Well, yesterday was our final exam. It was one of those exams where everyone was expecting to get murdered and it turned out to be much more of a breeze than anyone was expecting. Turns out the practice problems we were sent were designed for national-level chemistry competitions, not gen chem tests. So we all worked ourselves up into a frenzy over nothing.

It still hasn’t quite sunk in yet that in just under seven weeks, we’ve completely two full semesters’ worth of college general chemistry plus the associated labs.

Shudder. Labs.

After a binge cleaning of my apartment I got a chance last night to shadow the emergency room attending for a couple of hours. One of the biggest attractions of this program is the holistic view of the health care field it tries to provide, and part of that process is exposing us postbacs to the health care setting through shadowing. I was an EMT in college, so while I saw some pretty gross/bad/interesting stuff, I never got to see what happened after they were stabilized and dropped off. Last night, I got to see a little of that – a paracentesis, draining fluid to check for infection; a lot of ultrasounding, which I still can’t really decipher, a poor guy whose infection went septic,  and a woman with a strange-looking abscess. I wish I could write more in detail, but the patients’ privacy has to be protected even with the pseudo-anonymity I’ve tried to maintain here.

Anyway, it was a great experience and I can’t wait to shadow again. Maybe I’ll satisfy that annoying psychology-loving part of me with a psychiatry shadow….

Five random thoughts from yesterday:

• I think the Ravens, by jettisoning Derrick Mason and Todd Heap and choosing Chris Carr over Josh Wilson, have just lost themselves two wins off their 11-or-so probable wins.
• Nervousness does funny things to people. Before the exam yesterday, I saw the whole gamut of regressive human behavior, from high anxiety to apathy. When I get nervous I tend to withdraw and go mute; the girl sitting next to me (whose nickname is Big Tweezy, for reasons I won’t go into now) was repeating over and over again, “I’msonervous! I’msonervous! I’msonervous!” Another guy was literally running around the lobby back and forth to the water fountain, as if the professor would not let him take the test unless he was properly hydrated. One kid looked straight up green; I’m pretty sure he had a rough morning.
• Politics sucks, and I can’t stop paying attention to it. I’m glued to our governing incompetency like an alcoholic goes back to the bottle: I know it’s not healthy, but I can’t stop myself. Amateur psychologists out there: why?
• Spotify is amazingly cool. If you need an invite, just ask.
• Firing Butch Davis…. I predicted a lot of information would come out this weekend, and it’s the weekend. So we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, you can read my story on the events of last week here.