WHAT’S UP – IN A NUTSHELL
Helpful eye tip #146: Don't rinse your eye with urine (yours or other people's). You could give yourself gonorrhea.
Whew! Finally a chance to blog. These past few weeks have been crazy hectic since it’s the start of a new quarter. Here’s what I have been up to:
-Organizing the equipment fair
The 3rd years usually put on a mini-expo for the 1st & 2nd years since they’re required to purchase equipment. This is their chance to play around with ours, and ask us questions. Sounds simple enough but when you only find out the day before that the sales reps are coming & the ‘little ones’ are totally clueless; we had to do our best to make sure they weren’t overwhelmed and making sound decisions. I think we could’ve done a better job but the miscommunication between the school & our class is something to work on.
-Student Association Club Blindspot
Organized by the Student Association (hereon in referred to as SA). I like to think of our school as a high school but more professional. =D SA is pretty much like the student council. We put club blindspot at the beginning of each school year to everyone know all the extra-curricular activities they could be involved in. Free pizza & adult beverages are found as well. Not much responsibility on my part other than chatting to students & handing out pizza.
-Research project/Case report
We have our 3rd year project that’s due next May. An article assignment and the proposal were both due at the beginning of Sept. Not that she didn’t inform us at the beginning of summer, but of course I procrastinated – especially with studying for Boards. I was originally going to do research with 2 of my classmates but 3 days before the assignment was due, things didn’t quite work out. Talk about a panic attack! You don’t just try to plan a research, find a faculty advisor and write a proposal in just 3 days. Ended up scraping the research idea & I’m just going to do case report instead. I’m slightly disappointed cuz I’ve never done research but I doubt I’m a good research person either. I like interacting with people too much to be doing research – that’s my opinion anyway.
-SA Golf Outing
As class rep, it is expected that I attend & participate enthusiastically at all school events *grin* As you can imagine, I don’t play golf. I find it to be one of the most boring games in the world. But I had fun at the outing! I didn’t play, just helped out with registration but I got to chat with everyone as they were coming in at the halfway mark and learned how to tally scores. So (-)’s are a good thing! The best part was observing behaviours of the male species. All the older men would place their golf bags outside, come into the clubhouse, grab a beer or two, have a seat in front of the football game and just chat. Quite interesting to overhear conversations too, my favourite quote being: “It’s a fact, men go to play golf to get away from their wives”
-Work
Did I mention that I work on campus? Mondays I give tours for applicants here for an interview. Wednesdays I work with an ophthalmologist in Advanced Care. I’m also an open-lab tutor for optometry and course tutor for pretty much all the 1st and 2nd years classes. The hours are flexible but fairly consistent throughout the week. I love each one of my jobs even though they’re all different. I really like this school so any time I can share that with people, especially people thinking about coming here, I get excited. Working with the ophthalmologist is great cuz I get to see & learn all these things in a clinical setting. Tutoring is fun because I enjoy teaching and it’s such a reinforcement when you see the light-bulb go off in their heads. Plus it’s a great way to build relationships and care about others.
-SA Casino Night
Fundraising for scholarships to give back to students. If you have chips at the end of the night, you can exchange them for raffle tickets to win some awesome prizes. But since I’m on SA, I wasn’t allowed to be in the raffle. Boo…cuz they had a lot of tech stuff like IPOD, Digi-cam, TV, PS2, DVD player, etc. Oh well, I think I would’ve lost everything any ways. I tried to play High/Low but lost “$500” and was just starting to learn how to play Texas Hold ‘Em when it was time for me to leave. Good times of food & mingling though. One thing that was interesting was this one person who kept on coming back for more buy-ins. We finally had to cut them off when they spent $50. It’s great that all their money’s going for a good cause but scary that we actually had to cut people off. I hope it’s just cuz they had too much to drink and not because they might actually have a gambling problem.
-Externships
This has been the bane of my existence for the past little while. As 3rd years, we are in the process of choosing where will be for our rotations in our 4th year. It’s taxing on the entire class and for us in particular because there’s always going to be people who aren’t pleased with what they got and think that the system is flawed. I agree that it’s not perfect but unless you have a suggestion for improvement, all I can offer you is a sympathetic ear. Does that sound harsh & uncaring? I want to do my best to help everyone but we still need to be fair.
Any way, here’s what 've I got at this moment:
Summer: Rapid City, South Dakota
Fall: West Haven, Connecticut
Winter: Hampton, Virginia
Spring: Chicago, Illinois
We have our Scramble Night tonight after class so hopefully things will run smoothly, and everybody will be happy in the end. But those us regulating the evening is preparing for the worse =P.
I’ve been battling with God about Externships in particular because I really wanted to go Everett, Washington in the Summer and Detroit, Michigan in the Fall. I was pleased when I first heard my selections yesterday (excited even) because they were my 2nd choices but as the night went on, I kept wanting my 1st choice instead. Isn't that typical of us as humans to always want more? All I can do is my best and leave it up to Him. I just wish the carrot won’t dangle in front of me like so. It’s frustrating but I know it’s here because I haven’t fully surrendered it.
Mom made an interesting observation. My 1st choices were based on visiting people but my 2nd choices were based on the actual quality of the site. Perhaps this is to show me how my perspective is not where it should be? Part of me wants to just let things be, to just be satisfied with what I have right now and another part wants to fight tooth-and-nail to get what I want.
That’s about all.
P.S.
Gary, I will respond to your comment, I promise. I’m just trying to figure out how much I want to share on the blog. Half of me doesn’t want to be completely open, not knowing how much is really necessary/beneficial (particularly in this case) and half of me is wondering if it’s just pride that’s holding me back. Why is it so hard to be completely honest and vulnerable? Still struggling with same thoughts as I did back then – fears of judgement. Use me Lord.
