Friday, September 29, 2006

A day with 3 hours of zzzz + a cup of caffeine .....

That was me yesterday and what a fun it was. It started with 5:30am studying for for anatomy and meeting my lab group at 7:30 to go over our cadaver for the ID quiz later in the afternoon. Then calsses went from 9am to noon. That was great because I was really hyper and people around were like what was I on? hehe. Then anatomy lab after lunch and it was exhausting. My school was having a CME day with Alumni reunion weekend so we had all these older docs who graduated from the 50s coming into our lab walking around. On top of that, we were dissecting the forearm. Boy was that painful. Every time our group look over to the clock it seemed like the clock never moved and half the time we couldn't even find the right muscles in the area. We were guessing the whole time and had to have a professor coming over every so often to confirm what we've found. Then I went back to my apt and slept, right through an activity that I was gonna go that evening. It was a non productive studying evening especially with a Biochem test on Monday morning. Ugh.

The day before my hyper day was when I went with a 2nd year to an elementary school and did school physicals for 5th graders. That was fun. The kids love to talk if you ask them questions but I was busying trying to remember how to use the diagnostic equipment on them without looking like an idiot half the time. :P That really reminded of the fun times of being a doc. And I actually felt like "Wow! Ihave done something real life instead of all the books sitting in my living room right now waiting to be cracked open and poured over." It was a great reality and perspective check for however short the 2 hours were.

Anyways, now I'm gonna start my day off with Biochem studying and gonna go crazy over it till I know it like the back of my hand. Toodles.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Bedtime Ramblings ...

A little something before I go to bed ....

Pastor Bob Shaffer at Grace Community Bible Church (that I went to today) said something that just stuck in my mind. He said, "The danger to being a Christian is not allowing to fail. You can't fail out of Kingdom of God. Once it's given, it's given." What he said was very true and it just reminded me of us being man. We can't be perfected by our own works and that it has to be through God. By us claiming that we are not failures in God's standards, we are sinning already because our nature is sinful. I don't exactly know what I'm saying right now, but all I can say is that we need to own up to it that we are failures and sinners and that it is because Christ's resurrection that we might even have the hope of eternity and the personal relationship with God.

I don't know why this stuck out. Maybe it's because now I'm truly wondering why med school. It's so hard on life and on my body as well. Staying up more hours than I ever care for, constantly wondering when I can squeeze in more studying time. I feel like my life has been going on fastforward with studying and attending class ever since med shool started. Today at church, I thought about whether this is what God has planned for me and is calling me to do. I have nothing to complain but this is just my tired thinking. I know that God has opened this door for me and will help me through it. Now if my heart can be at the same place, that would be awesome.

Anyways, I think I will settle with Grace Community Bible Church. I find this place to be most homecoming to me, feel like I've come home. But we'll see how well I can be plugged in since I've only been to the worship services. :)

This past week has been busy. But nonetheless, it's been going. I am elected to the secretary of OB/Gyn club by default because I was the only one running. So that'll be fun and interesting to see how it'll work out with me. I've been catching up to watch House, MD every week since the new season but it's on a tape since I work on Tuesday nites. I watch it with another girl, Courtney who I go to bible study and church with. She's still searching for a church and may end up at the same church. Oh, and I'm going to medical Spanish so maybe my horrible Spanish will be put into good use. haha.

I really need to keep going to the gym. It's so hard to go at the end of the day, especially after sitting in all those lectures and thinking of all those notes to study over. sigh. I am determined to go to the gym at least 3 times a week. That's my pledge.

Now is really my bedtime. Good nite.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Wanderings ....

Here I am working in the library as work study and my head is pounding after a week's worth of not getting enough sleep and stressing out with 2 tests, with the last one tomorrow. But all I can say is that God has been wonderful and great. What can I do without Him? I really don't know. Anatomy test was as hard as I expected but God was gracious enough to let just pass and gave me a whole new insight in how to study again. It's amazing in how forgiving He is and how He is our strength when it's the most unexpected and undeserved.

Bible study CMDA yesterday was really good and a great reminder of what He has done to save us and picked us out from the millions of people. He definitely answered our question of "Why me?" and that it is His mystery and He'll reveal it when it's appropriate. How precious is that, Him planning the rest of my life as long as I trust, believe and obey Him. The bible study leader gave a really short version of his testimony of his life in Kenya and it really hit me that we may say we are christian but our lives need to be changed in order to live our lives as His testament.

Anyways, this was just a simple reminder of our lives and walk with Christ, very simple and it's something that we all claimed to know. This is my input for the next couple of days. Now back to more studying for Histology .... yippee hiya.....

Saturday, September 16, 2006

A Break to a Silght Catch Up .... ::sigh::

OMG!!! I"m so tired. My brain is constantly fired by the end of the day and by Friday, I can't function without taking a nap after class. I'm definitely going crazy. So much material to cram into my brain before each test every week. It's really during this time how I've found that God is amazing especially in the amount information that He has allowed for my brain. And the most amazing part is the fact that what I'm learning so far is all created by God Himself and that there's still so much that man cannot understand. God has been gracious to me so far with my first exam and the studying of the second and third and fourth exams for the next week. There's no way that I could've done all these without His strength. Phil 4:13 has been on my mind as I think back the last two weeks of how crazy my school life has gotten.

As crazy as my school life is, I haven't been going to the gym as much which I am determined to change. But there are still time for me to ponder upon a few things. This past week have been club lunch meetings the major clubs have their first meeting and provide lunch. In the food, God has provided without me cooking at all for the last week. But the clubs invited guest speakers and some of what they say hit me as like wow, I can't believe that they said that. One thing that stood out the most is the definition of humanism. According to the speakers (docs), humanism is compassion for the people regardless whether there is a god or not, but philosophically, humanism is related to the spiritual compassion of mankind. In that sense, the docs were telling us to put aside our philosophical beliefs when we are in our healing mode of humanism. From this, I pondered that the two ultimately cannot be separated because it is hard to understand the true compassion and display true compassion if I haven't felt that true compassion coming from Christ as He died on the cross for our sins.

Another comment that strikes me was that the sprirtual writings of a dead physician were tossed out by his family when they were writing a memoir for him. To the family members, science and spirituality do not belong together and that the world is always one or the other. It hit me that how can that line of thinking be possibly true since there are still so much about science that cannot be explain methodically and theoretically. Those are the amazing things that God has done.

This has been a heavy week and in some way a constant battle in trying to finght against science as I'm learning it. I don't know if that make any sense, but it's a battlefield that I'll be taking on for the rest of my life as God leads me on.

Besides this, my school had a hospital day where a bunch of hospitals across the US that have allowed the students from my school to intern there or have residency programs that have people from my school. That day was sort of like tossing us MS 1 into a sea of unknown and being overwhelmed and lost. It was quite interesting to see what options I have come my 3rd and 4th years and perhaps residency. So far, all my options were on the East Coast. Besides being tossed in, we got quite a few goodies from them ie coffee mug (a med student necessitiy), small portable radio, lots of pens, chapsticks, bags and not in the least papers and candies. I came back to my apt with a ton of stuff and papers that are still spread out in my room because I haven't had time to put them away in an organized fashion. The hospital day doesn't really mean anything to me till next year but it was fun.

An interesting happened on that day was a second year, (i think he's Chinese too), just randomly tapped on my shoulders as I was talking to a hospital representative and asked me if I was Chinese. I just said yes and turned away from him and kept talking to the representative. After I finished talking to the rep, I noticed the same was talking to another Chinese guy from UCLA, telling him that I was Chinese too. But I felt really bad because I think I kinda snubbed him. oops. Hopefully, I'll see him around and be able to apologize. That was quite an interesting reaction and question because people here in this town don't really asked me anything like that. He just sorta shocked me with his question. oh well.

Alright, I think I've taken my slot of break from studying human anatomy. So tooddles until next time. :)

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Cadavers .... Meat.....EWW!!!

I am having fun here in med school so far and that has included the anatomy class with cadavers. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever look at beef and pork the same way and may haps chicken as well. The labs were exhaustingly long. It's about 3 hours each time and it's always at the end of the day. So far, we have done the back muscles and pulling the muscles back to get to the spine. And that has been gross enough with the meats. I haven't eaten any red meat since my first day of lab and I have some left in my freezer from when my family was here.
Besides the cadavers, classes had been going relatively well despite having this crazy prof and two quizzes. The crazy prof just lectures from his memory and likes to use a different textbook than required. It was really annoying. He teaches two subject under two main courses. This week has been relatively normal but it will start to the point where I will go crazy. We are starting school physicals where we actually get to help to do them with the second years in two weeks and we have our own patient practical by the end of the month. scary or what!
Today, I actually went to a church that I've found to be decent compared to the last two that I've went to. They are conservative (i think) but the wroship service is a combination of the big service at GCC and Crossrods. The pastor is like Rick Holland, very short and very contemporary. The set up of the service is like the big church. Besides this, they spoke on the Word not in the sense that I'm used to. But more topical based and used the Word as reference. It is not bad, but it's just something different. It was when I was sitting there that I realized how fortunate I was to be under GOC and GCC for the past four years at UCLA. Without them, I don't think I could've grown as much. I know that I'm not make comparsion but sometimes, I just couldn't help it. This will be an area I'll have to work on. Next week I'll try out one more and it's a baptist church then I'll probably make a final decision.
I miss all my buddies from Cal and Chinese food and my family. I didn't think I would miss them so much since I've been away from home since freshmen year in college. But this time is different. I feel like I've officially moved out of my parents' home and will be on my own from now on. sad... :( Nonetheless, I'm excited to see what the Lord has planned for me for the next year here in Missouri. But for now, gotta go gof more Biochem and study for all the other lectures and exams.... tons more work.

By the way, my previous post were here
This was before I've found this to be user - friendlier that xanga.