Triangles

 You guys! For the first time in the history of this blog I went a whole month without posting. Whoops! It's not like I've learned to be quiet for everyone's sake or anything. Here is a cobbled-together version of the blog posts I started and never finished over the past few weeks.

[something something tirade about economic policies, 9-9-9, the number of words in the tax code, and postcards]

"...and that's it [...] You are released on an unsuspecting world."

Stephen King wrote this in Christine (creepy, gory, recommended) in reference to high school and I suspect it applies quite well to the end of med school too. Or to the beginning. Or, um, I was going somewhere with this. I just think the quote is foreshadow-y in a variety of contexts. I feel hyperaware of the next four years (which doesn't make sense, but just go with it). I like planning, and thinking I have control over things!

Last week was triangles (hard to demonstrate with your fingers). Urogenital triangle + anal triangle. The trigone is distinct from the detrusor (we must, after all, let trigones be trigones). Grid cells make triangle-based grids (3 neuroscience conferences in 1 day --> happy Takini).

As expected, I am super good at solving Meredith's life problems.
Blair is falling apart. Chuck is falling together. Nate continues to be irrelevant.

[tirade about Israel-Palestine, US hegemony, and how no one really knows what "hegemony" means]

Mrs. Bennet: You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.
Mr. Bennet: You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.
- Pride and Prejudice

happy interviews tomorrow! I have an exam but will probably be hallway-loitering before 8 am. They will give you snickerdoodles. Don't offer them to the lawyer. He doesn't eat sweets in the morning.

Real convo

Father: How many people in your class use drugs?

Me: Um, in my med school class?

Father: Yes.

Me: Do you mean like illegal drugs, or...?

Father: There's no such thing as legal drugs.

Me: Um.

Father: I mean, I'm talking about bath salts.

Me: What.

Apparently he was talking about this article. I guess that makes more sense.

Knees

I don't like knees. They just don't fit the aesthetics of the rest of the body. Plus, the patella is known as a floating bone. It literally can't get any worse than that. Literally!

So, learning the knee physical exam tomorrow. One of the maneuvers we are supposed to do is described thusly: "The suprapatellar pouch should be milked to determine whether an effusion is present."*

Problems:
1. Pouch?
2. MILKED?!

Finally, we learn the exams on each other. And I'm ticklish.

This has been the morning edition of Tarini Complains About Body Parts.

*paper can be found here

Poetry Sunday

Read this poem aloud. It's fun! It starts off fairly easy but then makes you think that "ever" definitely rhymes with "fever".

(and no, I haven't been studying at all. Chalk it up to recovering from the first exam.)

"The Chaos" by G. Nolst Trenite (1870-1946)

Dearest creature in creation, Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation.

Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough —
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Haven't checked in with KK in awhile.

The good news is that I've discovered a legitimate reason for flipping the bird at someone. It's just to check that C7 is working!

Hey kids.

Med school is a blast. I'm learning a ton in anatomy and getting better at the dissections with every lab (I think). Most of the professors are general surgeons or orthopedic surgeons, and they spend an equal amount of time being on-topic helpful and off-topic helpful (general life inspirationish things). One of them bakes for us!

First exam in a week or so, in the biochem/genetics class. I'm glad we have it instead of just the giant block of midterms. I haven't really been studying for anything except anatomy, though, so figuring out how to work in time for everything else is a work in progress. May also be in danger of "over-resourcing" myself as one of the profs says, since I've bought every anatomy book anyone has recommended..

just a quick aside on this, because I'm very tired of obsessing over it. My parents assure me that I'm the only one really thinking about my age at all and to stop worrying about it and what other people think, and I'm inclined to believe them. But in lecture I'm surrounded by people whispering and trying to figure out who "the super young person" is. I'm included in these conversations, so it doesn't seem like I'm under suspicion per se, but what's bothersome is the very predictable turn these convos take: I feel bad for those people. Wow, their parents must have been really pushy and awful. I bet they have no social skills. Let's look for someone who sits way in the front and stays after to ask a ton of questions.

There's also this party (I know this is not a big deal, but if i can't be angsty on the internet...) for all the first-years that I want to go to, because bugger it, I've made friends and I want to hang out with them outside of the classroom. But they're checking IDs at the door. This is supposed to be to prevent undergrads from sneaking in but I don't see a way out of this without telling all the hosts about my Womb Exit Situation, which would be already making it a bigger deal than necessary. Bah. Any advice (or well-intentioned yelling at me) welcome. Amelia suggested I pose as someone's mom. This idea is still under consideration.

Finally. I want to start legitimately exercising (dissection makes you realize there's such a thing as "skinny fat") and running seems to be the best place to start. Any tips for super beginner beginners? I'm talking basics, like whether I should eat breakfast before or after. Please keep in mind that the fastest mile time of my life was 13 minutes, and that was a fluke.

Ending on a happy note! I really enjoy being so close to campus and have been adjusting fine to being by myself. (possibly related: my mother fills my fridge every week.) All of my classes are really interesting, with the possible exception about the let's-talk-about-our-feelings one, which is about to get better because we start learning the physical exam in a few days! And my professors are funny and great. And my classmates are a bit on the whiny side on average (pot calling the kettle brown) but more than balance that out with being ambitious, friendly, and really smart.

Okay. Anything specific I was supposed to cover? less personal life, more politix? Need me to read any essays? Want to help me use my coffee coupons? just flash the batman signal and I'll be there.

Since classes start tomorrow and I'm already behind on anatomy, now is the perfect time to start reading two new (for me) comic-type internet things: We are become pals (Joey Comeau fix) and octopus pie (people named Meredith fix).

I don't have internet at the apartment yet, but that will hopefully get sorted out soon, so I can go back to bumming around in one place all day as nature intended. Oh by the way, med school rocks. I was worried that I was setting my expectations too high for the new people I would meet but they are fabulous, quite simply. I didn't even want to roll my eyes at anyone til the third day! There is such a huge variety in people's backgrounds, both in terms of area of study/interest and whether they have worked in healthcare before, and I think that's going to shape our many small-group activities in a really neat way.

A lot more to talk about (anatomy lab! healthcare policy! Ayn Rand!) but it's back to the web-less apartment for now!
exclamation points!