A Whole New Bloooooooooggggg

Are you bored with my blog? I'm bored with my blog.

Quite honestly, my life is simply not interesting enough to be blogged about. At least not very often. It was quasi-interesting when I was simultaneously planning a wedding and applying to medical school, and it may recover "interesting" status one day when I finally become "Mommy, MD". But for now, all I do is study all day. And no one wants to listen to me bitch about studying all day. That's just a downer.

So, I've decided to take this whole blogging thing in a new direction. Inspired by a Blogger-extraordinaire friend of mine (*cough* Laura Cooke *cough* *cough*), I've decided to use this space as an outlet to express my opinions and my perspective on "issues" that interest me. This could cover a very broad range of topics - who knows where we'll end up - but quite frankly, I need it. I NEED to think about things beyond the scope of the day's medical lecture topics. I really love to write (as you may have noticed), and everyone needs a hobby (even medical students who "don't really have time" for such trivial personal indulgences), so I'm converting this blog into a more structured "hobby". I don't expect to develop a large and devoted following - I might even lose readers if I get boring enough (though really, what could be more boring that what I've been writing about? And YOU'RE still here. I'm talking to no one, aren't I. Faaabulous). But I think this will be a healthy outlet, and I hope that I stick with it.

That said, I've got some ideas and I hope to start composing some "structured rants" very soon. I hope to be stepping up the quality of my writing, and including research and links to support my views and promote active interest. I'll emphasize again that these posts will be heavily opinion-based, but being a scientist at heart (and by trade, I suppose) I usually don't assert strong opinions without having some sort of concrete basis for them, so hopefully I won't make a complete ass of myself.

And fear not - I won't completely shut down the "personal update" portion of my blogging. Those of you who actually enjoy listening to me bitch about studying all day will still get your fix, maybe once every week or two - I haven't quite decided on frequency. But rest assured, I got ya covered ;]

Ye Be Warned...

Major blog overhaul in progress. Possibly involving a title change. Just didn't want anyone to be confused when they couldn't find "My Better Half". Like lots of people follow me ;]

Eh.

I don't really like this new class (Neuroscience). Does anyone really feel like sitting around trying to identify all the little swirls and squiggles and shapes, anything that's shaded slightly differently from what's near it...? Not this girl, I'll tell you that much! Every bump and line on the surface of the brain has it's own name (though they're all connected to each other, of course). And I don't care what that name is. But, ya know, I have to care. I'm paying someone to force me to care.

Since I'm already feeling HIGHLY apathetic about the material, and I have a super-pregnant sister in law just waiting to pop, my "study sessions" have been rather abbreviated this week ;] Em is now past her due date (which was two days ago), but it seems like she's about two WEEKS past her due date, since the midwife told her two weeks ago that she was making progress and probably wouldn't make it to her due date (so naturally we've all been waiting and watching ever since). But she's done working, and Josh needs to save his leave for when the baby does come, so she'd be home by herself just waiting... and I just have a hard time standing for that. So we've been taking walks and running errands and chatting up a storm all week, just trying to pass the time and hope for some action. Which is SO much better than studying this stupid crap. She went for a foot massage earlier this evening, so here's hoping...

In other news... Ben and I have completely fallen off the healthy wagon, but I'm not too worried about it. We usually climb back up with little difficulty, after sufficient lazy time. Maybe after the baby comes. I mean, I don't want to be on the elliptical when Em calls, ya know? He's been approved to work a bunch of overtime for these next two weeks, which is pretty great! It sucks for us spending time together (he's always WIPED when he gets home, after getting up at 4:15 and working 12 hours!), but we can always use the money. ALWAYS. Oh, and did I mention that I'm running for President of my school's Emergency Medicine Interest Group (which I may refer to from here on out as EMIG)? Well, I am. I'm running against two guys, so I'm hoping to take the female vote (since these things are usually, at the end of the day, a popularity contest!). Voting is open til the 28th or something ridiculous like that, so I have to wait FOREVER to find out. Ugh.

I think that's really it. As usual, most of "my news" is really other people's news, because my life is super-boring. This is reason #452 why I should have babies. STAT. ;]

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Hello, friends :] Do you believe I had an entire week OFF and didn't blog? I was just so busy... you know... doing NOTHING. It almost felt sacrilegious to DO something during my week of rest, so I didn't ;] I watched A LOT of movies (being home by myself all day every day), had lunch with a few friends here and there, caught up with family... it was lovely. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and Spring Break is no exception. So here I am, back at it.

I've been making good on my commitment to attend class everyday, with a few exceptions here and there (today may or may not be included in the "exception" category... ;]). I'm fine with exceptions, because everyone needs to maintain their sanity, and everyone needs to sleep in on occasion. Of course, not everyone has that luxury, and quite frankly I would be morally remiss if I were to ignore that gift of freedom with which God has blessed me for this season of my life. It'll be gone before I know it, and to waste it would be just plain WRONG! I don't allow myself to slack for two days in a row however, because I know myself well enough to know that sleeping in is a very slippery slope. Maybe two days in one week on a rare occasion, but NEVER two days in a row. That's just bad news.

So, in short, I'm plugging along and doing well. Reminds me of Dory from Finding Nemo... "just keep swimming, just keep swimming..." That's what I do. One step at a time, one day at a time, never letting my mind run too far ahead of me, and living in the moment.

There's really nothing exciting to report around here, though. I guess since my life is so wrapped up in school, very little else comes to mind when I blog! Of course we're still anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new niece :] "Exciting" doesn't even begin to describe the arrival of a new BABY! I told Em the other day though, seeing her full-term belly sorta worries me... I try to extrapolate the size of that thing onto my body, and I just don't know where I'd ever house a full-term child. I know it's possible, but I fear that I'll have one of those torpedo bellies that sticks straight out and clears shelves when you turn too quickly in the grocery store. Ugh. I just really don't have much of a torso. Oh well, at least I have no shortage of hip width.

Speaking of hip width, my most recent weight loss endeavor is failing miserably. It's really depressing. I must be doing something horribly wrong that I don't even realize. I've been working out quite religiously for over three months, usually 4 times a week (and sometimes even more!). I really work hard at the gym, I do toning workouts at home, and I practically starve myself during the week. I do tend to cheat on the weekends, I will admit, and over the past few months there have been two or three weeks (not all together) where I didn't work out much due to sickness or tests or whatever. But holy crap. Ben has lost 15 pounds and at best I had lost 3 pounds (though some days my weight is only a pound lower than it was in January). And he eats Burger King about once a week! If I ate Burger King once a MONTH I'd probably gain 5 pounds! Ugh. I exaggerate, but it definitely feels like my weight is SUPER sensitive, and any small slip sets me back to square one. It doesn't help that I just feel SURROUNDED by skinny people at school. Jerks. ;]

Alright, I gotta head down to Owings Mills before my return trip becomes a traffic nightmare. I was recently diagnosed with some nearsightedness (thanks a lot, college and med school) and my glasses are in, so I need to go pick them up. I'll really only be using them during class (the screen gets blurry for me with all the switching back and forth between my bright computer screen and the big screen at the front), and maybe for driving at night or something. We'll see where they help out the most. But I shouldn't need them full-time. Anyway, I'm out!

Square One

I wish I knew how to convince myself that this is what I want with my life. I still feel SO incredibly conflicted about becoming a doctor. So often when I think about the future, I just can't see myself doing it. I feel like I'm giving up about half of my life's dreams to make way for this one, and I wouldn't even describe becoming a doctor as "my dream". I don't feel NEARLY that passionate about it. And it's not something I "always wanted to do", I didn't "always know" that's what I'd grow up to become. I just decided one day that that was what I was going to do. I always thought I wanted to be a biomedical researcher, but then I sorta got burned out on research so I decided that becoming a doctor was the obvious "other" medical path. You either go get a PhD or go get an MD. I've had my moments where I feel excited about my future as a doctor, but more often it just scares me senseless.

And it's not the debt that scares me, or the responsibility. It's the TIME. We have X number of years, days, minutes on this Earth. None of us knows what that X is, but what we do know is that X is all we have, and we only get it once. The idea of dedicating too much of that X to a job really upsets me. If you were to divide up my X at the end of my life, I'd want the biggest chunk of that pie chart to read "Family". I DO NOT want it to read "Work". That's just not me. But I feel like I've cornered myself into a career that will demand far more of me than I'm comfortable giving. WHY would I start down this path, knowing that I DON'T want to have one of those careers that requires more time and commitment than your average job? WHY?!?! And being a doctor isn't something you can just try out, decide it's not for you and then quit - if for no other reason than the tremendous debt hanging over your head that only a doctor's salary will pay off. There's a certain "point of no return" with this, and I know that it's fast approaching. I'm already tens of thousands of dollars in the hole, and I can't go much deeper before I will have fully committed myself (financially) to pulling down six figures for several decades to pay it off. And those years of hard work can't be postponed until after my kids are grown and I have all the time in the world to devote to work - they have to start as soon as I graduate, during the most formative years of my childrens' lives. I feel like the walls are very rapidly closing in around me, and it's essentially "now or never" if I want to get out of it.

Getting out now would still be a pretty serious financial challenge if that was what I decided to do, given the amount of student loan debt I already have. Not to mention, what would I decide to do with my life? We can't afford for me to stay home, so I'd have to either try to find a job now (with my BS in a scientific field full of PhD's... yeah, good luck!) or decide on a different educational path (requiring more student loans, of course). And honestly, I don't know anymore what would make me happy in terms of a career. I don't have the slightest clue. Physical Therapy? Physician's Assistant? Nursing? Who knows. Quite honestly, I feel like I don't even have the energy to start over. The whole prospect is so overwhelming - makes staying where I am sorta attractive!

Sometimes I think maybe taking a year off is the answer (because in medical school, taking a semester off isn't an option - it's all or nothing). Maybe I just need to take some serious time to think it through before I get any further into debt. Because like I said, the financial "point of no return" really is fast approaching, and I could put it off by taking some time off. But then I really wonder, would I EVER go back? I'd have to get a job in the meantime - would it just be too easy to stick with that and never look back? It's so scary to think about the possibility that I might look back on my life and wish I had stuck with it - that I may always wonder "what if..." and always feel like a failure for quitting. I've never just quit anything so huge - how would I feel about that decision 20 or 30 years down the road? Just as the "we only have so much time on this Earth" argument makes me wonder whether I really want this career, it also makes it painful to think about giving up such a HUGE opportunity to do something big with my "one shot at life". But then I think, at the end of the day, I know that my children will be the most important thing in my life - could I ever regret the decision to take a different path that would allow me to be a better mother, to spend more time with them, to coach their soccer teams, to bake cupcakes for their class parties...?

What I really need is a window into the future. I don't want to skip forward and GO to the future - I don't like to wish my life away like that - I just want to peer into it and see whether this is the right path or not. I pray about it ALL the time, but I just never feel sure. I just want to feel confident in my decision to stay or leave, and I don't know how to get there. I thought I was starting to feel better about things, and I really have been feeling better about the difficulty level and the stress and my grades. But as far as my feelings about whether this is what I really want, whether this career will make me happy, whether I'm giving up too much for something I don't feel 100% committed to... I just feel like I'm right back at square one. Or maybe I never even left square one. I don't know.

I understand that everyone just wants to make me feel better, when I start talking like this. People say "you'll be fine, you're just having a hard time adjusting" or "you're here for a reason" or whatever. And I appreciate the encouragement, but what if it's not true? What if I'm committing my LIFE to the wrong thing? My ENTIRE LIFE! It's KIND OF a big deal. I can't bear the thought of looking back on my life with that HUGE a regret. I'm so afraid that I've gotten this far by lying to myself and making myself believe that MY career as a doctor will be different. I'LL find a way to do it all and be happy. THIS doctor ain't workin' no 60-hour weeks. But what if I'm wrong? I do believe that picking the right specialty will help get me to where I want to be, and I believe that I'm on the right track with emergency medicine. Everything I hear from practicing EM physicians indicates that I'll be able to work 8-hour shifts, 14 or 15 shifts a month (about 4 days a week or less), with no call and the ability to swap shifts relatively easily with other people to make room for family events and such. Doesn't sound too bad - I feel like I can handle that. I just have to hope that I can handle EM!

I also have to keep reminding myself that what I just described is what I'll be dealing with for MOST of my career. My worries about 3rd and 4th years of medical school and residency - those are VERY temporary situations in the grand scheme of my life, and they are NOT good reasons to give up on this. Yeah, 3rd year will be long hours, constantly changing, hard work and lots of studying. But it's only 1 year. Yeah, residency will probably be 12 hour shifts, more like 4 or 5 days a week, and very stressful as far as being new at it, having to learn A LOT on the fly, having patients die and getting used to the work. But it's only 3 years. I also don't like to live my life under the assumption that "I have time", because none of us knows how much time we have, so I hate to say "well it's only X number of years, that's not much in the grand scheme of things."But when it comes to selecting and training for a lifelong career, I also can't operate under the assumption that I don't have enough time to make it all worth it (especially since I certainly hope that's not true!).

I suppose I've talked myself into feeling a little better. I just really hate this constant mental struggle - it makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes. It just happened to come to a head today, and for no real reason - nothing happened or anything, I just started thinking about it... again. And now I've set myself back on my studying for today. As long as I remain enrolled, I can't let myself get behind on that, so... until next breakdown!

A Party for Little Miss Emily Carsen Beck!

Last Saturday was the big baby shower that we've all been waiting to throw, for my sister Emily and her fabulous still-baking baby girl, Carsen! Amberly and I tried to put a lot of thought and creativity into it, and we were very happy with the result :] Amberly's pics are WAY better than mine - she just got a new kick-ass camera, plus she got many more shots of actual PEOPLE than I did (I swear, there were people there...). But at any rate, this is what I've got for ya...

The beautiful mommy-to-be, Mrs. Emily Beck, and her ever-present sidekick, baby Carsen ;]

Amberly made these ADORABLE washcloth cupcakes for Em to take home!

And I made a "C" for Carsen's nursery, to match her bedding

Overall cuteness :]

Couldn't resist the cutest diaper cake-topper ever, even though it'll be a while before she uses them!

Lots and lots of purple and pink cupcakes...

...and lots and lots of gifts!

Caraline hanging out with her Auntie Em and her little BFF-in-the-making

Looking super-cute ;] Cause that's just what she does in her spare time!

We had a lovely time visiting with friends and family, and Em & Josh totally made out like bandits, leaving with a Subaru FULL of great gifts :] There's been quite a bit of suspense and anticipation surrounding the arrival of this baby, it being Em & Josh's first, so finally getting together to celebrate and kick the countdown into high gear was a pretty darn exciting event! She's due in about 5 1/2 short weeks now - April 19th to be exact! CAN'T WAIT!!!

This coming weekend we'll be celebrating Leo's birthday - poor kid had to wait 3 weeks to have his birthday party! I can't believe he's 5. It's unreal :'( ...makes me want to cry. I know kids have to grow up sometime, but Leo... he's just such an amazing little guy, and it's so hard to gradually say goodbye to little Leo! I know he's just growing from super-cool baby into super-cool kid, and he'll be just as awesome in a different way, just like his big sister :] Anyway, other than that I'll just be studying, trying to keep up with renal and respiratory physiology, because...

SPRING BREAK IS COMING!!! Next Friday (a week from tomorrow) is my renal/respiratory exam, and then it's BREAK TIIIIIIIME!!! I can't even begin to tell you how much I'm looking forward to sitting on my ass for a week :] Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh...

"Great success!" and much excitement

Haha! Please excuse the cartoon's "french", but it SO accurately captures my sentiments of late!

HOWEVER, my new strategy is 1 for 1 - I got a B on my exam on Monday :] Without revealing the embarrassing details of the last few debacles, suffice it to say that this is a VAST improvement, and I am very excited about the *possibility* of having found a way to survive this crazy, crazy endeavor without losing my ever-loving mind. Yay :]

In other news, I'm getting very excited for this weekend - Amberly, Darlene and I are hosting a baby shower for Em on Saturday! It's going to be PRETTY fabulous. Of course since our guest of honor could potentially be reading I won't post details, but rest assured that photos will follow! I can't possibly begin to describe how EXCITED I am to meet this little girl - our first niece from Em & Josh - so I'm pretty pumped to recognize this last big milestone on the road to BABY DAY! Once the shower weekend is behind us, there will be only 6 short weeks to go! I can hardly contain myself! I get so wrapped up in these babies :]