Saturday, March 1

recharging. . .

back at home in NJ. my parents told me to come home. i'm so happy that i did. ate a ridiculously big meal last night. perhaps too big. it was too much of a contrast to the 2 liter of mountain dew and the box of triscuits, the only food i had for the past 2 days.

home: where i can have some big laughs, where our whole family laughs with that uncontrolled, squinty-eyed, let-it-all-go laugh. where i can relax with my brothers and just watch a bball game with some munchies. where i can get some time to read for fun.

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today, i woke up late, had a big lunch, and then went to the closter driving range, where i hit some balls with dave. got the jumbo bucket (dag, those are a lot of balls...). hit maybe 5 balls past 100 yards. it's really discouraging when you see the korean ah-juh-mas do so much better than you. rather infuriating, actually. took some silly pictures.

had a talk with my parents, in which they offered to set me up. haha. they're not pressuring, but i think they are worried about me. worried that i might be celibate or something. HAHAHAHAHA... in this regard, my parents don't know me at ALL. if only they knew...

they asked me how medicine was. i think they were shocked. they were speechless for a while. my dad looked sad and said, "you should have told us. we would have prayed more for you." it's true, maybe i should have. but i didn't want them to worry about something needlessly. they've got enough to worry about.

this was the first time i had to really just sit and think about what the past two months were like. and in reflection, it sucked. big time. i think it was much different from the typical medicine rotation. here are some of the low-lights:

1) big-wig in medicine who ripped me in conference several times
2) working like a scut monkey (was sent several times out to a different hospital while it was freezing/snowing while wearing scrubs, just to get CT scans read.)
3) torn apart (unfairly: i was presenting according to the format we had all been taught. he kept interrupting me and demanding information out of place) by my teaching attending who told me (in front of everyone): "we all know that your presentation was less than adequate"
4) meeting with my firm chief who told me that the teaching attending had CALLED her to tell her that my knowledge base was poor (after ONE meeting where HE had spent most of the time TALKING, he had somehow accessed all that)
5) spending 2-3 hours (precious hours that should have been devoted to write-ups or studying) every night preparing presentations to impress teaching attending, trying to reverse the negative first impression
6) not getting any sort of acknowledgement from attending in the quality of my presentations
7) attending ignoring me while he teaches. literally, ignores me, never makes eye-contact. never responds to anything i say. he just pauses, and then moves on.
8) firm chief expresses concern about what i know, what i got from the rotation. even after our heart-to-heart back when i explained what was going on, she still says this. how can she say this? how is she evaluating me? what is she basing this all on? i am so upset while hearing this that i couldn't respond to anything she said, was close to brimming, and walked out after an hour.

(sportscenter dude just said: "holy schnikes." HAHAHAHA... sorry, just had to record that...)

9) took the medicine shelf yesterday. i was doing fine, i felt like i knew what the questions were testing for (it's all about knowing "the trick," the little tidbit that they want to know), but simply ran out of time. 10-15 questions that were completely blank. not even time to put in all C's.


my dad and mom's response: "don't worry about it. it'll be ok." they were sympathetic.
my dad: "job went through much more suffering, all undeserved. think about what happened to him, a righteous man."
me: "but i'm not a righteous man. so maybe i deserved this. but it doesn't make it any easier to take while it's happening, dad."


all-in-all, much needed laughs and mind away from all the junk. home is where my family is.



yakob at 6:51 PM

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