GREAT news and propofol??

I'll start with the the not so good news. I've decided to postpone my MCAT until January 2011 (because there are no more dates after ~Sept. 10 until then). Well maybe that's not a not so good news scenario because I'll still be on track to apply to med school next summer. But given everything that's going on in my life and my inability to focus, I needed to give myself more time to get this thing right for the LAST time!! I will however, still post my progress weekly.

More bad news, earlier this week, my intern royally screwed up in the lab and I was summarily blamed for it (all she had been asked to do was put solution A into pot 1. Instead, put solution 2 in the pot and ruined 2 days worth of work). Now this was a task she had done many, many times so I had no reason to think the last time would be any different. Anyway, my Supv's reaction to me and to her was BEYOND foul!!! Now, I no longer have help in the lab because my Supv in her infinite wisdom, has all but banned her from being there. So I talked privately with my student in an effort to save her self esteem and told her that she made a serious mistake but like most people who have worked in lab settings, she could recover from it IF she put in more effort into focusing on what she's doing. We'll see what happens there!!

So what's my great news? I've been offered a new position as Lab Manager in Pathology for another Gov't agency and after I clear the background check, they'll send me the formal offer, hopefully next week!! I'm so seriously stoked about this new gig I don't know WHAT to do, LOL!! And I'll be so close to that elusive six figure salary I can smell it, but most importanly, I'll have a gig in a lab with a B-E-A-utiful view!!!

Lastly, I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for my small dose of propofol at around 11:00AM tomorrow and so far, I'm doing a pretty good job staying calm. But for some reason I keeping thing about what would happen if I went into a coma during the procedure and woke up 10 years later!!!Personally, I think I've been watching too many movies about this kinda thing which is exceedingly rare for a person in general good health as I am. Oh well, it truly is in God's hands and at this point, I'd like to think His plan is that I enjoy that new office with a view I'll be sitting in, in about 3 weeks!!

And thanks to all my readers for the support and well wishes!!!!

Surgery part 2??? S^%$!!!!

I'm scheduled to have another "female" surgery this Friday and with my family history, I'm a little nervous about it (please read between the lines until I get some conformation, then I'll update). Of course, my Supv's VERY callous response to my having to be being out and I quote "well, I'm trying to make money here, who's gonna run the lab while you're out" had me seeing red, but then I remembered that God is prepping me for something else and I just may know that that something else is REAL soon. I also had a LONG term project at work FINALLY work out and the PI involved was very pleased, but not nearly as pleased as I was!!. Ironically, I've got more work than I can handle in the lab and my intern will be leaving in a few weeks, so I don't have any idea how this is all going to play out. I just know that it looks like it will probably play out without me, LOL!!!

So given the numerous doctors appointments I had last week getting ready for my big day, I only got one chapter completed in the Orgo 2 book, but I did amazing job on the verbal exam I took scoring an all time high of 13!!! I don't want to get too excited too soon, but I'm really hoping this upward trend lasts. It's so strange, I'm looking at these problems from a different angle before, focusing less and less on looking for trick words and other useless crap, and staying more in tune to what the author's main message is. I also find it hard not to interject my own thoughts into what's being said/asked which is what the test designers count out since most type a premed types are also very highly opinionated, LOL!!! Then it occurred to me that the reason the verbal section is such a good test is because you have to learn to put your own preconceived notions about what the author is saying and focus on what he IS saying. I'm thinking this helps keep doctors from making wrong diagnosis by training them to focus on what's there (patient presentation) NOT what you think is there or what was there based on some previous experience. Yeah, easier said than done, LOL!!!

What do you think about how you think??

One of the very unusual aspects of being a multiple, multiple MCAT examinee is that over the years, I've kept track of how I've done on my practice problems. For example, I feel like a complete idiot that questions on some verbal passages I missed in 2008, I'm STILL missing which is why they say that it's so damn hard to really raise your verbal score. What I am happy about is that I've done better on many of the questions I consistently missed previously than I've done the 2 or so years I've been studying off and on for the MCAT, registering, but never taking the exam before. And on the MCAT, 5 more right answers can be the difference between a single and double digit score on the exam, so I'll take the little progress ANY way I can get it.

So I'm finally done with book 1 of TBR Orgo and finished with a highly unimpressive "8". However, I was close enough to a "9" ( 1 point) that I'm OK with that given the week I had this past week. Plus, combined with the difficulty level of the TBR compared to any of the AAMC practice questions I'm also doing, so I feel pretty good, though I KNOW I can do better.

What I am becoming painfully aware of is that my way of thinking about things seems pretty difficult to change which I think may or may not have something to do with being middle aged? I dunno, I hesitate to cover up for what I really think is a case of the "trifflin", meaning that I haven't felt like I've pushed myself as hard as I'm doing now in a VERY long time. I mean I'm really, really, REALLY, taking my time going through with a fine tooth comb, my wrong answers (thanks TBR!!) which allows me to really think about how I'm thinking about my answers to MCAT style questions. More times than not, I'm finding that if I carefully read the Science passages I can answer at least 40% of the questions without what I feel is any substantial knowledge of the subject matter. In other words, we're right back to the fact that the MCAT is a test on how to take a test rather than what you really know. So, in looking back on wrong answers from the past, I'm finding out that in a lot of cases just a little more common sense and a lot less text anxiety is a good portion of what is needed to do well on the exam. And while progress overall is slow in coming, I feel pretty good that I'll have this thing worked out by early September.

Earthquake in Maryland?

So I wake up this morning to a magnitude 3.6 earthquake, pretty much in MY neighborhood!!! I thought is was a gas explosion at first, so I surfed the web from my iTouch then proceeded to go about my normal morning activities and later got confirmation from the news of the earthquake.

Other news in my life not so good, that "funk" has finally been "defined" and culminated in my attendance yesterday at my godmother's funeral. Besides the fact that I hadn't talked to her in years despite living only about an hour away, the last 3 words she said to me the last time we did talk was "finish medical school". Now I'm not one of those people who is prone to having regrets about the things I do, but where she is concerned I have a TON!! Besides the fact that her breast cancer from many years ago came back VERY aggressively, she kept it a complete secret from almost everyone except her 2 sisters (why do Black women do this 'ish?"), I kept promising myself I would go visit her more often and never did what I kept saying I was going to do. Like a lot of people, I assumed I had plenty of time since she was 68 years old and had only had one serious illness in her entire life. Well, I guess this is one of those times where you really should do/say whatever you feel in your heart to say to people you care about or do, because you never know how much time you or them have left to say/do something.

What her death did do was completely remove the "questioning medical school funk" I had been in, although you can't tell by the amount of MCAT work I've completed this week, LOL!! But because I may have some BIG changes in my life where my time is concerned, I suspect that I'll have PLENTY of time to get what I need to get done by Sept. 9, 2010. Now normally, I'm not so secretive about things like this but this time I need to be until I everything becomes official. But if you've followed my blog closely enough, it probably isn't hard to figure out!!!

I'll post my MCAT progress this Sunday!!!

Funk defined!!

These days I've been what can best be called in a SERIOUS funk, a VERY long term funk that I just can't seem to shake. For the first time in forever, I really started to doubt this med school journey thing. And a large part of my mood was the fact that I went to the Doc last week and the results weren't very good at all (I'll give details when I find out what I'm dealing with) and I've got some additional procedures I have to endure along with meeting with a couple other Doctors. Yes, just what I did NOT need at this time . Needless to say, my MCAT progression was short lived but I'm going to work hard to get back on track this week.

I also changed my test date to Sept 9, registering for almost the last day I could take the MCAT for this cycle and now, I'm just hoping I'll be healthy/recovered enough to take it. Still, I'm going to keep preparing as if things are going to work out fine because at this point, I refuse to think anything else is a real possibility. I'm a strong believer that a positive attitude is absolutely critical especially at times like these.

Other than that, nothing much is going on. Now that I think about it, maybe what I really need to do is take a short 2 or 3 day vacation to get my head together. Yep, that sounds perfect, I've been promising my daughter that we would take our mother daughter vacation early this year and this coming weekend sounds like a GREAT idea :)!!!

Progress, at last!!!

So this week was pretty amazing as far as my MCAT study is concerned. I had double digit scores in everything, and spent most of the week focused on practicing the verbal section. Besides the fact that med schools regard this score more highly than the others, it seems obvious to me that if I can FINALLY master this area, it will almost certainly pay off in the Sciences as well. I started off scoring "8" in Verbal and ended the week consistently scoring at least a "10" with "11" as my high score. I've also finished half of the EK verbal reasoning passages too.

Still, I'm behind overall in the science areas, but again, I think interjecting so much verbal practice will help me speed up my review of the remainder of the science stuff due to so much reading comprehension practice. Another revelation I'm having about my science review is that for the most part, I should be able to answer most of the questions without reading the passage itself, if I simply pay significant attention to the clues in both the question stem and the answers. As for Physics, I still haven't directly reviewed any yet, but the first gen chem book of TBR has a pretty impressive review of some important physics concepts.

Other great news this week is that the positions at the local hospital I thought I didn't have a chance at because I hadn't heard anything back after telling them my salary requirements, was due to my HR contact having a month off for vacay. WTH?? Ok, I'm not hatin', it must be nice, though I tend to get bored on vacay's that last more than a few days. Speaking of local hospitals, during a visit to a local med school to see a mentor, I also happened to run into one of my many Pathologist mentors who reminded me that my Physician shadowing begins with her in 2 weeks. Geez, how in the world did I forget that?

Health wise is unfortunately where things aren't so great and it appears that I'm really having some complications following my major surgery in the Spring of 2009, problems which started last year, but that I didn't follow up on until I was too sick to go to work last week. Yeah, doctor types make the worst patients, but over age 40, not taking stuff seriously is just plain stupid. Still, I haven't let that sidetrack me too much from riding the bike for at least 5 miles everyday, but I did have to give a rest for most of last week. At any rate, I have to see a GI specialist and get that colonoscopy I was supposed to get 3 years ago, so I'll be sure to report of how THAT goes, LOL!!!

Guess that's it until next time!!!

Plowing ahead

So this week I've made what I consider an amazing amount of progress on my MCAT prep, but I think from now on, I'll post my results at the end of the week. My "groove" is really starting to come into place and I find myself learning at a much faster pace than I did before. Kinda reminds me of my summers in med school.....Again, a HUGE shout out to TBR for the amazing test materials. And I also think I'm going to move my test date up, giving me an additional 3 weeks of study, but this is a hard one because I kinda held out hope that if I received my scores in say early October, I could possibly still apply this year to a few schools in the area. Yeah I know, it's not smart to apply late but I guess I'd be depending on my networking to see me through.

Other things going on this week, I'm having some health issues related to the major surgery I had last year so I'm a little ocncerned about it especially since I've put this off a little bit, but I'm reasonably confident that things are going to be OK. Still, I'm reminded that after age 40, you just can't let things slide like you did in your 20's.

Jobwise, I've really got my hands full with some major projects which is exciting for me, but just as I expected there's going to be a consolidation of 2 labs that pretty much offer the same services, with the exception that I've got a few more techniques under my belt. Well my plan hasn't changed, I've "overextended my stay" in this current position by about 6 months so to speak, so hopefully I'll be on to my next employment challenge by the time this thing comes together. Guess we'll see! :)