Things I'm addicted to (Procrastination edition)

To help prove that I am a better and more dedicated procrastinator than Mallory. I have assembled a list of the multitude of things that occupy my every day and are mostly a complete waste of time.

1. TV shows- I spend multiple hours a day watching tv shows. Usually I do this on the internet so I can watch during lunch or dinner or other periods of time when I would not otherwise be doing anything useful. However, it must be said that due to the number of tv shows that I watch, I definitely spend time when I should be being productive catching up on tv. Let's see, every week I watch Samantha Who, Jon and Kate plus 8, How I Met Your Mother, Gossip Girl, House, Bones, Private Practice, Pushing Daisies, Top Chef, Grey's Anatomy, 30 Rock, and The Office. The advantage of watching these shows on the internet is the lack of commercials so the shows are 20 minutes or 40 minutes instead of 30min and 1hr. But still, lots of time wasted.

2. Jezebel.com- Jezebel is a website which is an interesting mix of celebrity news, politics, science, history, and random weird stuff . It is a feminist website, so it is written by women for women. They write tons of articles and post videos every day so it can take a fair amount of time to look at everything and read all the articles. There are also often interesting discussions in the comments so then it takes time to look at those too. Basically it is just a place where all the news of the day be it serious or silly is assembled, critiqued, analyzed, and probably made fun of. I love it and it is a complete waste of my time.

3. Cute Things- Cuteoverload.com, Winston the cat (seen here dressed as ET for halloween), and Capucine. Capucine is the cutest little french girl ever. There are many videos of her on the internet and I have watched all of them.

This is Capucine's letter to Santa as dictated to her mother:

“Père Noël,
I would like a nice gift, and I would like to see you.
Because I have been very good throughout the year. I have listened well, I have cleaned up my room by myself and I had fun at school, and I have played with my friends.
Also, I am going to move, I will have a nice house and a mezzanine.
I eat everything, but sometimes, I don’t.
Then I would like to see you for Christmas and Halloween and talk to you. I would like to sing you a song-poem. When is winter coming ?
Also I would like to talk to you, but if you leave and go far away, I would like to see you in your house.
If I hug you, your beard will not sting, it will only tickle.
And I would like to go into your sleigh. How will I do that ? Do I have to climb up the trees ?
Kisses,
Capucine.”


4. The Rachel Maddow Show- To quote Jon Stewart, "Who is this complex, articulate, even-tempered lady?" She is clearly not your typical host of a political show on a news network. I watch her show every day. Mostly because she has made every episode available by podcast so it automatically downloads to my computer. She is funny, smart, and a self-professed "policy geek." I especially enjoy her segment: "Lame Duck Watch: Quackitude" which keeps an eye on our extremely lame president as he continues to try to do sneaky things while no one is watching. At least watching this show keeps me up to date on the news right? Right???


5. Brotherhood 2.0- I blame Mallory for this one. She introduced me to John and Hank Green, two brothers who made a video blog a day for a year to communicate with eachother. John Green is an author of YA novels which are extremely good! I just finished his book Paper Towns. But obviously the bad thing here is that there are over 300 videos on youtube that I must now watch because the Greens are extremely nerdy and funny. They do happy dances, put things on their heads, make up songs and get punished for not following the rules of their video blog.

This is one of the best punishments that John Green had to do involved a blenderized happy meal and leg waxing. You can find the video here:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIA5x4tuuO8


6. Reading- This is one thing that I refuse to feel bad about even though I spend an hour or more a day doing it. I have never understood people who say they don't have time to read non-school books. I've read about 20 books since school started in September and it was time well-spent.

Weeeeee books!

I believe I've made my point.

Look! An update!

Well hello again. I'm not so good at the whole writing blogs thing when I get busy. As you all know I was home for Thanksgiving last week after a tough period involving Psychology, Neurology, Ear Nose Throat, and the usual Pharmacology and Pathology. I did well on my finals considering they were hard. Sometimes I look at the class average to measure my performance but often that makes me depressed and annoyed that my classmates are too smart. I got As and Bs on my tests which feels good and I was above the average , exactly at the average and also below the average on the various tests. Mostly it was just nice to do nothing for a week at home and recover a little.

So now I am in the midst of period 3 involving the exciting bones, joints and connective tissue (yes that is a class), skin, and pharmacology and pathology. This period is 2 weeks long followed by 1 week of finals. So I am already halfway done with the period and really should be studying for finals right now. Unfortunately I find bones joints connective tissue and skin veerrrry boring. But I suppose I must learn. At least I'll be done and on my way home for christmas break shortly.

Though this period should be relatively easy, they have decided to throw a bunch of other stuff at us also. So I am feeling pretty overwhelmed. For one, I started the Internal Medicine rotation of Physician and Patient this past Wednesday. It was my first time in a real hospital with real sick people. They put 2 of us with one patient for the morning where we interview and then examine them. The exam part is a little awkward because they are in a hospital bed and we aren't used to that. Also they don't seem to like being put through an entire exam when it doesn't seem to have any relevance to their condition and takes a long time. Anyway, then we spend a lot of time writing a note on the history and physical that we completed. Then we meet in small groups with a doctor preceptor and do long or short oral presentations on the patient. This is to prepare us for what we will be doing the next 2 years in the hospitals presenting patients to residents and attendings. It is a little scary since it seems they like the presentations to be formal and structured in a particular way and they don't want us to look at our notes. As if we should be able to recite the 10 or more drugs the patient is on including dosage and route off the top of our heads. Perhaps we will be able to do that more when we actually know what the drugs are. I will be on the internal med rotation for the next 3 weeks so I will have more of a chance to get comfortable with the whole thing before next year when I will be thrown into the hospital with little guidance.

Another exciting thing I get to do this next Tuesday is learn how to do a male genital and rectal exam. yippee! Okay I'm not so much looking forward to this but I guess it is something I will have to learn. I get to wait to learn the female one in January at least.

Oh I almost forgot. We also had a field trip this past week where we went to a local college that teaches chiropractics, massage therapy, and other alternative medicines. They are trying to open our minds I think. Mostly it is kind of funny because all the med students listen to them talk about energy and qi and how the person can feel skull bones moving and use that to diagnose problems with their arms crossed and a skeptical look on their face. I think the alternative medicine people speak a different language than us. If they would only speak in terms of physiology and scientific studies we would all understand. One thing they thoroughly convinced me of is the benefits of massage therapy. They gave us all foot massages for 20 minutes and it was wondrous. I certainly wasn't about to let the chiropractors do a neck manipulation on me since we learned that that can cause carotid dissection. Not cool!

Anyway, it will be a busy couple weeks then home for christmas so I'm sure I won't update till January at least. See you all soon!