skooool

so today is wednesday! we are halfway through the first week - although i feel like i've already been here a whole semester! unlike undergrad, med school started for real on day one. we had a 2 minute "welcome to utmb" speech, and then we had an hour lecture and headed into anatomy! not to mention that studying started day one :(( -- oh undergrad, i miss you!

highlights of the week so far:
- CUTTING OUT A HEART AND HOLDING IT IN MY HANDS!!! - wow. one of the coolest things of my life. i don't even know how to describe it. especially when you realize that kept someone ALIVE for 73 years. at (an average) of 70 beats a minute. wow.
- holding a pair of lungs was also cool. super squishy! but compared to the heart..
- my awesome small group mentors - one is a pediatric ENT, and the other is a surgeon - they lead our group called "practice of medicine" and basically teach us doctoring skills and how to think like a doctor... and they are both really fun and eager to teach!
- fun classmates!

low points:
- being EXHAUSTED.
- not being used to studying. even in undergrad, i could get away with taking days off. NOT true anymoreeeeeee
- feeling overwhelmed! and feeling like some of my classmates already know everything.

anyway, i should probably stop procrastinating, turn off the kardashians, and get to work on learning all this cardiac anatomy! only 3.98 more years until i'm a doctor, ha.

last day

so today was my last day of freedom! until the afternoon of september 23rd at least! while i'm sure i'll have a spare moment here and there, it will definitely be high stress until then! (our anatomy midterm)

anyway, tomorrow is the first day of class - we have lecture at 8, lab from 9-11, small group from 11-12, lunch 12-1, and our practice of medicine group from 1-4! -- it is definitely going to be a longggg day!

tomorrow is also a big day because we meet the cadaver we will be spending the next 8 weeks with! keeping my fingers crossed for a good one! that sounds weird, but let's just say some are easier to dissect and identify things on than others...

so just for memory's sake, i spent my last day at home this morning, then drove back to galvy, shopped at HEB, baked cookies, watched the kardashians, and pretended to read over stuff for tomorrow...

hopefully you'll be hearing from me again soon! i'm STILL waiting to post apartment pics because my coffee table and end tables have yet to arrive. they are only TWO weeks late. and will end up being THREE weeks late if they arrive as expected (not holding my breath!)

ok - need to go to sleep. day one of being a medical student happens tomorrow. i still can't wrap my brain around that!

year one!

so my blog "a year reclaimed" is hopefully going to end up chronicling my first year of med school! i'm going to attempt to check in every so often, but i'm not making any promises! i hear life is about to get nutzo, and i've heard the "time management" lecture about 100 times now...

anyway, i drove down to galveston on friday and moved in the last of my things! i'm still waiting on my coffee table and end tables to be delivered this coming friday, but other than that, my apartment is starting to feel homey :) - planning on a few more decorations here and there, but i've definitely made progress from just having a lawn chair in the living room!!

please check out the lovely packing box end table i set-up to improvise in the meantime! will post more apartment pics once everything is in place!

saturday was our first day of orientation - nothing terribly exciting. however, i did get to meet lots of my classmates, and everyone i've met so far is really chill and easy to talk to! i'm excited to have ended up somewhere with a good sense of community instead of a super competitive place! school is hard either way, but i think it will make it a lot more bearable with fun classmates!

this morning was our white coat ceremony! up to this point, i didn't really feel like a medical student. but after being coated and introduced as the class of 2015, i'm starting to warm up to the idea of being a MS1!! weird to FINALLY be a medical student after saying i was pre-med for like a decade (or more!!)

big thanks to my dad and sister for coming in to town for the ceremony and helping to set-up my apartment! it was nice having family in town even if it was just for the afternoon!

anyway, we are continuing orientation this week through thursday. lots of exciting sessions about hippa, safety, and how-to sessions to come... luckily they've scheduled lots of fun things as well! class officially starts on monday the 29th - first up is gross anatomy!

the traveler

so i know i've been rather absent from the blogworld lately, but my summer vanished before my eyes -- last thing i remember, it was may, and i had weeks and weeks of nothing ahead of me. now it is august, with a week until the start of school, and i can't believe how fast the time went!

i just got back to houston from pennsylvania and am entirely too excited to sleep in my own bed! i feel like i have been such a nomad lately! while flying home today, i was thinking back to one of my first blog entries detailing my travel goals for the year, and i was surprised that i actually hit most of the spots on my dream list!

this gave me the idea of doing a little "year-off blog recap" -- so i decided part one would be my travels!

i originally set out to visit: dubai, the caribbean, waco, pennsylvania, and colorado...

1) dubai: remember that time (december 2010) that i coaxed myself onto a 14 hour flight to the middle east ALL ALONE?! still can't believe i did that, but it was AWESOME!

2) the caribbean: did NOT happen. not even close. unless you count my 6-week stint in galveston this summer. nope, didn't think so.

3) waco: YES! multiple trips happened - went back for my first homecoming as an alum, ran my first 5k at the bearathon, and other random weekend trips! i don't care what people say, waco will always have a soft spot in my heart :)

4) pennsylvania: SO MANY TIMES. i'm pretty sure i set a record for number of visits this year, which is fine by me! it's nice escaping to the country every once in awhile! i think i ended up visiting 5 times since graduation? including the most recent 24 hour roadtrip there. i will NEVER complain about flying EVER again!

5) colorado: went skiing for the first time (march 2010)! i was hilariously bad. especially considering that my sister went from the bunny hills to the black trails in 2 days. pretty sure she took ALL the athletic genes in the family...

6) turkey: was not anticipating a eurotrip (july 2011), but how could i say no?! it was exciting getting to travel with my sister for her first time out of the country! istanbul wasn't bad either ;)

hoping to recap some other year-off happenings soon! also want to post pics of the new apartment (furniture comes tomorrow!!!)... so stay-tuned!