November surprise!

Haven't had time to post since school started, but now that I have a 2-week break for Thanksgiving I feel the need to catch up on things, including blog posts.

My first semester of medical school has been such a whirlwind and it was really hard being away from home for weeks at a time and only able to spend about an hour per weekend home of quality time. So, to take the stress off, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity U of I has to "decompress", meaning I can split my first year into two and halving my courseload. I still have 6 courses I'm taking, but it's better than the 14 I had before!

So, I guess this year is my M1 year and next year would be M1.5. After that, everything proceeds normally with M2-4. So this year I'm taking Anatomy, Anatomy lab, Micro/Immuno, Micro/Immuno Lab, Histo, Histo Lab, Statistics, Intro to Human Disease, and RMED. Technically, the labs are components of the whole class, but they have their own skills exams we have to pass in order to pass the course overall that are unique to the labs themselves. So that leaves Biochemistry, Embryology, Genetics, Physiology, Neuroscience, RMED and Behavioral Science for next year. I'm sure I'll blog more about it later. But for the mean time, my stress level is low and my exam scores are high and I think decompressing was the best decision of my career so far :)

Outside of med school, Joe and I are celebrating our 3rd anniversary tomorrow. We had a rocky patch a year ago, but the counseling has worked and we've been able to weather the times apart pretty well. Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow and this year we'll be at Sue's house in St. Charles.

I still have my finals for Micro/Immuno and IHD classes 12/15 and 12/19.