Everyday I feel behind. I need to skim over the textbook and notes for the next days worth of lectures, review the material in today's lectures, understand everything that has been taught up till now. I need to do the practice problems and study questions, look over the diagrams and figures, stare at purplish blobs of histology that really all look the same but from which you're supposed to distinguish the oblong nuclei of the smooth muscle cells from the oblong nuclei of the fibroblasts. I have to stare at anatomical atlas because the parts just don't engrain into my head. I try figuring out what all the little lines are pointing to, what's the difference between a white tube that's supposed to be a nerve from one that's supposed to be an artery. I have to look at EM's and X-rays and body parts obscured by fat and connective tissue. I have to figure out how we go from one cell to two to four and eight, morulas and blastocysts, bi- and tri-laminar discs, splanchnopleure and somatopleure, notocords, neural crests and neural tubes, somites and lateral plates...

And everyday the information keeps piling on top in dumpster quantity loads while my brain processes it at a snail's pace, page by page from the bottom of the toppling pile. There's so much to memorize, so much to know, and there's no good way of doing it except brute-force studying. I hate studying. I never quite learned how to study, how to process all this random stuff and make sense of it. It's kind of like having to sprint forward in order to remain in place, like some fantastic description I quite remember from Alice in Wonderland.

But it only gets harder, and it only becomes more. I'm overwhelmed yet I try to keep it all in prospective. If I can't remain afloat in shallow waters there's simply no possiblity of breathing in the currents of the sea. Everyday people just study so hard. And when we talk about it they all seem to know the material like the back of their hand. I need to know it like that, yet I'm surprisingly reluctant to put the effort in; I just wish I didn't have to study to know it all. At some point we all reach a trade off - how much to study and how much to stress, how satisfied we are with ourselves for being average or for one standard deviation away from the mean.

Medical school is hard. I knew that before I signed up. My mentality hasn't quite caught up with the demands.

Fall. What comes with the cooling season? There's the turning leaves of golden yellow and firey red and bright orange. The breezes that remind you to put on another layer before venturing out on your day. The pumpkin patches, signs of harvest, Halloween decorations. The warm red colors make a final appearance before receding behind the piercing blue and white of winter.

I was thinking about the changing colors yesterday, thinking about how I've taken it for granted all these years, walked past the trees planted in neat rows and giant patches all across suburbia, trees that have been rooted for many a years, whose branches are thick and heavy with memory and years of growth. I think about all this, because I realized yesterday that I have not seen a proper, large tree all these months. I have not seen the seasonal transformation of color that seemingly so naturally coats the East coast. There are no leaves on the ground, especially not a red one. The wind courses past the tall concret buildings standing side-by-side. No rustling of leaves. I miss it.

The wind was quite gusty today, and the air quite cold. The feeling of autumn is in the air, and I kind of enjoy the briskness. I wish it will last longer than it probably will, because Chicago only has two seasons: bone chilling winters and sweltering summers. Where is the happy medium? The lovely spring and the nolstalgic fall? Running along the lakefront I always pass the Buckingham Fountain. Depending on my timing, I sometimes see the water shooting way up. It does it on the hour. The wind blew the water toward the lake, and you could feel a little sprinkle of droplets as you pass by Grant Park. It's quite beautiful to behold, a sheet of water rather then just a single ray shooting into the sky.

Doesn't it seem like some people have more hours built into their day then others? I totally envy them, envy how they manage to exude that sense of charisma which actually translates into strong leadership, friendship, and fellowship. We've all known those people who seem to manage to accomplish a thousand and one things at the highest level, yet still have time for the small joys in life. I could give specific examples, but the lists of accomplishments do them no justice; it's the whole embodiment of character that seems to teeter on the edge of perfection, that unattainable utopia so beyond the normal person's grasp. They seem to be good at everything. Talented, intelligent, thoughtful, witty, easy-going...it's all the good qualities and nary a defect in sight.

What could you possibly say about them other than that? Wow. It renders me speechless, gawking like a fool and scratching my head trying to figure out how to emulate perfection.

It rains and rains and rains. Friday was absolutely gorgeous, Saturday was cloudy then rainy, Sunday was just all drizzle and rain, and the next whole week is looking like sopping wetness with scattered thunder and lightening storms. What a great way to kick-off a new school year.

I can't believe summer is over. It surely doesn't feel like summer anymore with those puddles and trying to dodge the cars spraying you on every city street crosswalk. I'm still in lazy summer mode, not at all ready to be memorizing the Krebs cycle and every other biochemical pathway in the next few weeks, not ready to be waking up at seven in the morning everyday to get to class by eight, not ready to be sitting in giant lecture halls again scribbling down notes on every Powerpoint slide flashed across the screen. Medschool is like being demoted back to high school again; we all take the same classes that start ridiculously early (in terms of college standards). It's very rigid, not at all like college where you could cunningly craft your schedule to exclude all classes starting before 11am or held on Fridays and go to bed at 3am. *sigh* the good life is over.

Actually it's orientation all week then real classes begin the next. Orientation includes a criminal background check (because all pre-meds are predispositioned for violent crimes, obviously), getting photos that you're stuck with for the next few years taken, finding out what college you're in (unfortunately not via sorting hat), information sessions about this and that, financial aid, HIPAA training, course intros, blah blah. I haven't gotten any of my textbooks yet. There's about thirty listed for all of four courses were taking. Bah.

Guess it's time to go to sleep when normal people in the real world do.