Sneaking

Real life snuck up on me something fierce, what with homework, applications, orientations, and dear friends having their baby. It has been an interesting week, let me tell you.

I am about 5 days away from launching into more midterms. Physiology and physics. I'm pulling a reasonable grade in both but I could do better. There is a fair bit of pressure on me here to perform well because I'm basically between grades at this point.

I was accepted into a clinical research internship at San Francisco General Hospital, sponsored by UCSF. I am really excited about this. Basically my job consists of approaching patients in the emergency department that fit specific profiles and asking them to consent to participate in various studies. The two that hold my interest the most involve blunt trauma and HIV testing.

Because of the confidentiality agreements that I made, I'm not permitted to talk about specific patients. What I can do, however, is discuss my experiences working around an ER (obviously I'm not a doctor, so I am not trained to assist in an emergency or anything like that) and what I see on a daily basis. I can't wait to get started. I spent quite a bit of time in a veterinary ER, and I have a feeling that I will adjust rather well.

I also have been doing rather well at chipping away at my applications. I got three done, and am working on the last two. I was thrilled when I got a secondary application invitation from Stanford, which is my first choice.

Applications are an odd duck. Sometimes they give you an enormous amount of room to finish what really can be summed up in a sentence or two. Sometimes the questions are so unlike everything that I have answered before that I am just taken aback and really need to consider my response. The more I do the easier it gets, but I doubt it will ever really be easy.

On a slightly different note, I am gathering my materials and letters and preparing for application to grad school. 3 local universities have my interest: Stanford, UCSF and SFSU. I was considering USF but they are really expensive. I have to investigate their biology programs, because I still really want to apply for grad studies in neuroendocrine physiology. The deadline for SFSU is the earliest one, being in February, and unlike med school they aren't rolling admissions. This means that in February they begin to sift through applications. I am pretty confident that I will get in to SFSU, since I have made so many contacts in the department.

Well, I'm off to school. Hopefully I will be able to finish complement and have a physiology post by Friday.