I missed all but the last fifteen minutes of Everwood. Including the welcome home scene and kiss. 🙁 🙁 🙁

My patient tried very hard to die on me today, and completely freaked me out. And my resident who overlooks me had the day off. So it was just me, trying to figure out what in the world I’d even do. Luckily, I pounced on one of the other residents and he shouted out orders and everything turned out okay (I think), but it really started my day out on a stressful note and didn’t change all day.

I have stories to share, gripes to make, but I am so freaking exhausted that I’m calling it an early night and hitting the sack.

🙂 Night all.

Still hating the applications. Only more.

I’ve been really hoping that I’d be able to mail them off on Thursday, with overnight delivery, so that they’d be received by Friday. Well. I’ve only got one letter (that I know of because the Student Affairs office is run by a bunch of moronic idiots (and that’s not redundant, because believe me, they deserve every adjective of the sort I can provide) and the person who’s SOLE job for the entire year is to open up the little envelopes and put them in files and email us when we’ve received a letter … is gone on vacation. That’s right. And apparently, there’s not a single other person in the 20 people employed who can do it either. So they just pile up, and up. Did I tell you that they lost my letter last week? Yeah. So feeling the love)…. Anyway, I’m waiting for the other two. I apparently have to get a new picture to send in. And the essay is still only 300 words, when it should be closer to 900 by this time. I’ve got ideas, and I really like the first 300 words, but… I work best under stress, right?

*sigh*

I started a new rotation today, my “sub-intership” in internal medicine where I basically function as an intern, only my resident has to cosign everything I do. It’s already kicking my butt– I am so over my head. In three months, I’ve forgotten everything–and I’m expected to know a lot more by this point too. It took me six hours (yes, you read that right) to see one patient, write up his history and physical (H&P), discuss it with the chief resident (whom I stunned with my absolutely lac of EKG reading skills), write up the admit orders, cross out and add to my assessment/plan, discuss with the attending physician, make more orders, find resident so he can sign orders, dictate H&P, remember that I had forgotten most important order of all, add on order, talk to patient again about his home medication, add on that order, find resident again to sign orders, and finally, sign out patient to the cross-covering intern. Six hours. So much for my early afternoon that I had counted on.

My resident does happen to be one of my absolute favorite residents in the entire world–seriously, I nominated him for teaching awards because he was fantastic and half the reason that I’m thinking crazy thoughts about doing two residencies. I am crazy. Out of my freaking mind. I really hope that the end of these four weeks doesn’t change his opinion about me.

On a funny note… claidheamhmor, I had a dream about you. Or actually you and your wife, whom the only picture I’ve seen is her little user picture that she uses when she responds to you. I dreamed that you and your family were coming to the United States to move here, but your wife was coming early to scoop out the places that you wanted to visit. So I took her to see the Grand Canyon and a little cabin on the side of the cliffs that she decided that she wanted to live in. But it was flood season and she was worried that your picture was going to get wet. So the rest of the dream, I spent coming up with ideas to keep that pic dry and move it from one location to another–going all over the country, in fact. Weird, yes, I know. I don’t think that Freud would even know what to make of my dreams. I think this is the first time that I’ve dreamt of my lj friends!

Arrr, maties, tis ye ol’ sea wench, hear to remind ye, that this day dar be “Talk Like a Pirate Day”, so ye scum bett’r be a’growlin’. Best ya smartly visit this here site and learn’d you Piratey lessons or risk bein’ a lubber.

🙂

Just an excuse to post really, but I’m so glad that I actually caught it this year!

Things are going better. With Chris’s help of connecting me to the right secretary (never underestimate the power of an excellent secretary) and much groveling, begging forgiveness and promising to not let my responsibilities slip again, I managed to salvage (I think) my letter of recommendation. I have a bad feeling that it won’t be so full of praise and gushings as it would have been a week ago, but I’m settling for what I can get. Hopefully, it’ll be enough.

I had an excellent weekend. Friday night was the annual All-School Picnic. Hard to believe that I’ve now attended my last picnic– I felt old there, the old model about to be phased out. I didn’t have any interest in meeting the first years, when in years past, I had a great time meeting new people. I did have an unexpected encounter with a particular crush, which, as always, occurred when I was not prepared for even the possibility, and therefore left me feeling awkward, unsocial, unattractive, and blah. And yes, since I am now in full denial mode and have imagined it away, we’re keeping it vague. But you can probably all figure out who anyway (and the picture below should have left no doubt!) Bah.

I spent much of the rest of the weekend with Chris. After not seeing him for more than about an hour for weeks, it was like old times and I just had a great time. I’ve really missed my friend. His life is more and more drifting away from mine–I found out that he’s moving in with his fiancee and future in-laws in a week, something that he neglected to tell me–and in just a few short months, we’re going to be thousands of miles apart. So we hung out with friends Friday night after the picnic (and managed to avoid talking about medicine for two and a half hours! A record!) and went shopping together at the outdoor store garage sale (I bought a tent! Whee!) and went to two movies on Saturday, Just Like Heaven (very cute. Sappy of course, and the medical parts of it made me groan, but I was a sucker for it) and An Unfinished Life (which would have been greatly improved by the absence of JLo. And Ellie shirerain: Your boy was in it! Of course he played the wife-beater villain and had a sneer on his face much of the time, but I can see a little why you like him. 🙂 Damian looks a little like Seth Green. Hopefully this will mean that there will be more pics around of him for you!). It was such a blast and just what I needed to recharge my batteries a little.

It’s my last week on Peds Neuro. I’ve really enjoyed working with the kids, but it has confirmed my decision that Peds is not for me. I love working with the kids (except when they’re 3 and stubborn and won’t touch your finger when you ask them too!), but the parents can be quite overwhelming (it’s funny how different people can get when they’re seeking medical help for their kids rather than themselves), and I’ve had some heartbreaking cases with some pretty sick kids. So it’s adults for me.

And lastly, your opinion… picture quiz!

I love my flist. I really really do.

I know you guys are wanting the whole scoop on what’s happened, but I’m not able to find the words to describe the whole depth of the problem. Let’s just say that messing up chances for a letter of recommendation because of her stupidity, finding out that the other letter is somewhere in limbo and she’s got only a few days to find it (and nobody’s responding to emails), and realizing that she didn’t have a back up plan for anything, put Julia in a depressive funk that she hasn’t seen since the summer of 2001.

Right now, I’m scrambling to pick up pieces, eating humble pie and literally begging people to help me fix this. It’s not fun, and I’ve been in tears for the past two nights, knowing that I brought this on myself. One mistake brought the whole pile down…

On a positive note, I ran into my “arch nemesis” today, and we had our only friendly conversation in the last two years, since the infamous cafeteria blowup. It reminded me that at one time we were friends…. It was nice, and it gave me a niggle of hope.

And side note: Tay (fileg), have you been having problems responding to a journal? I’ve had difficulty once I click on, say an LJ-cut, and read the entry itself–it’s like my browser doesn’t recognize the HTML. No problems if I click to respond on my friends page view. Similar problems with you?

I’ve just screwed up my entire life plans.

Go me!

I give up, I just give up.

Boring post, but I’m freaking out!

Last week, avidtvfan (Marissa) posted that she had gotten infected with a virus that was propagating to her friends on AIM. I use a Mac, so the risk of me being infected was rather small, but you know, I’d been hearing rumors about some files starting to affect macs now that they’re becoming more popular and all of that… And my computer has been running slower than I remember, so I went looking around the internet, found reputable AntiVirus software (Sophos Antivirus for those who are curious)… Ran it, and it found two viruses and promptly deleted them! Yay!

Or no. Today, I open my mail program (Eudora), start downloading my mail and notice that one of my filters isn’t working–my school email is ending up in my Inbox rather than the handy dandy mailbox I’ve created. I go to hand move it–and discover that the entire mailbox is gone. Poof. It’s not anywhere on my hard drive. Um, this is three entire years of email communication. Lot of it junk, but there were also pictures from my classmates and their kids or emails that Chris and I exchanged while he was in Ghana.

Or most important: registration information and PASSWORDS for all of my residency applications. Gone. Just like that.

I checked the log and sure enough: Virus: ‘W32/Bagle-HTML’ detected in Julia Durrant:Users:jcd1013:Documents:Eudora Folder:Mail Folder:ms2006/Content/Embed0004/ReScan/Content
Deleted infected file

See that “Documents:Eudora Folder: Mail Folder:ms2006” bit?–yeah it deleted the entire folder. My preferences (as I have since discovered) are sent to be automatically deleted. And it ain’t in my trashcan.

Peachy. Just peachy.

Any Mac users (or computer whizzes) out there who might have an idea of how I might retrieve my files? Anyone? Bueller?

ETA: After talking with my dad (he’s my personal computer guru) and searching around apple.com and discovering that I could spend over a hundred dollars (!!!) on software and probably not get anything back and “next time you should make a backup of your mail” it hit me. Back up. I made a backup of my mail sometime ago. Pulled out my CD–Nov. 2004. Then I went and looked on my school’s email program–and my messages from November 2004 and onward were present. So I didn’t lose my mail. I’ve made it more difficult for me to find a message, but it’s all there. I think. *wipes brow*

Thanks for all of the advice, my beloved flist! It really helped me know where to even start looking. *BIG GIGANTIC HUGS*

Things to complete before Sept. 15th:

–Personal statement, version #3
—Email Dr. Digre, neurology lady and beg for letter
—Email Dr. Hale, internal med doc and beg for letter
–Talk to Dr. Bale (current neurology attending) about letter, no begging needed (I think)
–Create form letter to email neurology program coordinators
–Email said program coordinators and inform them that I wish to pursue neuro/med residencies and would they be willing to create such a program? Ask to get in touch with program directors–this must be done this weekend!
–Transfer all CV information to annoying forms
–Get official college transcript
–Get medical school transcript (not sure if they’ll be diff’t)
–Get USMLE Step I scores

Deadline for everything to be turned in: Ideal: Sept. 26th. No later than: Oct. 1

I just discovered that my school’s email program allows you to see when a person reads your email. My stomach just dropped. Am extremely nervous now.

ETA: Dr. D said yes! Whoops! Hopefully her letter will be a little more positive than her evaluation! Two more to go!

Dear Santa Claus,

I do hope you’re doing well. I was a little bit worried because I hadn’t heard any response from my letter last January (exactly 9 months ago), but bjorks_defender assured me that I probably caught you on your much needed vacation in the Caribbean, and that it probably got lost in the post-Christmas complaints. So I thought I’d better check in, and see how you and the elves were doing with creating me that boyfriend.

I have to admit, I’ve been a little bit disappointed. Right after I wrote you, Matt took center stage in my awareness, and I was certain that you were moulding him for me. He seemed exactly like my specifications–you even gave him intense blue eyes that sparkled when he look at me, just me! But disappointment followed disappointment, and before I realized it, another girl had claimed him as her present. I don’t know what she bribed you with (I gave you cheese! That’s what the commercial said you liked best!), but Santa, I expected better than that from you. I don’t want to hear that she was just breaking him in for me and that he’s free now–I’m not sure that I’m desperate for hand-me-downs.

But perhaps I’m being to hasty in judgment. Perhaps, you have been working hard with your little elves in Santa’s Workshop and are not ready to reveal him until he’s perfect. If that’s the case, I’ll be patient and wait until Christmas. Maybe. Going to God is seeming like a good alternative right now.

In any case, we do have a deadline coming up. Remember, there’s only 3 and a half months before Christmas–I won’t be very understanding if he’s late.

Lots of love,

Julia