Not Awful

Yayay! Done with the second of three exams before Christmas! And, like the first one, it was NOT AWFUL.

It is interesting how goals change. When I started medical school, I intended to be the top of my class, the fastest and bestest and coolest, etc. Then, I lowered my expectations to allow myself to leniency and aimed for Pretty Good. Now, I intend to be Not Awful. And I'm doing it! I'm consistently Not Awful! Yay! I've reached my goals!

Tomorrow I get to break out the white coat again and venture out into the hospital and talk to people, which will be followed by some awkward poking at them and shining bright lights in their eyes, and finally asking them not to tell my attending what a bad job I did if we come and visit on Wednesday. This sequence usually works pretty well and has yet to fail me. This is in line with my goals of being Not Awful! Or at least, not letting anyone else know that it was awful.

Speaking of which, last night, I was studying with my good buddy John and he had a sudden stroke of brilliance that required a piece of paper right away. I felt so prepared! I had a blank piece of paper! Right there, in the back of my notebook. I had a fleeting thought of, "Hm. I wonder why I have a blank piece of paper in the back of my notebook. I usually put those in the front. Oh, well. Glad to be of service!" and gave him the paper. He proceeded to draw out his brilliant visualization of the clotting cascade (in three colors, mind you) and then held it out in front of him for me to see. Unfortunately, we both saw... that I had given him the score report from my atrociously terrible parasite exam from Infectious Disease. That, sadly, did not live up the goal of Not Awful. It was Awful. And now the world knew about it. Oops.

Good thing that John is awesome and didn't care. And then he proceeded to teach me the entire coagulation cascade followed by congenital heart defects. This consisted of, like, 35% of the exam this morning. So, in essence, John's help = Katie's grade is Not Awful!

Yay for John!