Week 4 -- Survived (but just barely)

Week 4 has definitely been the hardest yet witha combination of being sick, feeling a little down over the fact that Saint Peter's started this week and I'm not going back, and OUR FIRST MID-BLOCK EXAM ON MONDAY.

Sunday was my White Coat Ceremony which was really great. Thanks so much Mom and Dad and Aunt Diane and Unka for coming up! Here's my roommates and I in front of our house before the ceremony. At the ceremony, all 135 of us got "coated" and took the Osteopathic Oath.








It was pretty exciting!





Monday I woke up, feeling fine, and went to class. Unfortunately, I had to leave class because I got the stomach flu!! I don't know if it was the coffee that the Christian Club put out that morning or just a 24-hour flu thing, but it was not such a good day for me :(

Tuesday, thankfully, I felt better and was able to go to class as well as to my USMLE study group (review for the board exams I have to take in TWO YEARS). Wednesday (and Thursday) we didn't have to go to class til 10, which was a nice reprive. I also went to a lunch lecture on malpractice insurance. Apparently Northern CA is one of the cheapest places to get malpractice insurance because CA has a law called MICRA that says the cap that you can sue a doctor for "pain and suffering" is $250,000, where in some states there is no limit, so people sue doctors for millions of dollars. They told us that the average cost to a family practice doctor for malpractice insurance here is $6,000-10,000/year as compared to New Jersey (his example, not mine!) where you can be paying $10,000-$40,000/year for malpractice insurance. I also went to a lecture for my "Healthcare Policy" elective by one of the Govenator's Senior Advisors. It was after this that I decided that I need to marry a guy who majored in business and political science, so that he can run my practice and deal with insurance companies and the government for me so I don't have to....
Also on Wednesday was our Club Day. I went with the intention of signing up for one or maybe two clubs. I ended up signing up for about ten, between the free food and free stuff they were giving out, and nice people (read: cute boys asked me to join).
Since then it's just been class and lots of studying for our first mid-block fundamentals exam on Monday: Embryology, Biochemistry, some biology of a cell/histology, and some homeostatsis. But mostly biochem.

On another note, I thought I would share this (one of my favorite) CS Lewis quotes that has been especially true in my life the last few months: "God whispers in our pleasure, and shouts in our pain."

Oh, one last thing. Unka and Mumsy, I downloaded a CD by Chris Rice called Peace Like A River: The Hymns Project and I love it. It's just hymns (as the title implies) and has some of my favorites (How Great Thou Art, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, Rock of Ages, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, etc).
One of my very favorites (and the reason I downloaded the CD) is Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, primarily because of this verse:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be
Let Thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, O take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above