Two quarters down and time to celebrate

This one felt a real accomplishment. I'm done with Gross Anatomy, Histology, Embryology and Biochem!

Obviously I need to really this information better in the next year and a half before COMLEX 1/Step 1, but the formal instruction and grades are done. One caveat is that I haven't gotten all my grades back yet. The ones I'm most interested in are those classes listed above. I have a 90%+ in Biochem going in but the test was very hard. I think I'm close, but who knows. Gross and Histo was a real grind. I really wasn't sure if I was going to pass until 10am Friday, two hours before the tests started. Now I just hoping that I didn't blow my ~95% in Gross and I managed to pick up my Histo a bit (85% prior to the test).

Bottom line though, I made it through the toughest week yet. It was a bear! I hardly got any sleep and studied non-stop for over a week with stress up to the eyeballs. Cramming when you've been irresponible is one thing. It's another when you've been studying like crazy and still don't if you're going to pass in medical school. I can't imagine passing these if I or my family had health problems or some other unforeseen event come up in the last few weeks.

Gross ended with a nice ceremony thanking the people who dedicated their bodies to our use. Immeditately after we bagged the bodies and cleaned our areas I headed home to quickly pack. Julie has been a godsend these few weeks. She not only packed the kids, but has pretty much been their parent this last week while I've been cramming and Becky is finishing the Bar. Aunt Julie is doing a great job!

So we got on the road about 7:30pm and I was still awake enough to drive for awhile. I did manage to sleep a bit in the back row of the van while Julie drove but sheer exhaustion and the stress of the last week kept me awake for the most part. It was a joy and reward to allow my brain to wander and think freely. It was amazing how nice it was to free my thoughts from the discipline of the last few weeks.

We arrived in LA around 12:30am LA time and met Becky. All of us got up fairly early for the hour drive to Becky's graduation ceremony. She was equally relieved to done, completely done, with her JD and the bar. Two months wait until we hear her results, bt she doesn't need to pass it so we won't be biting our nails. (speaking of, last week the stress was enough that I started biting again and my nails are stubs!) Also in addendence were Becky's mom and one uncle, my Mom, Dad and Stepmother and one of our nieces.

The ceremony was interesting. Her class is definiately older than mine. And lawyers are just a different breed. The speaker was pretty good. He's the VP of Planning/Strategy for The Washington Post company that owns Kaplan and Concord University of Law. He was, of course, very pro-lawyer, but talked about how Becky's program was harder than many public schools where students didn't have spouses, kids and careers to juggle with school. He recommended a book call Hard America, Soft America that sounds interesting. The gist is that our schools are weak and our kids start way behind up until about 18 yrs old. Then universities and the "kick you in the butt" capitalist system we have forces most of the kids to grow up fast so that by their twenties and thirties, we are far more compeitive than most countries.

Afterwards, we had a nice lunch. Then is was a long drive home. The kids and most of the family had enough energy to go swimming at the hotel pool, but I crashed for two hours. I think the exhaustion finally hit me. And I hadn't slept very well, reliving at least tests in my dreams during the night.

We had a casual night at the hotel and ate too much. Sunday everyone headed to California Adventures at Disneyland for the day. Disney is way overrated, but I can handle one (very expensive) day every couple years. Colton was thrilled because he's finally tall enough to ride the big roller coasters (picture forthcoming). Even with the hassles of coordinating a big group amidst huge crowds we had a good time.

At 5:30pm or so we started the 5.5 hour drive home which included a stop at the airport to drop off most of the relatives. The drive was long, but uneventful. Monday I slept in until noon and got some of my To Dos done. Still working on them now, but making some progress. I definately need some down time too. Unfortunately Becky headed right back to work. Even thought it's a non-profit, she's part of the exectutive team working a big merger with another non-profit.

That's plenty of verbage for an update. The impact posting will have to wait.