Test week in medical school puts a ton of stress on both your body and mind. Don’t skimp out on sleep, because bad things may happen to you — for example, lack of sleep may compromise your ability to judge distances when parking your car, so you may inadvertently end up scratching the side of your bumper badly on someone else’s car.

…hypothetically. (Or not. The other car came out of the ordeal unscathed and no insurance information was exchanged, and I guess it could be worse. But it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. AGH.)

(Long time no see??)

In the middle of tests — round 2. I don’t think many people can truly appreciate the feeling of studying your ass off and still feeling like you know nothing/are not prepared….

But when I’m not freaking out, I’m trying to overload my brain with hundreds of pages of information, all to the tune of the following songs: (House music is the only thing I can listen to when I study — minimal words, and it keeps me upbeat! Although the latter might also have to do with the can of Red Bull that you can now find me consuming every day during test week.)

…and listening to such music makes me feel slightly better about spending so much time in library, because it feels like a PARTY. (For a split second, anyways.)

You know that feeling you get when you feel like suddenly you’ve gotten yourself in too deep? Or maybe you just realized what kind of insanity you just got yourself into? (You know, it goes a little something like “Oh shit.“)

My first round of exams start on Friday, and I’ve been freaking out about them since a week and a half ago. I’m also starting to think that I spend more time at school and the library than I do back home…which is kind of unfortunate. I feel like medical school is one big oxymoron — I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to be here, but at the same time I hate it. I hate medical school. I hate the feeling of sitting in class and getting lost in the material within 10 minutes, and I hate the feeling of medical school because it’s seriously like taking a drink of water from a fire hydrant that’s spewing water at a million miles per hour. I hate being tired all day, and I hate the fact that I’m starting to need stronger coffee because I’m starting to build a tolerance to normal doses of caffeine. (An aside: no joke, this one urologist I shadowed in college needs 4 mugs of coffee before work. Every morning.) I hate having to study every week like it’s finals just to keep up with the material, and I hate the fact that I just spent 80% of my first three day weekend in the library. (No. Really.)

But then you get to volunteer at a clinic for women who are in unfortunate circumstances, and you realize why you’re having to put yourself through that kind of hell in the first place. You get to shadow surgeons in the midst of saving lives, and you find yourself falling in love with medicine all over again. You get to work with outstanding faculty who really just want to teach you everything they know, and you meet amazing people with incredible experiences before they even came to medical school.

I really just wish medical schools could incorporate more of the latter stuff so us students won’t forget why we’re in school in the first place.

Also: I’m sort of convinced that J.K. Rowling drew her inspiration for naming the spells in the Harry Potter books from anatomy terms…because, really, don’t orbicularis oculi (the muscle around your face that’s responsible for closing the eyelid), plica semilunaris (that fleshy, moony part in the inner corner of your eye), and infidibulum (refers to funnel-shaped cavities in the body) sound like something Harry Potter would shout out during an epic battle with Voldemort?

…or maybe it’s just me.