I'm Going To Atlanta, Y'all!

   I recently applied to be able to attend this special MSFC Activist Leaders Institute conference.  It's held on a weekend in May, in Atlanta, and if picked to attend, all expenses are paid.  If you know me well, you know how much I love MSFC, and how involved I've been with our school's chapter.  This next year, my hopes are to become more involved on a broader, national level - and I think this conference is the first step in achieving that goal.  Not to mention, I always love learning more about reproductive rights issues, and there is always more to know about ways to advocate for women's health issues.

   Anyway, I was ecstatic to find out yesterday that I got picked!  I am so excited for this opportunity, and I absolutely can't wait!  It's the weekend after I take my Step 2 CK, so I'll be free and ready to mingle with other passionate and intelligent women's health leaders.  Eeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

   Now enjoy some photos of genital baked goods that appeared at a "genital bake-off" that BF and I held a few months ago...

Uterus cupcake

Vagina cupcake

Uterus ganache made by my friend, E (complete with IUD in place)

When Wannabe-Ob/Gyn Meets Wannabe-Surgeon

   Sounds like the cheesy plot line of a romance novel, but it's my life.  I wanted to practice my surgical knot tying skills, so I bought some colored string to make it fun.  Last night, BF and I had arts-and-crafts time, where we practiced our one-handed and two-handed knot tying, but we decided to get fancy and make each other anklets.  We decided on anklets as opposed to bracelets so we don't have to take them off.  Feel free to barf now!  :P

My Surgery Rotation Was Like Menopause

   We had our orientation for OB/Gyn today, and I'm already super excited!  I just love learning about all these things, so it makes it easier to study.  A few friends and I decided that our surgery rotation was just like menopause.  It caused us to have insomnia, irritability, and the pimping gave us sweating and hotflashes.

    Last night, I had some really weird nightmares.  BF thinks it's my delayed processing of being done with my surgery rotation.  First I dreamed that I was in a car accident, and that 30% of my body got burned.  In the dream, I had circumferential burns on my left leg, so I was all scared because I knew I needed an escharotomy STAT (nerd alert!).  Then that dream ended, and my second dream was a lot more disturbing.  I dreamed that I was in high school again, and that someone was trying to push me into a big boiling vat of chemicals to burn me alive (yeah, I don't know what's up with the burn theme...) and I was freaking out because I knew how bad chemical burns were.  Somehow, I escaped, but then the villain shot up the whole school and I had to hide.  Eventually, I survived, and my dream ended with people evacuating the school, several of them in stretchers from being shot.  It was pretty freaky.

Nerding Out While Getting Ready

So I'm not a huge cereal person (I'm more of an egg-whites-for-breakfast kind of gal) but when I do eat cereal, I eat this super healthy one from Trader Joes. It's called "High Fiber Cereal", so no thrills there! It looks a lot like catfood...

Anyway, I've noticed that when you get to the bottom of the bowl, the last couple of pieces look like chromosomes. And they kinda float around in the milk, so it totally looks like mitosis. Just sayin!

I love lolcats

Especially when they are involved with science...

Biochem Lab, it was fun while it lasted, but... oh wait, no it wasn't!

     Today was my last day of Biochem Lab! Thank the heavens!!!! I have been counting down the weeks until this day and it feels so good for it to finally be here.  The class actually wasn't all that bad, I just hate lab classes in general.  I liked my lab partner a lot.  She was really nice and laid back, unlike other freaks in that class.  The one thing that I guess is pretty cool about lab classes is you get to know your classmates a little better, and our class dynamic was pretty funny.
       So our TA was this tiny Vietnamese girl with braces, who was so easy to relate to because she did not take the labs too seriously like most neurotic, control-freak TAs I've had.  Also, we had a guy who liked to do magic tricks for us before class.  And normally, I think that type of stuff is cheesy, but he was actually pretty good, so it was entertaining.  Besides, who does magic tricks in biochem lab?!  The whole idea just makes me laugh.  Then there was this one girl, you know the one.  She was top of her class in high school and expects no less at UCLA, so she must prove to everyone that she is the smartest.  She thinks that she is soooo much better than everyone, and if someone ever doesn't understand anything she scoffs, "how could you not know that?!"  Needless to say, I never talked to her.
    I can't stand people like her.  I mean, can't we all just get along?  There is absolutely no need to put yourself on a pedestal above your classmates.  If other people don't understand something, why don't you share the wealth and explain it to them?  I have never really understood "gunners"*.  Why do you have to be the best of the class?  I feel like as classmates, its a lot more satisfying when you all work together and everyone succeeds instead of just one person.  (Not cheating of course, just helping eachother to succeed by being collaborative and bouncing ideas off of eachother, as opposed to "every man for himself")

*gunner = douche who feels that they are better than everyone else in the class; must outcompete everyone for grades; sets the curve at an impossible score; will not help out any fellow classmates; RUDE