it is finished

I am officially done with my first two classes: Gross Anatomy and Histology

My scores were 648 and 643 respectively. I'm not sure what they mean, but I think they're ok. I do know they're not percentages, but I've been told that percentages don't matter anymore. All that matters is how you do in relation to everybody else. so if you get a 90 and everybody else gets a 95 you lose...or something. Anyway, I don't know what anyone else got so I can't tell if I did well. So what I'm left with is a pair of relatively meaningless scores.

So in protest I'm going back to the good old days of just worrying about how I did. That is 93% and 95% respectively. See that looks so much better to me. It actually carries meaning. Even given that the testing system is rather arbitrary and given my ability to guess better than basically every other person in medical school, it still carries more meaning than those other numbers.

Anyway. The two new classes are Biochemistry and Physiology. To be honest...I don't have a clue what's going on in eithe one. Actually that's a lie. Physiology is interesting, and I can keep up with the professor at least half of the time on a good day. Biochemistry is a whole different beast. She's from India so she says things like methial for methyl or and jen for gene and you can forget about words like adenine and guayanine. Listening to lecture is like a guessing game.

Suffice to say that my stellar(as far as I can judge) record thus far is about to make a swirling exit

Christmas List

As readers of my blog may know, I'm not very good with Christmas lists.

I am sorry

On the other hand...

I am very gracious no matter what you give me...

And I will be thankful

Happy Thanksgiving

What a wonderful day thanksgiving is. We had snow today. It was fun to walk through the snow. We're not used to that.
I'm thankful for lots of things, but I'm not going to list them all here.

One of my favorite parts of thanksgiving dinner is the cranberries. Something about cranberries mixed with turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes is spectacular.

I was a little disappointed today though. I'm used to Thanksgiving being an all day affair. Everybody spending time with each other in the morning then helping with dinner and eating together. So it was a little strange to just be invited to a Thanksgiving dinner. The whole day I didn't know what to do. I just kind of sat around waiting until it was time to go to dinner.

And I missed my family. My favorite thanksgiving I think, was when we went to the ranch. That was fun. My least favorite thanksgiving was when I was in Egypt and I didn't even realize it was thanksgiving.

So we'll have an easy quiz so everyone can be thankful for quiz points

for one and a half points...where was the first thanksgiving celebration on this continent?

For another point which president proclaimed the first official day of thanksgiving?

and for half a point, which president made it a permanent official holiday?

Pop Quiz

So we're going to start a new quiz feature. I will pose a question and then put the answer under comments. If you can answer the question without looking it up, then you get to add a comment giving your point total for that question.

So over the weekend 3000 people died in and around Dhaka.

one point if you know where Dhaka, another one if you know what killed the people and 3 if you know what language they speak.

On sports

We went to the UM/OSU football game yesterday. It was to say the least, an interesting experience.

I have to admit, I don't really enjoy sporting events for the most part, or at least I'm beginning to think that I don't. Crowds aren't really my thing. But aside from that, being a spectator really isn't my thing.

I love playing sports. Pretty much any sport. Granted, I'm not very good at any of them, but I enjoy letting my competitive nature free for a while from time to time. But watching sports is the worst. It's like playing, in that if you're not careful you'll become invested in the outcome, but you don't have any control over the outcome. In the case of the game I went to ysterday, I could only sit and watch as Ohio State beat Michigan. Luckily, I'm not as invested in Michigan football as a lot of other people or it would have ruined my whole day.

Over the years I've been to a few professional baseball games, and a few college football games, and even a college basketball game. And they've all been fun, to a point. My best experiences were when I was a child sat in awe at the outsized nature of big time sports. As an adult the chief pleasure in going to a game has been derived from the company. Perhaps I've become inured to the grandiose after 26 years in the US.

Inevitably, at some point during the game I begin to ask myself...what's the point. Why am I here? What is so compelling that 110,000 people would gather in one place? A bunch of young men throwing a ball around? Is that really so gripping, so important that it draws more people than church, or than the symphony, or even than a rock concert?

Besides that I always feel a little a little guilty. For one thing there is an association between big time sports and alcohol. Walking through the rows of tailgaters at 10 in the morning the alcohol flowed freely. Even on the high-school campus every car had a table set up with rows of bottles.
Besides that, there's the money issue. It would be hard to justify the money that goes toward sports in this country if it went towards buying food for homeless people. But as it is it goes to television stations, agents, owners and guys with big guns.

So anyway,

Happy Birthday

this is a fun picture









and this is so I don't get disowned

On Tests

I just had a test today. It was a final exam. Tests make me feel so inadequate.

First the teacher presents material. I learn it. Then the teacher tests me on that material. Nothing on the test is new. Everything is something i was expected to learn. So every question I don't know represents something I failed to do. And realistically, how often do you get a 100% on a test?

Every question I get wrong is an expectation from the instructor that I didn't fulfill. So tests just make me feel like I'm not good enough. That's why I don't like tests

I haven't posted in a month

Apparently I haven't been inspired

but that's ok...maybe things are looking up