#graduate medicine

[meddlecine]

Fixing broken hearts in med school.

The hardest part about med school hasn’t been med school itself. (Although, I’m scrunching my eyebrows up as I write this, so maybe that’s not entirely true).  The hardest part about med school has been having a boyfriend.  Maybe that’s why I don’t have one anymore.

I moved out of our apartment in January, just one week before starting my second year of medical school. We agreed that me moving out would be best for the relationship. He would take over the lease, and I wouldn’t have to worry so much about money. Up until that point, I felt like I’d tried everything, from dyeing my soul every colour under the sun in the hope that he would fall back in love with just one shade. I tried, I really, really did. But the exhaustion from meticulously choosing every word and placating my tone in the anticipation of the next thing to go wrong, was unlike anything else. He wasn’t being rude, he insisted, just being honest. And if I couldn’t take it, then that was my problem.  I’d been seeing a psychologist, who eventually, after many sessions, shared that she couldn’t believe how much effort I was putting into this sinking ship. She suggested couples’ counselling. He refused.

Had it been going on for some time? Of course it had, but there was never a ‘good’ time to end things (is there ever?). What a laughable concept! “I’m a little busy this week, maybe we can break up next Thursday at 7pm?” To make matters worse and prolong the inevitable even further, I was always determined that there was something that I hadn’t tried yet. It didn’t matter though, because it kept happening over, and over, and over. No matter what I tried to change about myself, nothing worked. Not even the happiest of occasions could blunt the edge I was skating on: I was a bridesmaid for my best friend from school, and felt more alive and glowing than I had in months. But despite every determination to keep the makeup pristine, I couldn’t help let a few tears slip during the ceremony. The vows were beautiful, it’s true, but I think that part of me was quietly grieving as I grew to understand that the guy attending that wedding with me would never, ever love me in the same unconditional way that the groom loves my best friend. And I knew that he would never want to try, because he told me so. It didn’t matter how beautiful I looked that day on the outside. On the inside, I couldn’t help but feel my heart sink as it caught up to my head.

My spirit and self-esteem had been slowly pushed further and further into the ground to the point that I believed that maybe he was right. Maybe I am difficult, and stubborn, and dismissive, and unappreciative. In desperation, I reached out to an old ex of mine, a gorgeous Parisian lawyer who was always kind, honest, and made me laugh. He admitted that although it’d been a long time since we were together, there was no reason to ever justify such outbursts of anger, and assured me that I wasn’t any of those things that I’d listed above. “But of course, you’re not perfect!” he added. I smiled and raised my eyebrows at the message, grateful for his candour, all the while thinking that I probably could’ve done without the last comment. It’s a shame things never worked out with him; I can only assume he is happy with his life in France, as he very much deserves, but he at least serves as a sobering reminder for how I should be treated. I paused and cast my mind back. Our time together is a memory long gone now, but I still remember enough to know that I missed how I felt when we were together: calm, safe, my cheeks often aching from laughing at his quick wit. All things that I didn’t have now. His one small message of kindness after all these years made me realise how miserable I really was.

Because, when I thought about it... could I survive the next 3 years of medical school, plus my training with chaotically unpredictable ups and downs? I’d heard that medicine puts a strain on your relationships, but with or without med school, I don’t think I could survive this. Just a week prior, only a few days before my final exams for the year, we’d had a fight. Another one. No matter my attempts of resolution, they were met with jagged stares of contempt and crushing silence, and so finally, after three days of drowning in an ocean of anxiety, I pleaded for some kind of resolve. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or study from the stress-induced migraines, and was a complete mess at the idea that I would lose my relationship and fail my exams. “So it’s my fault if you fail your exams?” he scoffed. He told me to get over it. I patched things up as best as I could, determined to not let someone who could be so indifferent towards my feelings be my downfall. Miraculously, I passed my exams. But I knew that next time I might not be so lucky.

Moving out bought me one more month.  It sucks, but everything was clearly crumbling around me.  It wasn’t all bad—no one gets into a relationship with someone who’s like this at the start. There were many wonderful, fun, whimsical moments in the years we were together, and the guy I left isn’t the guy I first met.  In the end we just...  weren’t the right fit for each other.  So, I may be alone now, but I’m okay with that. For now, I love talking to the patients and hearing their stories, and I love seeing someone’s eyes light up when I ask them how they met the love of their life.

Hopefully one day I’ll get to share mine.

[why-the-heck-not]

me, a responsible being, working on the coding project as I should vs. me, a dysfunctional shithead, getting distracted by reading about brains (once aGAIN damnit (it's my favorite "I need to study my field but bc I should do that it's an impossible unthinkable feat now, so I'm reading about something else to fool my brain I'm still being productive"-topic))

[anonymocha]

Friend hc’d Kaalaa Baunaa as a silent-but-scary-stare type of drunk. This is her after a few drinks. (They’re both drunk)

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

NeZha 2 International Trailer (哪吒2: 魔童闹海）

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 94

Danny has no clue what he’s just agreed to but Ellie seems happy about it, so it can’t be too bad. Ellie is honestly surprised but more than a little touched her template-dad gave her permission to let her new clone-union-totally-not-a-revolution use his lair as a home base. Now she just needs to help Klarion figure out how to make those portal-bracelets for each of them…

[fantastic-nonsense]

What major do u think tim would be in?🤔 i have a few options in mind, like archaelogy, mechanical engineering or even psychology, but havent been able to settle for any of them

Tysm!

Tim is that one kid who changes his major every semester for the first two years because he can't decide on what he wants to do, takes a gap year in the middle of his degree to go hiking in Albania, and then comes back and graduates with a double major and a minor with a solid B average because he decided if he couldn't choose one thing to do, he'll just do it all, and then got overloaded while trying to finish because nothing he picked has any overlapping reqs.

In my mind, he starts off in business because "it's the major my dad would have wanted me to pick", switches to computer science after a serious come to jesus talk with his advisor because it's what he thinks he's interested in, and then finally lands on mechanical engineering after he sits down and realizes he only actually likes doing computer stuff for fun and Robining and not as an actual job. He ends up coupling the engineering degree with a double major in sports medicine and a minor in photography.

[nerdgirlnarrates]

Had to explain to my parents last night that women don’t pee out of their vaginas. And then they just didn’t believe me!!! My mother kept saying that she knows she only has two holes (?????????) until my dad made everyone move on.

[equinesandeducation]

It is done!!! ☑️🎓 My thesis of veterinary medicine is finished, after taking a year in between my bachelor's and master's degree, so I could spend more time on it and also get my honours certificate! It was so much work, I was so so so nervous to present, but everything went great and our entire group got awarded their diploma's. So proud!! 🥹🥳

[medstudy09]

Now that my theory papers are over I am going to start medicine classes again

[thesummerstorms]

11 or 35 for the Rook story time asks!

35. Crow!Rook’s graduation from Fledgling to Assassin.

This turned out like... ten times longer than I originally anticipated, so I apologize in advance.

The contract had been an unusually bloody affair, but that was typical of a graduation. No Crow worth the name was just handed the title after all, especially not in Esma de Riva's House.

For all that the Fifth Talon was milder on her Fledglings than some of the stories she'd heard from the older mage compradi - in so much as milder meant not wasting an investment unnecessarily, not starving them outside of training or punishment, not being House Arainai- the woman did like her tests.

To Esma, Crows were only as good as their worst, their weakest moments, and that went double for Mages. Arsinoë couldn't help but wonder if that philosophy had been handed down from the Talon's Chantry-Cleric mother... but she absolutely knew better than to ask, even just to Viago.

It was fine. She was fine. Her arm and fingers and ribs all itched and ached where the potion was achingly slow at knitting the bone back together, but it was fine. It was over.

Admittedly, she wished Esma kept more than one proper spirit healer on the books, the way most of the Talons' Houses did, someone to put that skittering wisp hovering just in earshot to work, but-

But no, she didn't wish that. How many times had Viago told her?

It was Esma's very distrust for mages and the resulting lack of mage recruits over the years that had kept her ... well, not safe. No Crow or Mage was ever safe. But it gave her an advantage, an edge the other fledglings didn't have, to be needed. A mage was an expensive investment.

Bile stung at the back of her throat at the thought. Her stomach twisted, even as she tried to hold back the empty heaving. Pain lanced her chest again, so sharp that the beams of the infirmary rafters above her cot disappeared in a blur of new tears.

It would be fine. The physician Esma had deigned to bring once everything was over had said as much. He hadn't been a spirit healer, and he hadn't bothered to give her pain killers or talk to her directly, but he had done that. Looked at her with dark, dispassionate eyes and promised Esma there would be no loss of function once the potions had run their course.

Of course not. Esma didn't like needless waste. Something she credited to her merchant prince father when entertaining guests.

If anything, Arsinoë almost thought she had seen the Talon scowling when the physician prodded at the long deep cuts down her cheek, the one curving from her collar bone down between the valley of her breasts. She wouldn't have believed it but-

Facial scars are too easy to recognize.

It would bring her value down on a Contract. Lucky then, that she was a mage, a lightning-wielder, not a seductress or a spy.

None of this would have happened if-

Arsinoë swallowed again, blinked her eyes in an attempt to clear them, and wished that wisp would go away and stop with its odd little noises. She wanted to yell, try to scare it off... but it was already so hard to catch her breath. Besides, no one could find out that she heard or saw the damn thing so clearly after years of pretending otherwise.

So the job had been bloody, especially for someone whose best teacher was primarily a poisoner. Just her, a mage's stiletto, and a last minute contract on a target who seemed all too aware someone would be coming.

But she had managed. More than managed. No one had seen so much as a bloody footprint when she slipped back out from the dead man's chambers and back into Salle's side streets.

Maybe if she had been a duelist or a poisoner, that's where it would have ended. Arsinoë had never asked Viago, and he wouldn't have been able to tell her.

But Arsinoë was a mage. There was always another test for a mage. Stupid of her to forget that, even in a moment of victory. Stupid of her to trust one of Esma's men.

The torturer had reminded her of that while they worked, their voice neither condemning or sympathetic.

A mage was a risk like no other kind of Crow. How would a client take it if some Crow listened too carefully to the whispers from beyond the Veil, whether it be in a moment of greed or pain or terror? How would the Crows ever recover their reputation if a Crow, from any House, could be made an abomination from something as mundane as agony?

The Fifth Talon had to be sure.

And Arsinoë, who had more practice that she would ever confess at ignoring the whispers of interested spirits, who had survived a Circle where Templars went readily with their hands already at their blades... Arsinoë had endured. Because she had to.

A mage would always be tested. Even her mother, an Apostate with more hatred for the Chantry than anyone Arsinoë had met before or since, had told her as much. A mage had to keep control.

Arsinoë had kept control.

That meant something, even now with the room still spinning from pain and from the mix of potions and poisons and antidotes that had been poured down her throat. The small brand on her hip proved it, marked her as a Harrowed Crow, a sign of protection if you could find the right Templar for the House to bribe.

Maybe in the morning she would even be happy about it. But it was hard to feel much now beyond the aches and the nausea and the silence of the otherwise empty room, broken only by that damn wisp.

Her eyes blurred again, and then her mind. Just the quiet and the pain and the occasional flash of interest-hurt-worry from the wisp. Viago would have scolded her if he hadn't been off on a Contract, but Arsinoë found she was too tired to care about whatever someone might try to do to her now.

It felt like hours later, maybe longer, when the clinking of glass vials finally drew her attention back the present. The physician back with more potions? But he had said she'd been given all the tonics she could safely consume for the time being. If not him then-

Maker. Just leave me alone. Please.

She groaned, and the noises at her bedside stopped. A shadow fell across the back of her closed eyelids, followed a second later by a touch to her bandaged cheek that was just a little too firm for comfort.

"Arsinoë?"

That sounded like Viago. Was she hallucinating Viago's voice now? She had thought being off in the Free Marches would at least keep him from lecturing her.

"Arsinoë." Definitely Viago. He sounded pissed, as usual, though the hand that stayed pressed against her face was new. "Arsinoë de Riva, stop pretending to sleep and tell me what that moron has been giving you."

That sounded like an order, so after a moment of deep resentment for the command, she forced her eyes back open, taking in the scene in bits and pieces. A blue leather glove at the edge of her vision. Weak sunlight through the high windows. A slight blur over the world, no matter where she looked. Everything had fallen quiet again, waiting for her reply.

And yes. There was Viago.

"Did..." her voice felt stuck in her throat, her mouth dry, "Did you scare off the wisp?"

"The wisp?" Viago's scowl deepened, and abruptly he drew his hand back, reaching for whatever he had been working on before she caught his attention. "Never mind, don't tell me, I don't want to know."

He waited a moment for her to argue. When she didn't, he added, "You're feverish. I suppose there's no point in asking what you remember about the viscosity of the tinctures you were given, is there?"

She thought about it for half a second, trying, but the mixtures she had been given kept slipping from her mind. She had something more important to tell him, didn't she? Something he needed to know more?

"Vi, I-"

I'm a Crow, she should have said. I passed. Whatever happens, I'll die as Crow.

She should have said, I graduated.

What came out was "Vi.. I'm safe."

Her voice came out all wrong, too weak at the ends, almost questioning, but she needed him to know. Whatever happened next, she would die as a Crow, and an Antivan, and not just an Apostate.

Viago's face scrunched up strangely. For a moment it looked like he was going to reach over and poke at her again, but his hand only rose and fell back to his side.

"Yes..." He said softly. "Yes, I'm watching the exits. And I'll fix this."

That wasn't what she had meant, but Viago was strange at the best of times. She let it go, closing her eyes as he began his familiar prattle about reagents and the comparative virtues of embrium versus arbor's blessing versus elf root, letting the words wash over her in waves.

[justinesattendingadventures]

I survived residency!

Yes I still have 7 days left...

But I have now officially graduated!

[meddlecine]

So, about that blogging thing...

Hilariously (fittingly? shamefully?) I have not touched a journal nor have my fingers clacked away on a keyboard for my blog about med school since, well... the beginning of the year. This year’s goal? Document my med school journey in exquisite, nay, excruciating detail. Recreate it all for the reader! Do it for yourself! Remember it all!

Now that week 1 has passed (back in January) I’m pleased to inform you of my most recent blog update: graduating the year. Yep, clearly the daily/weekly med school adventure blog went extremely well. If anything, though, it sums up the year a little bit. In the beginning of the year, I thought this was all tooooootally manageable.

Ah, the beginning of the year. I’ll be so organised! I’d tried to convince myself. Medicine is manageable if you just make for the time for it. Oh my, so young. So naive! So full of hope!

And yet... today I got the email confirming that I had passed all of my first year exams. I’ve done it!

How? Well, to be honest... barely.

In hindsight, this year was ROUGH.

Just before starting med school, I’d gotten appendicitis. Then my grandpa, with whom I was extremely close, passed away. My job (who I’d convinced I could keep up with, sin problema) doubled—nay, tripled—the workload despite me cutting my hours in half. I failed my mid year exams. When recovering from surgery, I got COVID, and as a result, missed 5 weeks of my 2nd semester.

Walk in the park, right?

And yet, miraculously, (dazzled with a few tears and “I’m going to *sniffs* fail *sniffs* and have to *blows nose* repeat the whole year again!”)... I passed. It sounds like a dramatic proclamation, but to be honest, it wasn’t far off. Having failed one of the mid-year exams, the end of year situation was looking to be on verrrrrry thin ice. No matter what class I sat in I just felt like everyone knew more than me. Quite the humbling moment going from being the top of your class and colleagues to... the bottom. The pits. The dungeon! The silly corner. I felt like I’d turned up to a party where everyone got the memo about the fancy dress except for me. I was plain, boring, and unprepared.

The week before my final exams, my boyfriend and I had a huge fight. Again. He didn’t talk to me for 3 days—despite the fact that we live together—and in my distress, I couldn’t eat, nor concentrate on my studies. My stress migraines launched like rockets and I lay in bed in desperation. Desperate for an apology, or for a shot of inspiration to bring me back to life and get me back into the books.

Despite all of this, I still made it.

I won’t lie, it was tough. I quit my job, and have shifted to tutoring instead. I set my own hours and get paid more per hour (plus it’s way less stressful), but obviously less secure than a job with a company. But, it meant that I could dedicate far more time to my studies. I missed weddings, and parties, and weekends. Sundays were spent between tutoring and studying clinical skills with my study group.

But now, I can say it was worth it. I passed! Bring on second year!

[thoughtfullyrainynightmare]

My wedding ring (ft. my engagement ring) ^^ ❤️🔥

With my wedding dress (already previously shown here)

[anonymocha]

Robot Love is Forever

Drew this with friends for a graduation film shoot at art class

[orcinus-veterinarius]

After over 2 months away on externships, it’s proving very difficult to adjust back to normal rotations…

[angels-heap]

Trolls love to claim that there's no "proof" that Gordon didn't age in stasis (even though common sense, characters in the games, and Valve themselves all basically confirm this to be true), but it's so funny to me how bad faith actors love to overlook the most compelling proof:

Look me in the eyes and tell me, with a straight face, that this recent, canon model is a representation of a nearly 50-year-old man. I fucking dare you.