It has been awhile.

Not that I haven't had plenty of things to rant about but it is just that time of year. Fatigue and impatience is running high and I am certainly not immune. We are down to less than three weeks until we are released to electives. There is, of course, all the year end projects and deadlines along with the regular course and preparing for the 'summer'. To illustrate some of the frustration: Last week, after having Monday off for Victoria day, we had 8hrs of lecture on both Wednesday and Thursday and then, at an extra lecture scheduled for lunch time on Friday we got notice of a deadline that had past a week before. I can't think of a better way to stress out a bunch of tired med students than to tell them that they are already behind before they even started.

We received another reminder of the deadlines this morning. So, aside from my other work, I have added 'invent time machine' to my to do list.

It is only Tuesday but I am already sick of this week. Aside from my rapidly decreasing patience, I think I am actually sick; one of those slow irritating colds that make you tired and achey and last for ages. That or my med-student hypochondria has started to manifest in actual symptoms now.

Yesterday was a more eventful than average Monday. It was well summed up with my bike ride home. If you haven't been on the bike paths near downtown at rush hour, you might be surprised at the level of traffic that can be achieved with purely human-powered transport. The path is quite wide but with the walkers, joggers, bikers and roller bladers it turns into a exercise highway. There is even a yellow line down the middle for lanes. I was just west of downtown when I was coming up on a walker. I ran my bell and swerved to go around when I came across another walker coming right at me IN THE WRONG LANE. I swerved around her, just barely, but as I passed she shouted "Bitch" and tried to spit on me. I will assume that she was British, or perhaps from another island country where they drive on the left. But I was still a little upset with the whole encounter. This led me to wonder why it bothered me so much. Nothing really bad happened, there was no crash and I didn't even catch the loogie. So what if she was angry? She was totally in the wrong and there was nothing else I could have done. I guess it bothers me that you can be doing everything right and still get hated and spat on. This is probably a lesson that I should have learned by now. But, like I said, nothing really bad happened so I will just count my blessings and go on thinking that there is some meaning in following the rules and doing what you think is right.

We finished our first OSCE-style exams today. I wasn't even out of the room (sometimes even as the words were leaving my mouth) before I was mentally kicking myself in the rear for my own stupidity. Needless to say I wasn't very happy with my performance. I think I at least came off as a kind, caring, reasonable human being, if entirely clueless. I blame the endless training to perform well on multiple choice tests. If you give me the option of the right answer I can almost always pick it. I just can't pull it out of the nether reaches of my stress-addled brain when it is actually important.