Hx - On The Ridiculous Hardcore Mentality, OR Finals, Falling

I am still alive. It is finals week. Yesterday was anatomy; I walked in with a solid grade and for sure walked out one grade lower. -sigh- We'd been warned that it would be brutal, but still - a letter grade? Well, that's what cushion is for. Today is (gasp!) a day off; tomorrow I have my OMM two-part final, then Biochem on Thursday and Histology on Friday.

I don't think I'm going to be that exhausted by the end of the week. I'll be tired - obviously - but not so completely exhausted that I will be nonfunctional. I know a lot of my classmates are going totally balls-to-the-wall, but I think that's just because they are immature type-A's who think that you're not "doing it right" if you don't go multiple days without sleep during finals in medical school. Part of me understands where they are coming from; there's this kind of mystique and drama about having to work! so! hard! that you literally can't ever sleep. It's hardcore and other type A's secretly (or openly) respect that. But you know what? There is a reason I studied a ton last week, and that was so I could get regular sleep this week. It's not cheating or slacking, it's planning and time management. And I am walking in to these tests with all passing grades so I have space for things to go wrong. I am realising that this is how medical school is actually supposed to be. You work every day so you don't have to cram; your stories aren't as cool drastic this way, but you get better grades and lose fewer years off your life from stress.

...This is going to sound totally hypocritical after what I just wrote. The way I appease that part of me that insists that sleeping during finals is cheating is by reminding myself that I am absolutely going to do medical missions once I'm a doctor, and go for a couple of months at a time and help out in refugee camps and give shots to tiny babies with kwashiorkor and whatnot. Those people wear themselves out and break their hearts AND pay for the privilege. If that isn't hardcore, I don't know what is.

And now to learn about testosterone - no, not the interesting stuff, that's next semester. Right now all I get to learn is how it's made and where it goes and blah blah blah. A future medical researcher I am not.

Note from the future: Premeds, learn this lesson now.  Spreading stuff out = win.  Cramming + all nighters = fail.  You've been through calc II; this should be easy math for you.