Whew! I'm out of my hole now!

I am now 2/3 of the way through my didactic studies of medical school! I finished the horrible, horrible finals week on Friday and now I get to enjoy 2 weeks off! The rest of the quarter went relatively well. I survived a group of Monday/Friday/Monday tests including the terrible trio of Path, Micro, and Pharm! It will only get worse next quarter, though, as nearly the whole quarter is Monday/Friday/Monday exams.

For Halloween, Midwestern put on a really cool "Safe Halloween" for the kids. All the departments had things set up for the trick-or-treaters to visit. This was Braylei's first time trick-or-treating. It was a different concept for her, and she was a little scared at first, but once she realized that she would be getting candy by saying "trick-or-treat," she seemed to be much happier. Of course, she wanted to be "Dr. Braylei" as she was dressed up in little scrubs. Tayscen was also dressed up in little scrubs, but he of course was a little more chill in the stroller.

Finals week went pretty well for the most part. Because I needed to pull later hours, Meghan brought Braylei and Tayscen to school to have lunch together every day. It was a lot of fun to see them during the day. Braylei loves coming to my school. I think she feels like such a big kid! Ever since Halloween, when she saw a girl dressed up as the little mermaid, as soon as she gets to my school, she'll say "I want to see mermaid!" It's hilarious! On the Saturday before finals began, we went to Chuck E. Cheese's for dinner. We had Meghan's niece, Aliya, with us too. Braylei had a real good time being able to play some of the games and ride the little rides! She is really getting to be a grown up little girl.

The previous week held my Osteopathic Medicine written and practical final, which being my favorite class, went really well. We also had our Clinical Correlates final, which was nice to get out of the way to free up more time for study during finals. That test was tough, but I ended up doing well. Ironically, I had the most time to study for my Pharmacology final, which was on Monday, but that test did not go well at all. I totally tanked it. I don't know why. It was weird. I had been through the material quite a bit, and felt pretty decent about it. But about a hour and a half before the test, something happened to me and it seemed like I lost everything. I wasn't able to go through the drugs in my head like I had been, and it felt like I knew nothing! It was crazy! I tried to regain it, but it was definitely a struggle. The class average was only a 71% on it too, so in addition to my brain spasm, it was a ridiculously difficult exam. Then we had two finals on Tuesday: Clinical Medicine and Topics in Medicine. The clinical medicine final was tough to me, but again I did relatively well, but the Topics final was by far the most ludicrous test I had ever taken! With these tests, they are written by physicians rather than PhD’s, so sometimes the questions don't make sense or there are multiple answers that are correct, or none that are correct. It can be a real crapshoot sometimes. For a relatively minor class, a lot of people struggled on that final. I surprised myself and did better than I thought. But then we had to turn around and take the Microbiology final 20 hours later. Now I had been through the material already but with virtually 2 weeks of finals, it was like a week ago, and new material was presented in the meantime. So we have to assimilate all this information so fast! Again, for the short amount of time we had to prepare, I was pleased with my results. Luckily, we didn't have a final Thursday since we took our clinical correlates final the previous Friday, giving us more time to study for my arch nemesis, Pathology. Path is actually a really good class, and the information is so vital to being a physician, but so much info is crammed into the course, and the professors don't have time to go over all the testable material in class. I took a big hit on the first test, which wasn't too horrible due to the fact that for one, I had no idea what to expect, and also that it was Braylei's birthday, and my Saturday studying was greatly truncated. I don't what the scrud happened on the 2nd test, but I ate it on that one, too! That was another beastly test, with a really low class average. Then I scored a nice A on the third test, which brought tremendous relief to me in securing that I would have to get like a 40% on the final not to pass the class! So things were up in the air about this final. But I ended up getting a 98%! That was the highest grade I've ever received on a major exam in medical school. I had gotten high grades like that in human behavior and clinical medicine last year, but this has been my hardest class and I nailed it! I was very pleased with myself. I've said this before, but sometimes it's hard not to compare myself with my other classmates who don't have a family with kids and a spouse, who doesn't study on Sundays, and has life responsibilities. All those things draw time from studying, and I do the best I can with the time I have. But I am not going to sacrifice not seeing my family and spending time with my kids for a higher GPA or class rank. It just isn't worth it. So it's nice to see that like during finals week, when I did put in that extra time, I can do really well too.

Meghan is my hero. She took up even more of the superfluous slack I usually leave her over the last few weeks. Since I stayed late during finals week, she not only got the kids dinner, but bathed them got them both ready for bed, fed Tayscen, put Braylei down and red her stories and sang songs all by herself. Granted, she usually does most of that, but most of the time I was home for dinner, would give the kids baths, and would have one of the kids while she had the other. But she does this all day, every day. It's really disappointing to me that society places such a negative connotation on the stay-at-home mom. I know it's hard for Meghan because she worked so hard for her education and is insanely intelligent. I always tell people that she would do much better in medical school than I would! I don't know, do people think homemakers just stays at home and watch TV while the kids run around? Meghan is constantly working with Braylei and Tayscen on developmental skills. It's because of Meghan that Braylei has a flippin enormous vocabulary and that she speaks in full sentances as a two year old when normally at 2 kids are just beginning to put two words together and have a 20 word vocabulary. Braylei also loves to color and gets to do that everyday. She works with Tayscen and gets down on the floor to do exercises with him and continuously interacts with him, which does wonders for a child's development. Plus, they go to the library every week for story time, and Braylei picks out new books and learning videos to check out, and they have a rotating playgroup with a couple other kids in her church nursery class. Seriously, they have such busy schedules and they are immersed in stimulating activities all day long. I am so grateful for Meghan's sacrifice to stay at home with the kids.

But she does get me for the next 2 weeks. Honestly, though, it's more as if she has 3 kids to deal with now rather than another parent to help out. She always tells me that she's so much more efficient when I'm at school! On Friday afternoon after my test, we went to go see the Bee Movie. Braylei had been wanting to see that for a long time. It was a really good little movie, too! Then on Saturday we went to the Wildlife World Zoo that's only about 15-20 minutes from our house. I remember going there in middle school. It was so much fun! It was nice because it was much less crowded than the Phoenix Zoo, the exhibits were more accessible for Braylei to see the animals, and there was less space in between the exhibits and every in between the big exhibits were smaller ones with different birds or monkeys. We had a really good time there. I'll get pictures up soon.

And now for these 2 weeks, we have lot to get done around the house and various tasks to accomplish. I'm doing half days of studying as I need to begin preparing for my dreaded board exams coming up at the end of May/early June. But I'll be home by 1pm every day so I can spend more time with Megs and the kids and get stuff done around the house. It should definitely be a lot less stressful, for sure!