hands when he did that! The smell wasn't as bad as the look of it... am I getting warmer?

Future posts on healthcare coming soon.... found some interesting reading to share...