Most of the unergraduate students at my school are now finishing up their final exams and moving on to their summer activities. Having worked and then done graduate school, I am used to year long schooling. (Our medical school has class until mid-June and we start up again at the beginning of August.) But it is still hard to concentrate with the weather (finally) getting nicer and the sun shining. To make it worse, all the year long classes are coming to an end. So we have exams without the knowledge that we will be free to enjoy the patios soon.

All of the things that sit at the top of my to-do list are things that I really don't have any motivation to do. I have found myself reading physiology just to procrastinate stuff I find even more distasteful. So I have started setting things up so that I am forced into deadlines. Like scheduling meetings I need to complete things for or setting up equipment to make myself do experiments in the lab. This has just led to another problem. After even a short time doing only things that I really have to do, I am starting to get resentful and even more unmotivated. In an attempt to prop up my waning enthusiasm for medical school I have made another push to schedule some shadowing. I always feel more hopeful about my new career in medicine after spending a few hours actually talking to patients. While a good idea in theory, scheduling all these extra things is just going to lead to a huge pressure on what little time I have left to finish all those other things I need to do.

So should I buckle down and put real effort into the things I need to do at the expense of my good mood? Or should I do the things I really like to do at the expense of my academics?

When I put it that way it really isn't even a question. I am going to go and call a couple more doctors right now.