I Don't Know

There's roughly one more day until test week begins. I feel terrible. It will be over soon, I know, but I feel kind of scared at the moment. There's a lot of stuff I've gone over and zero guarantee that I'll remember. My laptop isn't exactly cooperative either, it's kind of overheating and really slow at loading/opening files. I get so frustrated I kind of want to smash it on the ground.

I still haven't gotten to that point yet where I'm like "I don't care if I pass or fail". Like, of course I'll care if I pass or fail. I could not care for about the span of a day, and then when the results are about to be released my stress levels will take a hike. I get so nervous, even though the tests are meant to be "easy". It's not that easy.

I really don't think I have natural talent or any incline for the subject of medicine. It's like... interesting, sometimes, but everything takes so much effort for me to learn and remember. Back in high school there were so many subjects I could pick up with ease, and they would just all automatically make sense and manage to stay in my head. With med it's kind of like... if I stare at something for long enough I'll have a vague recollection of it, but I won't be able to conjure the information at a useful time (like during an exam).

Well, stress isn't going to do much for me, and at this point I don't think my revision means much any more. Hopefully the tests don't thwart my expectations, otherwise I'm going to have some very disappointing scores.

Wish me luck. x

Heart. Romance. Jks.

Whenever I think about heartache or heartbreak it's always really romantic; like there's this backdrop with roses and handsome men and a proposal by candlelight. Fancy, fantasy, dreamy stuff. But now I look at the word heartache I think of angina pectoris which involves your heart slowly dying due to being deprived of blood. I can't stop thinking about revision but I haven't revised very much- and even after I've looked at something I tend to forget it. Overall there is nothing wrong with my comprehension- I remember everything that was explained, but ask me to recall and I'll show you just how much I've forgotten.

Studying the anatomy of the heart, I've realized what a grotesque thing it actually is. If you did any biology in high school you'll remember that the heart is essentially a blood pump- but it's like a continuous pipe twisted and wound around itself to form a massive...blomp (that's not even a word) and there really is nothing more to it. Sure you can look into how it was formed, what allows it to pump, how it can beat faster or slower- but really, it's just a fucking pump that does 2 things. Contract----Relax.... Contract----Relax... How do you keep yourself going when you stare at a gif of this for 10min trying to correlate it with an ECG?

So what I'm saying is: the heart is kind of grotesque and I feel like I have to vomit right now. That probably has nothing to do with revision. I feel like I ate too many raspberry bullets today. To be fair it was the only thing making me happy after 2 hours of staring at notes about "plaque formation".

Hey hey, wanna hear another one of my rants about why alcohol is bad for you? No? Too fucking bad. Anyway, alcohol was like the only thing under the cause for "dilated cardiomyopathy". So like one of the chambers of your heart becomes larger- so now there's more blood in it, but the walls are actually weaker so they don't pump any blood out. Then you just have blood stuck in your heart and not enough blood everywhere else, and you'll have heart failure sooner or later. Doesn't that sound wonderful.

In conclusion: all romantic notions I had of the heart have been destroyed- I am now a new person seeing the world in a new perspective. This complete paradigm shift has caused me to become a better person and I'm on my way to ending world poverty.

Jks.

I Love Korean Food

My revision has been largely non-productive; I look at the course content and I feel as if I've learnt everything I need to, then I try taking the practice exam and fall flat on my face. I don't know why tests have become so difficult all of a sudden- I was never worried or stressed about exams before. Sometimes I feel like I don't experience anxiety at all- but some part inside of me is screaming that there is so much I do not know and I really have a long way to go. 

Anyway being in Sydney has been a real treat for my tast buds- I basically refuse to eat "normal" food that I could otherwise easily get my hands on. On the day I got here I ate at a Korean restaurant for dinner, and subsequently fell in love with kimchi. Maybe it's because I'd never had Korean food before, but even the side dishes taste good. There's just this... flavour in Korean food which I can't really describe. I think it's soybean sauce? It's as staple in Korean food as MSG is in Chinese food. Day two I essentially just slept a lot and woke late, then we had takeaway delivered, which was great. The food was like, meat softened with starch and flavoured with your usual MSG + salt combo, which tasted delicious regardless. You'd be surprised by how few unhealthy meals I can usually get my hands on.

Then last night I had Korean again and tried bulgogi. I have no idea what that word means and it reminds me of a genre of Japanese porn, but we won't go there. As far as i could tell bulgogi was mostly deliciously succulent beef and from that point on I just wanted to eat Korean food all day every day. If I ever become rich enough to eat out every single night, I'm going to love my life. 

Though in reality if I get that rich, I'll probably become one of those sleep-deprived work-a-holics who ask their colleagues to buy them meals in styrofoam boxes and finish eating in 5min. I guess at that point I would no longer care what I was eating, as long as it was food.

Pushing aside thoughts of good food, tomorrow is going to be another day, and hopefully I will be more motivated and actually study or something. It's quite disappointing that the work and effort I put into things doesn't match my ambitious drive, and I just keep lowering my standards every single time.

STUVAC ver III

So this is like, the 3rd STUVAC I've ever had and this could potentially be the best I've ever had. I'm only saying this because I get to spend this one in Sydney- away from my parents but not quite in the shit-hole I signed up for when I got into med school. Like, if the city I primarily resided in got some Asian grocery stores and entertainment centres, I wouldn't complain, but since it has nothing to offer other than the beach (and it's winter now so beach is a pretty bad idea) I've bailed out.

I'm currently crashing with my room mate's family; and they have excellent internet. Naturally the first thing I've done is patch up LoL (I gotta de-stress before revision, ya know) and I'm going to test out, once and for all, whether it's because if my laptop is overheating or whether it's because I just had really shitty internet before. It'll probably be because my laptop is overheating, and I'm gonna need to get it fixed after the exams... (what a gigantic pain).

While LoL is patching I"m semi-revising, and I realise I've forgotten everything we've done since lecture 1, week 1. Reading over it again, it's not that hard to understand, and some of the information is coming back to me, but overall it's still like, the most boring shit ever. I kind of just want to sit back and enjoy everything as it is, but I think if I don't start revising soon I'm gonna fail the exams...

Well well, there goes. Study yea yea yea