Bip bip bip
I've been ridiculously busy due to my getting into that emergency medical technician course and not quitting my job yet, and deciding to apply to medical school again this year hasn't helped free up any time. Bullets it is.
- I'm working M/W/F and sometimes part of the weekend, trying to finish up my remaining two projects and make a bit more cash before I quit entirely. I'm mostly making steady progress and my boss has been loving me for the past few weeks, god knows why. I also haven't seen much of him since a week or so after this good mood started. This past week, for example, he was out on Monday, I was out T/R, Wednesday was a paid holiday, and he ducked out early on Friday to get to the beach. I stayed late, but I at least sent my intern home by four.
- My intern is still catching on quickly, for the most part. I give he instructions for Tuesdays and Thursdays and she does her best while I'm gone. She does it all almost perfectly, then messes up one tiny step that usually blows the whole thing. She used the wrong buffer in a PCR reaction yesterday. I'm tempted to come in on the weekend and catch us up. She's not a child, though, and I need some down time.
- I am going to be tapering off at work, though. I'm looking at two- or three-day weeks until my intern's done, then I'm not sure. I like the idea of staying on until I'm starting to feel worn down. I've been trimming down my vacation time on class days. This would be bad if I intended to work past the summer, but it's great to get paid for full weeks when I'm putting in half the time. I'm going to schedule gyn/chiropractic/HBV titer & HPV vaccine appointments on the same day next week, I think, and so take some of my sick leave and half a day off afterward. I told my boss I'd be cutting back and he seems to be okay with it. Actually, he scrambled around at first, trying to find ways to keep me on. He scrounged some grant money to hire me on a month-by-month basis after my one year contract runs out in August, and said I could even come by now and again after that's out and just keep up the Neurospora crosses for hourly wages if I need some spare cash. But we'll see.
- The EMT course is going well. I like being in a classroom again, and I'm acing my exams so far. I'm good friends with two single parents of three-year-olds, an exuberantly gay Oregon student, an outgoing Oregon student, and one down-to-earth Nevadan hydrologist, plus a few others. We listen to lecture in the morning, then practice "saving lives" all afternoon in lab. Airway management was great, but CPR was as boring as ever. The instructor is strict, yet friendly, and I know we'll be overprepared for the state and national exams.
- EMT work will pick up soon, though, I think. I cruised through the anatomy section of the class, but we'll be getting to new stuff soon. Well. I probably could have pulled a passing grade on the final before taking the course, but there are still some new things to cover. It's one class for five weeks, then another for six more, plus internships on ambulances and in emergency departments. I expect the second half to be a lot more work and a lot harder. I'm looking forward to it. My midterm for the first course is next week, three weeks in. I'll have to remember how to study.
- I was wrong about Boots and Flash. We're not done. I thought Boots was calling it off last time, but we've all been texting just as much as before, if not more, and she told me she was drunk that night (which I hadn't realized at the time) and being stupid. We're still nothing but an aloof vacationship, but that's fine by me. As I recently told SB, I still don't think I'm up for something meaningful. They've been able, due to their knowledge of what they'll be doing for the next few years, to spend a couple of months together traveling around and hanging out. I'd like to do that. I fully intend to bop around come fall, but it sure would be nice to have a partner along for my travels. I've got a lot of stops to make, some really key.
- SB. We shall see what happens now. Another great friendship potentially spoiled by my inability to communicate. I am much better at it than I used to be, though, and I don't think we're going to call it quits. It's not the Achilles heel it used to be for me.
- I'm really excited about the traveling, too. There are a few people for whom I wish I lived in the East.
- I'm starting to have had enough of Portland, actually. It's not just the rugby players I hang out with; everyone here under thirty-five seems to have a Peter Pan outlook. Or maybe I just need to find my way back into academia. I miss having intense conversations about queer theory or molecular biology or someone's thesis I barely understand. I'm skipping a reunion of sorts right now, a high school friend who invited a bunch of us to come out pubbing and dancing to see her off. Maybe I'll do the same before I take off. I need to get out on my own for a while.
- That's probably part of it. I need to get out of my parents' house. I've socked away a little bit of cash, but I need it for medical school applications, which are over $4K so far with probably another $3K to go. I just really hope I get accepted to the Switzerland program.
- I did go looking at apartments. I found a great one in NW Portland, near the Pearl and the med school and lots of great independent shops. And the very best French bakery isn't so far off. It's a bike-friendly part of town, to be sure. The duplex was nice, with cedar floors and attic wall panels, two giant bedrooms, a refurbished kitchen, tons of storage space, a claw-foot bathtub, and a balcony off the living room. I'd hoped to find two roommates, actually, and install one in there. It's a smaller room, but there's that porch. There are two large rooms in the attic, too, but they're not approved for sleeping. They'd make a great study space. On top of it all, I know the owner. My mother and I took a watercolor painting class with her last fall. She offered me a great deal on rent, but it's still a bit much and I'd have to find a roommate before I could do it. It ends up really cheap with two roommates. I don't know if I want that much company.
- My back continues to improve! I saw my chiropractor today, and he really beat hell out of my spine. He thinks it's about eighty-five percent of the way back to perfect, better than he's ever seen me. It feels like a miracle. I'm getting more of that scraping technique next week. I missed a couple weeks of scar tissue removal, but I'm still doing my PT every night. I need to up the exercise, though. I've been slacking off for the past two weeks while I adjust to my school schedule. I'm up at six these days and I haven't started working out earlier, so I just haven't gotten to it most evenings. It might almost be easier, at this point, to work out at five. I rather like starting my day off with a run. I just don't like showering in the morning, especially when I know I'll be sweaty again after walking home in the afternoon.
- I finished my medical school primary application a couple of weeks ago, new personal statement and all. I wrote a much more traditional statement this year, though still not the classic "I want to be a doctor because..." type. Last year's was about backpacking, while this one's about my health care policy reform advocacy work. It got verified fairly quickly, and I applied to nineteen schools on 29 June. I've received secondary applications from seven this week. I sent two back already, which is good progress. We'll see what I can get done this weekend on the rest of the essays. It's frustrating to have to respond to the same prompt in a different way a year later, especially when I know I did a good job last time and earned an interview off of what I had to say. I just hope I'll find a way to say it even better this time. I guess I'll hole up in a coffeeshop after my science museum volunteer shift on Saturday and work through as many as I can. Khiv, you up for joining me? Bring a good novel and we can switch roles.
- I'm not in a dashing hurry to write the secondary apps at the moment, although I'd better stay caught up so I don't get buried in them in August. I can relax a little right now because I just asked a former professor (T.A.K.!) to write me one last recommendation letter. I had been thinking I'd better get another science professor to write one, someone other than my lab/thesis advisor, but I remembered that I have the one from my current research job. Besides, who knows me better? I've spent days in Professor K's office, chatting about queer politics, bodies and power, biomedicine and gender, papers, theory, books, the QRC, TransBrandeis, and various topics that kept us poised as liaisons between the queer students and faculty, not to mention the hours we spent laughing and dreaming up ideas for the second thesis we both knew I would never have time to write, no matter how much I wanted to. There were moments he'd almost convinced me to stay a bit longer for graduate school in English (queer studies), never mind the lack (at the time) of a terminal master's program. So he's got to finish that up and send it to the university pre-med advisor, and she's got to read it and the other five and write me a composite letter. No medical school will invite me for an interview until they receive that packet from her. Since the wait isn't on my shoulders at the moment, I can stay cool.
- Rugby starts up soon. I won't have time until I finish quitting my job, though. Argh.