if you can't beat 'em, join 'em

I am officially in medical school. Which basically means I study all the time, and I make new friends by complaining about how much work we have to do. Note that this simultaneously alienates me from my former friends. Quite the dynamic equilibrium. (I know what you are thinking ... oh no she did-nt! To which I respond 'oh ... I certainly did'!)

But all is well in the land of intellectual self-aggrandizing and social ineptitude. I hit the expected hurdles: homesickness, self-doubt and la piece de resistance ... loneliness. I am having a difficult time making good friends at school. But I think this is par for the course - making friends is a long-lived process and it takes several iterations to find the good ones. I am on my way though ... slowly but surely I found my way to the back row of the lecture hall. Every morning I roll in a few minutes late to lecture, and plop down next to similarly minded classmates and engage in a lively game of "What the hell is the professor talking about?" Followed by my next favorite game of "Let's make fun of everyone but us, since we clearly are the coolest kids in school."

I had an idea to have a class-wide dodgeball game (but dropped it once I found out they already have one in the spring). I wanted to call whatever team I formed "Picked Last." Because clearly, if you are at my school, you were picked last whenever they played dodgeball. Except for the six foot tall girl in my class who apparantly was a rock star Ivy League basketball player. And who has been assigned to my anatomy group (which starts in a little over a week. The frequency of blogging, I am sure, which increase right around then because that's where the good stories will come from). But yes, she is in my anatomy group. I am sure it will make for quite the comedic scene. Has anyone seen the movie Twins? I envision our anatomy table to resemble that somewhat. Except multicultural. Sort of like Benneton-meets-Twins.

I digress. So yes, overall nothing extraordinary. Just life. And the lovely feeling of doing something (however painful it may be) that is taking me to a place I really want to be. Not once during this whole process have I doubted my desire to become a physician. And that is pretty gosh-darn nice.

OK, back to the back row. We were learning the details of the cell cycle late last week. In the cycle, a cell alternates between a phase when it copies its DNA (called "S" phase for synthesis) and the phase when it divides ("M" for mitosis). For several reasons, it is important the M phase follows S phase. Our professor spent quite some time explaining this, and often reiterated:

"S&M are very important. M must follow S. In certain situations, S&M alternate rapidly."

And in there in the large theater, a lone, high pitched giggle emerged from the back row of miscreants.