Not Quite 4th Year

I struggled just the slightest bit in coming up with a title for this entry. My first thought was to call it "Life Goes On." But I hate ending sentences with prepositions... and here I went ahead and did it anyway. It also sounded needlessly melodramatic. I then thought about returning to an often used title back when I was on LiveJournal - "Logorrhea." But this is a different blog... and I've tried to stay away from using one-word titles for some time now. And so I decided on a statement of the obvious - not quite fourth year.

Tomorrow feels like the first day of school. It's been just about three months since last I wrote, and as I suggested in the previous entry, I will be taking a year off to do some research. While initially, I had anticipated this year would start on the 1st of August, it turns out that the official length of my scholarly year will be August 15th (tomorrow) - June 15th. The details of what I will be spending this year doing are still not perfectly clear. My mentor is a surgical oncologist who specializes in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and particularly hepatitis B (HBV) associated types of liver cancer. I developed a good relationship with this man during my surgical rotation, and despite my extreme tardiness in deciding to pursue a scholarly year, he single-handedly made everything possible - including handling the administrative details, writing the proposal, and securing a stipend for the year.

I finished up my medicine rotation near the end of June uneventfully, overall feeling satisfied with my efforts and performance, though not quite enthused. By this point, Hannah had returned to California for the summer to help out with her sister's wedding and spend time with her family. July was spent taking the school-sanctioned USMLE Step 2 review course and then actually sitting for the exam on the 23rd of July. These three weeks were fairly relaxed, with the course running only in the mornings and four times a week. The intensity of studying for this test did not compare to last summer's prep for Step 1. While not entirely pleasant, going through the question bank this time around was far from miserable.

I spent all day on the 23rd going through the eight sections of Step 2 CK and then my mom and I flew out to California that same night. We spent just over a week in California doing some light sightseeing and meeting up with friends, the first few days in So-Cal and the remainder in the Bay Area. This one week vacation concluded with Jeanee's wedding on the 30th and on the 31st, my mom flew to Korea while I returned to the east coast. I spent another week trying to study for Step 2 CS (and largely failing) and took this exam (the practical portion of Step 2, involving seeing 12 fake patients in a simulated setting) in Philadelphia on the 5th of August, Friday. This exam is only offered in five cities throughout the whole country, and it is pass/fail. While inconvenient to travel to Philadelphia, there was less stress involved because of the way it is graded.

This past week, I spent most of my time sleeping in, spending time at Starbucks trying to read through my research proposal at least once (and largely failing), and attempting a road trip to Boston/Maine. I say attempting because I cut this trip short when I left Boston prematurely late Thursday night. Apparently the cool parts of Maine are at least an additional five hours of driving from Boston. This fact, combined with my quasi-anxiety about starting research this week and an overall lack of enthusiasm about the trip in general had me driving home to make it back to New York in just under three hours, my fastest time yet.

The weekend flew by as it always does, and I now find myself comfortably situated in my newly-renovated apartment, mentally preparing myself for my first day of work, which starts bright and not-early-at-all at 9AM. I had been trying to write something here for all of these last two weeks, but it wasn't until just now that I felt ready. Was I inspired by the research proposal that I finally was able to read through and, moreover, to actually understand? Was it the clever and deceptively subtle writing of Tom Rachman in The Imperfectionists, the first work of fiction I am reading in who-knows-how-long? Was it listening to the steady downpour of pitter-patters that's been falling unrelentingly all day? Was it this article that had me panicked and wanting to blog about the uncertainty of my future chosen profession? Was it frustration with the ever-growing tedium of Facebook and YouTube?

I'm not sure. All of the above. I will be engaged in this mode of leisurely (hopefully) purgatory/limbo (call it what you will) of "not quite 4th year" for the next ten months. Despite my describing this upcoming year in these terms, I actually hope to accomplish a lot before next July arrives. Figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Get married. You know, minor details.

It starts tomorrow. Wish me (us) luck!