vacillating

Despite being six years down the road, I have had the oddest feeling lately of being in college. This week and last I have been in lectures all day (the "basic science" part of med school here), then I come home at night and work on my paper. I've had music on in the house all the time, I've been hanging out and working in coffee shops, and I'm juggling three boyfriends, none of whom know about each other. Okay, maybe not that last one. As far as you know. (Hi Aaron!) I suppose the large dog, husband (Hi Aaron!), and small child should be clues to the contrary, but I'm a little dense these days. Go ahead, ask me my major.

Actually, speaking of majors, the equivalent of that question for me is what kind of residency I'm thinking about. For the past couple years I have had vague plans to go into some kind of primary care (yet to be specified), combined with some kind of public health and related research. I am pretty excited about this plan, and even 3/4 of a dissertation later I really want to go into epidemiology and public health. I have never really liked working in the hospital, so avoiding that has been another general goal. I think we can all agree that perhaps I should not go into or even anywhere close to surgery. I think we can see from the poll results thus far that none of you are actually concerned with my med school performance, although you do want me to finish my dissertation, presumably so I will stop whining about it here. And Top Chef. Most Bleisenblog readers agree: I should watch more tv.

What has been cool in the past few weeks is that I realized I actually really like critical care (=people who are really sick) as a field. It seems counter intuitive, because being an intensive care unit seems like not only not avoiding the hospital, but like being in even more hospital. But I like it because people are hooked up to all sorts of monitors, so there is tons of data all the time, which I always like. And there is a lot of physiology all over the place, which has always been my favorite part of med school. I'm still not sure I'm open minded enough to consider changing my game plan, but I should probably do more electives just to make sure. Which I will have time to do in 6+ months. In any case it's nice to feel like I'm engaging in med school at least a little.