Tuesday, May 07, 2002

I'm getting my hair cut today! Oh and I got around to making an appointment for my annual thyroid evaluation among other lovely annual exams I am priveledge to as a member of the better sex. I nearly got a headache making my appointment to see the internal medicine doctor. First of all, I discovered that one of the people that blue cross/blue shield "recommends" (she's on their list of PPO providers) doesn't even work at the clinic at school (why would I drive uptown if I can stay downtown?). But here's the annoying thing. I call the number listed and I first have to get transferred to the internal medicine clinic. No biggie. Here's where it gets crazy...I say I need to make an appointment with one of two docs whichever had a sooner opening. They told me that one doc works uptown and that they need to transfer me to make my appointment. So I get transferred. Then I say that I need to make an appointment with the doctor I can see downtown and they transfer me! In fact, I think they transferred me back to the same people! So this chick was going to transfer me again! But by this time, I had no clue who I was talking to so I just told them I'd go into the clinic (a 3 minute walk away) and make my appointment in person. I should have done that in the first place because I get down there and it was so simple. The next test will be to see how they handle my insurance claim since the peacehealth organization clinic in Eugene people were complete morons. Here's the gist of that escapade: My insurance number is 16 digits long and they only have 15 spaces so they decided to just not enter the last digit and were confused as to why I was unidentified by my insurance company! I had to tell them about 3 times that unless they used the entire number, they would get no where. Hopefully since this city has blue cross/blue shield widely used, this won't occur again. Well, I better get ready for the big hair chopping event.
~me~ at 2:51 PM

Monday, May 06, 2002

So it's the start of another week and also the calm before the storm. Starting next friday, we have the fun world of exams. 4 exams in 13 days! It sounds absolutely horrendous but then I think about last semester when we had 4 exams in 5 days. But then you figure foundations wasn't a real exam so 3 exams in 5 days still sounds bad. What sucks this time is that 2 of those exams are comprehensive national shelf exams. Which means I need to go back and study stuff I supposedly learned in January. I hope my brain has enough space. Certain things may get pushed out...like anything I may have accidently learned while "studying" for neuroscience. Another little mini drama that has developed at school is forming groups for next year in pathology, clinical diagnosis, and some other class (same group for all 3 classes). Well, this year everything was assigned randomly (which was perfectly fine in my opinion) but they decided to let us choose our teammates for next year. This email was sent out friday afternoon and today I learned that many people have already formed their groups! My groups of girls and I decided that we wanted to branch out and work with new people. Satya and I are just not going to sign up for a group and let them assign us to one. Then we thought, what if our group gets randomly assigned to be together because we are the only ones who don't sign up for a group! My only fear is that I end up being in a group of gunners (those people who are only interested in honoring things and aren't shy about promoting this). But since the CGA (California Gunners Assn) seems to have formed their group, I won't have to worry about being the odd one out in that hellish group. I honestly think it's stupid to just be with the same people you hang out with all the time. This is when we should be meeting more people and learning how to get along with other people. I mean, really, you and your friends aren't going to end up in the same residency program. Oh well...wish me luck! For third year, I think we go back to random assignments based on what order we want to do our clinical clerkships. Oh the drama of med school...sometimes I feel like it's no different than high school the way we sometimes behave!
~me~ at 7:22 PM

Sunday, May 05, 2002

You know, this site is doing something weird. I went to check on it today and the layout was all messed up. So I went and changed it to the way it should be and then it just reverted. I think I'll just ignore it and hopefully it will fix itself. Yesterday I was so incredibly tired after helping out at the Louisiana GUMBO games. It's a track and field competition for kids who have physical disabilities. At first I thought it was some sort of substitute for the Special Olympics but then someone explained that someone 15 years ago or so started these games because these kids can't participate in the special olympics (i didn't realize that you need to have a mental deficit to be eligible for those games). So in a sense this is like the youth version for the Paraolympics. Anyway, I discovered that I can't have a job as a timer for races. I kept getting faster times for the kids. I swear I was going when I saw the smoke but apparently not since I was always under the other timers. The person I was back up for kept annoying me because she felt that I was always wrong, even when other people got the same times that I had(there were often 4 or 5 people timing the same person if only a few athletes were running). It seemed kind of odd the way they chose the winning times and even the way they measured things for the field events. Anyway, it was very very hot that day and so when I came home (after taking a nice cool shower), I had a nap and then I still felt a little tired. Christina made a dinner for a bunch of us and then we spent the night hanging out in her room talking and playing scrabble. Apparently Harvard students are very intense scrabble players since they memorize word lists and are into keeping score. I could care less and so even though I finished first, I still didn't win overall. Then again, since I kept getting the 1 point letters, I didn't really have very many high scoring words. Anyway, we dyed Amber's hair and they tried to get me to agree to dye my hair (didn't succeed). I'm going to cut my hair the shortest ever this week sometime. I'm a little scared that it's going to be so short that I end up with a frizz ball of hair but everyone seems convinced that won't happen. I guess I could always just gel up my hair if that does happen. So either I'll have a nice haircut for my brother's wedding and the family pics or it will look hideous. Alright, I'm going to work on getting caught up on biochem. Fortunately it's stuff I had over and over and over again at the U of O (molecular bio stuff). Then I have to work on physiology. And thankfully no more neuro!
~me~ at 1:58 PM