I have been living in St. Louis for 10 weeks now (WOW) and I haven't really talked about it on here yet!
My roommate, Bethany, and I get along wonderfully! She is one of my closest friends and everything in the apartment is going very well. There are very few things we have done without each other. I am so lucky to have ended up living with someone who is so much like me! I've never had such an easy going living situation.
School is going well, in general. I have made a group of great friends; we got close very quickly because we are all going through the same thing and spend all day together at school and in the library. On an average day I am at school from about 8am-6pm, but there are plenty of days that I stay until 10 or 11. I have been trying to mix up where I study, but the school library is convenient, my classmates are nearby, and there's free coffee down the hall, so I usually stick around there. My only real class right now is Anatomy. The course block is 10 weeks long, so now I only have 3 weeks left! I cannot wait. This is by far the most difficult class I have ever taken.
Once a week we also have a class called Applied Clinical Skills, which is when they teach us the non-scientific things about being a doctor: how to take a history, how to treat special issues, etc. Also, my school sponsors a student-run clinic, and I volunteered there a couple weekends ago. It was amazing because I basically got to play doctor! We had licensed doctors there as well, but I greeted the patient in the waiting room, did the initial physical exam (eye test, hearing test, blood pressure, pulse, temperature...), and took the history. I really loved doing that!
We just had our second (out of 3) anatomy exams yesterday, so I am taking this weekend completely off. This is the first official weekend of fall, and it couldn't be better timing for me to finally have time because the weather is beautiful! I live near a huge park...the biggest one in the country...so I plan on taking advantage of that at some point. I have been there a few times already- when BJ came to visit we checked out the art museum there, my mom and I went to the zoo, and I've wandered about with my friends. I haven't been able to do nearly as much St. Louis exploring as I did when BJ was here...we had such a great visit! We went to that museum, had stl-style pizza in the italian neighborhood known as the Hill, did the touristy arch thing, and went to a Cardinals game! With a group of school friends I went to a concert under the arch, I went to the Anheiser-Busch brewery, and we've done some exploring of the nightlife.
Even though school is so much work, and at times I feel like I have no life at all, I am very happy here. It's hard being so far away from my family, but I try to stay caught up on what everybody is up to. I would like to congratulate Jamie for being initiated in SDT today! And it was strange hearing about the Atlanta flooding and knowing I wouldn't experience it at all. Seriously, though, I feel like I have really found my place (not St. Louis, necessarily, but med school...) and I am looking forward to every step of this long road.
I hope everyone else is doing well and I would LOVE to have a good variety of updates to read on here...how else am I supposed to know what's going on in your lives??? Even if you think it's not worth writing about, I think most of us would disagree.
I LOVE YOU!!!!!!
Kim
