Secret Societies and Politics

I have mentioned before that I submitted my letter of intent to run as class vice president (or in Spanish: vice presidente de la clase). Elections start Monday and close on Tuesday. That makes Tues the 22nd the day I find out whether I'm popular enough to get the majority votes. That is really all that anyone has going for them, popularity. We just got here and we haven't even been in school for a month! How should we know who to vote for, let alone if we should run? But I want to run anyway. So fingers crossed.

I also have started into motion something that might really be awesome. I have (hopefully) created the Secret Society of Study Guides. I just sent out an email to the class of 2013, inviting those that would be interested to form a secret society. Yes, we all know about the evils of secret societies, but it won't really be a secret, hence the mass email. But it makes the group sound so much cooler! The goal is to team up with other students who, like me, love making study guides, diagrams, drawings, etc in order to help simplify complex concepts and make it more fun if possible. We will peer review each other's submissions prior to the test and then distribute the separate study guides as a packet of educational gold to the rest of the class. I dream that every student will eagerly wait for the Society's packet to hit their inbox and then they will see several pages of study materials to break up the boring textbook/lecture note studying. It could be... amazing. I am already thinking of t-shirts for those that put in the time and effort into making the study guides and studying early in order to get them out a day or two before the test. It will make me a little more proactive and help fight the temptation to cram, all while having fun seeing what other people come up with to learn the same concepts. I'm really excited and figured I'd share it with my readers.

I finally made it into the thoracic cavity of my patient today in dissection!! My dissection team and I removed the left and right lungs and checked out the heart. I have to say that I never felt like anything was ACTUALLY beautiful in our cadaver's body until I saw the heart. All I could say was, "beautiful." I have seen a bunch of hearts. Pictures of hearts, pigs hearts, even human hearts in cadaver lab in undergrad. But it was the act of removing muscle, facia, and bone that made the uncovering of the heart so breathtaking. Arguably the second most vital organ in the body, absolutely beautiful. Turns out it was humongous, probably due to left ventricular hypertrophy, a comorbidity of obesity. It may have even been the reason for her unexpected heart failure. We won't ever know. Dissection is the greatest thing I do every week.

The worst thing I do every week is not sleep. I feel so tired every day! I need to get more sleep! Which is why I will end this post right now as it is 10:30 PM and I have no tests or quizzes tomorrow, finally!