honestly

So, I realized that lately I haven't been blogging that much, but everything I've written is super cheerful and hopeful. I think maybe my blogging hasn't been so honest. I tend to do that when I'm struggling - act super cheery and only talk about the positive stuff, and just leave out the stuff I don't really like. To be honest, there's a lot of stuff I don't like:

1) Doing laundry. I know, everybody hates this one, but I am never home. My roommate can attest to it - sometimes we go days without seeing each other because I leave at 8am and tend to get back around 11pm. And the occasional evening I take off, I don't want my vegetative state in front of the television to be interrupted by trips to the laundry machines with the huge amounts of laundry I accumulate. Most weekends I feel guilty if I don't spend the entire afternoon (at minimum) at school studying.

2) My basic science classes. Let's face it - I've never liked biochemistry or histology - but I have always enjoyed physiology, and I even hate that class at my school. The class is taught so poorly that I often can't bear to go to lecture. I feel like I have to teach myself everything and it's really, really hard to motivate myself to do so. Uninteresting, poorly taught material + an enormous amount of said material + friends that are fun to hang out with = Chelsea has trouble concentrating. Which basically makes me feel constantly guilty and like failure is looming over my head unless I get my act together.

3) The fact that everyone is constantly telling me I will forget everything I just bemoaned having to learn in #2. Oh wait, maybe I should just add this to the "why Chelsea is both unmotivated and guilty" equation.

4) The stuff I actually care to learn, stuff I will use in my future life, like physical exam skills, I barely spend any time on. Because the "Practice of Medicine" class is the least intense, I feel like allowing myself the luxury of reading the material for that class means I'm taking away precious studying time from my harder classes. Which is sad, but true.

5) I want so badly to know how to balance everything in my life, but I just can't seem to find a way yet. Hopefully eventually I will, but I know the next few years of my life involve a constantly changing schedule that I don't know whether I'll ever be able to strike the right balance.

So that's what med school is really like for me right now. There are definitely enough times when I do something and get really excited about becoming a doctor. Those moments are what get me through and let me know that medical school will be worth it. I think this year is just more of a struggle because it's not where my strengths lie, but many of my classmates are geniuses at this basic science stuff. Well, that's enough complaining for now. Hopefully it wasn't to painful to read (well you could have stopped reading, no one's making you...)