"It is a tale told by an idiot..."

I actually have a couple of interesting things to post about this week. The weather was quite nice today (45 degrees!), so there will be no complaining about that. Once a year, our school offers various seminars in place of our normal afternoon curriculum. These seminars are part of the medical humanities curriculum our school boasts of - the sole purpose of which is to ensure that we don't become dicks to our patients. Basically, we get to choose from a variety of arts and humanities courses in some way related to medicine so we can learn to deal with the "human condition." This is a fancy way of making sure we know how to deal with nuances and problems without obvious answers. I loved my seminar last year, and it turned out to be the only class other than neuro that I actually enjoyed. I wrote a paper comparing the portrayal of humanity and its values in the 1950s version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Pan's Labyrinth." Yeah, I love this shit...

On the list of courses this year, I saw one on Medicine and Macbeth. I haven't read Shakespeare in forever and I love his work, so I signed up for this course. For once, it's actually better than I imagined. Our instructor is OBSESSED with blood (you'd like her, Sami), which proves to be handy for this play. She made us go around and introduce ourselves last week, but we also had to give one fact about blood. She then proceeded to educate us on the 16th-17th century theories of how the body created blood - it made the blood directly from the food you ate, so eating a lot meant you had a hell of a lot of blood, thus the keen interest in blood-letting - and the natural state of the body formed from the various humours. This was possibly the most interesting physiology lecture I've ever had. Sigh. 

Anyway, we went to see a live production of Macbeth this afternoon at Navy Pier. All of us were literally blown away by the adaptation. None of us had been to this theater, and we honestly thought it would be a crappy little production for tourists visiting Chicago. Apparently, Chicago Shakespeare Theater is a world-renowned theater group. It really was impressive. The theater was small and built in the model of The Globe, but on a smaller, more comfortable scale. It had similar tiers and the stage jutted out into the audience and was on a similar level as the crowd. There really wasn't a bad seat in the house. 

They created a modern adaptation, so the soldiers wore camouflage fatigues and carried guns. It was super bloody and violent. They show Macbeth literally cutting a dude in half at the very beginning. The witches show up as part of the media following Macbeth, and later on Macbeth finds them in a fetish strip club. Lady Macbeth, who famously prays to be unsexed, was pretty much running around naked the whole time. And she was super crazy, which was fun/disturbing to see live. Everything was just done so well. It was great to be able to sit and watch something so rich with nuance and meaning. Every movement, every direction meant something. I really need to make sure I go again at some point.

I also watched a modern movie adaptation by the BBC. James McAvoy was Macbeth, and it was oddly great. I say 'oddly' because Macbeth is the head chef of a restaurant and Duncan is the restaurant's owner. It works really well though. I think my new favorite line ever is "There are pigs landing on my head!" ... I think you all need to see it to understand (it's on Netflix's instant watch under Shakespeare Retold). 

 

So yeah, that's all. I'm going to NYC next week, which I am super excited about. Dude, look at me being excited about things! Yay!

Eh, it's winter

Ok, so I'm going to suck it up and try to blog regularly. We'll see how this goes. I feel like things right now are in a bit of a lull, but will probably pick up soon. We're going to schedule our third-year rotations in the next month or two. Of course, I'll be trying to work my schedule around going to ComicCon, because comics are more important than learning how to be a doctor. I'm not even kidding. I either go to ComicCon now, or try to squeeze myself into a Phoenix costume when I'm 40 and scar thousands of children for life. I also have to start studying for boards soon, so you know there are going to be some cheeky shenanigans that will ensue. And by "cheeky shenanigans" I mean that I'll probably drop my microbiology flashcards in snow that's covered in dog urine and I'll end up stabbing somebody. Hilarious. 

Speaking of snow, I think it's time for another exciting edition of, "Winter: wtf?" So all the snow we've gotten in the past month never melted away at any point. It was really quite disgusting. I wasn't kidding about all the dog piss covered snow. Since I'm in the ritzy part of town, everyone has little dogs and they have to urinate somewhere, thus we have yellow snow. Also, all of the snow lining streets were covered in black. I'm not entirely sure what the black stuff is - whether it's from the cars or the tar on the streets or what - but I fear for my lungs. I just don't want to see that. Anyway, the disgusting snow finally melted this weekend, and I realized that I kinda forgot what the ground looked like. Winter is a complete mindfuck. We're having a bit of a warm spell, which is nice. It was 60 degrees and sunny yesterday, and again, I forgot what warmth coming from the sun felt like. I stepped outside and was struck by the heat causing me to do a crazy little move where I covered my face with my arms and squinted in pain at the sun. Then, I realized that I should stop looking like an insane, emo vampire child and walk to class. I'm so smooth.

I did have a fun conversation with my college mentor. We have to check in with him every semester, which is fine. He did happen to bring up the Healthy Living class they're currently making us take. Essentially, it's a class where they tell us that we need to eat more fruits and vegetables, exercise, sleep and not smoke. I imagine you know just how much my head is shaking as I'm writing this. Yes, they're lecturing second-year medical students on the very basics of health and nutrition. Becuase apparently none of us had an interest or understanding of the very minimum of healthy behavior before coming to medical school. God, these people make me so mad. I decided to take the honest route with my mentor and tell him how boring the class is, mostly because I've been following health news since high school and took nutrition classes in college. He seemed to understand and take this ok, but still decided to push the topic to find one positive thing about this useless class. 

So he mentioned the Behavior Modification project. Good god. If ever I would have just taken a punch to the face as opposed to this misery, it was at this moment. We have to pick a behavior of our own and modify it over the next 12 weeks. Most people are choosing stuff like sleeping regularly or going to the gym, which I already do. My mentors point was that it was good for physicians to know how hard it is to change a behavior so they can empathize with their patients. I just stared at the poor guy. I had a whole tirade of how I went strictly vegetarian three-and-a-half years ago, only lapsing a handful of times in the first two years. I started doing yoga regularly last year, during med school, and now go three times a week. There are many, many other things I could name, too. I figured I was fighting a losing battle, though, and did what I do best. I just didn't respond and continued to stare at my mentor. That got him to stop talking, which was nice. :)

Well, that's all for now. I swear I will try to update more...