Friday, June 3, 2011

9 Days or I'm not sure I even remember my name anymore

   I'm moving to New Jersey in less than a month. And I take my first Boards in 9 days. Holy crap. My apartment is basically in boxes and I wear the same clothes multiple days in a row mainly because they happen to be the ones on the floor closest to my bed. Today was the first time I had been outside my front door for a reason that did not include MORE CAFFEINE in three days. I also thought today was Wednesday for about 5 hours until I opened my computer and realized that it's actually Wednesday + 2.

   I wake up in the middle of the night because I've forgotten the most common type of thyroid cancer (papillary) and then I can't fall back asleep until I get up, find my First Aid (the all-knowing study guide of Step 1) and look it up. Then I do the same thing about an hour later because I've forgotten the name of that drug that turns people into smurfs (Amiodarone). Obviously I'm not smart enough to just sleep with the damn book next to me so I wouldn't have to get up 15 times. And why haven't I been sleeping with it under my pillow for the last two weeks?!

   If you're reading this, so, basically, my mother, you know me, which means you know I'm neurotic and this shouldn't surprise you. I have slept with the notes for every medical school test under my pillow the night before. You know, just in the off chance that osmosis works on more than just water. I had better not fail the Boards because I just jinked the dirt. Thankfully, I still have 9 more nights to make up for that lapse in judgement.

Everyone in my class is starting to drift off to their new cities, two or three at a time. The prevailing sentiment is along the lines of "Get me out of this hellhole." I don't disagree, mainly because this place is a pretend town, with the budgetary licensing for 150 blinking stoplights but only 1 snowplow. Also there are no Targets and way too many coffee shops that close at 5 pm.

But I'm also going to miss this place because small towns are weird, and I like weird.
Here's what I'm going to miss:

-Windchimes made out of coat hangers and Natty Lite cans (I'm still mad at myself for not taking a picture with my phone)

-Barbeque grills on house roofs (again with the pictures)

-Driving behind a truck pulling a small wooden house behind it. (and again. Seriously, what is wrong with me.)

-Awkwardly seeing my professor at the grocery store in the middle of the day, knowing that we're both skipping school.

- A place where the townies' idea of a good time is hanging out at the Kum 'n' Go gas station, sitting on the hood of the car with your friends, smoking a cigarette and listening to the radio blasting out of your open windows.

- A place where they name the gas stations Kum 'n' Go.

-Being able to go home and see my parents without involving aerial deathtraps. Moving half way across the county means I actually have to get in a plane alone. During landing and takeoff, I tend to spazz out, with visions of fiery crashes dancing in my head. I don't think people enjoy having random strangers holding their hand in a bone-crushing grip. On the other hand, some day I'm going to be on a plane when their flight attendant asks if there's a doctor on board, and it's going to be awesome. It's the little joys in life... Also moving far away means that I'm no longer three hours from home and can't go visit my parents just because.

-Going to the gun range to shoot my old class notes. This is what happens when a good portion of your classmates are on military scholarship, own enough firepower to take over Russia, and have a lot of residual hatred toward Anatomy.

-Rednecks, because, seriously, how ridiculous are they? This town is so full of them that the electric billboard outside of the pharmacy here posts helpful tips on personal hygiene that involve things like wearing deodorant showering daily. I might be losing the rednecks but I'm gaining the "Jersey Shore" type people that I suspect are running rampant around NJ. They must be the East Coast equivalent of rednecks, right?

-The Blue Bunny Ice Cream golf cart: Kirksville is way to weird to have an ice cream truck. Instead we have some woman with an old golf cart retrofitted to hold a small freezer, which she drives up and down the streets. It's the Pinocchio of ice cream carts: "I'm real. I'm a real ice cream truck!"

All in all, I'm excited to be going somewhere new, experiencing a different part of America, all while hopefully not driving into a pothole the size of the state. It's been fun Kirksville. See you in a year.