My life seems to oscelate between good and bad, highs and lows. I rarely experience absolutes - my day is never "great", nor is it "crappy". It's the perpetual blender of all things good and bad, occasionally garnished with a paper umbrella and served up in a coconut shell.

Today, our school held it's 16th Annual Santa's Workshop to provide a fun Christmas to children of Los Angeles County who are in protective custody (aka foster care.) At least 16 student clubs from the various progams came together and provided a luncheon, gifts, stockings, games and crafts for about 50-75 children and their guardians. Our group, the Doctors of Osteopathy Chamber Singers (aka DOCS) sang carols on and off for about an hour and a half, while kids ran about our student commons with stockings full of candies and toys. At one point, two very tiny girls with doe-eyes the color of chocolate excitedly displayed to us their prized possessions - a day-glo orange Pretty Pony and a brunette Barbie. The entire affair was so bitter-sweet - it's so great to do something fun for these little tykes, but at the same time, there is the realization that there are those individuals out there who have no "normality" in their lives. Their priority isn't what X-Box game they want, but to have something for breakfast. For whatever reason, they live in a wolrd many of us couldn't even imagine - they have no real home, the most important people in their lives are gone, and their thoughts are of survival. I sometimes have to wonder if this version of reality even enters into the minds of the general population - perhaps if it did, little things like "Happy Holidays" vs "Merry Christmas" wouldn't be the focal point of the season.

In other news, D-Day is December 16th - our final "molecular and cellular basis of medicine" exam. Topics will be medical genetics (testing, diagnosis, pharmacogenomics, fingerprinting), biochemistry (carbohydrate, fatty acid, and protein metabolism, vitamin utilization as cofactors, synthesis and degradation enzymes), and some basic embryology. Now, MCBM is a new concept at school - each class used to be independent, and while some ran all semester, others were compressed into a few days. The tests have changed, some lecturers have changed, and overall, this class is no other class' biochemisty. A few nights ago, I came up with a novel idea - we have about 40 hours of lecture on this last exam, and there are about 200 students in our class. Since the old practice exams are, well, old, I figured the class could pull together and come up with our own practice questions... if half the students in the class pitched in five or ten questions, we'd have a monster quiz bank! Needless to say, medical students are never the "mature adults" we make ourselves out to be.

Our class has issues - while previous classes can pull together for the common good, our class tears itself apart over stupid, trivial things. Example - our class t-shirt. Our class president, bless his heart, started the discussion about a class t-shirt. He asked for ideas and slogans, and then selected the top four concepts. Two were heavily promoted, and debated. The first, "MD + OMM = DO" was viewed as being elitist, or a smack at MDs, or as a "justification" for why we are in osteopathic school and not allopathic school. The second, "Tuition = $35,000 a year, Books = $2000 a year, Touching your classmates without a commitment, Priceless", was viewed as being too vulgar. Just the voting for the two slogans became a war. The president had to stop the voting for a few days and tell the class to chill the hell out. It was the stupidest behavior I have ever seen in my life.

 

Now, having said that, let us return to the topic of a quiz bank. I started the discussion of a quiz bank to try and get the class to pull together for everyone's benefit. Out of 200 students, 5 offered to help. I had a discussion today with one of the gals who helped with some questions, who is also a class officer, who stated that the kids in our class always want the perks, but don't want to help, or be appreciative of said help. The instructors spend so much time trying to get us to work as a team, yet we can't even come together over a stupid t-shirt. What the hell was I even thinking trying to get a beneficial project up and running?