The Most Efficient Way to Give Yourself a Stress Ulcer/Myocardial Infarction

...whenever i say "infarction" my husband laughs. because we are a house full of mature adults....

:)

well, my big angry cumulative exam is done. it was a bear, as i knew it would be. 360 multiple choice questions, took about 4 hrs to finish. i took a few stretch, pee, eat breaks during it, which helped, but still by the end my vision was blurring. i just get bored and antsy. and maybe sloppy as a result. i will need to do some marathon training for the boards (same # of ??'s) so i can be vigilant for the duration. i didn't do awesome, but i passed w/ enough margin that i think i'll be fine on the boards after putting intensive study into it for a few weeks in august. for the program, i have only 1 more exam to complete- which is the week of graduation in august and is a practical exam where we show our physical exam skills on fake patients and read xrays and such. sigh.

i am SO looking forward to next summer when i'll be lying around by a pool somewhere, not a worry in the world, thinking back on these 2 summers of stressed-out studying and anxiety over jobs and licenses and stuff.

actually, since i plan to be a filthy rich successful PA by then (in less than a year and despite much accumulated student debt, naturally), i'll actually be out tanning by my OWN new pool (maybe filled with champagne, i haven't decided). yea, that's it. and i'll have my gardener, harold, fanning me with palm branches and my personal assistant, bridgette, bringing me fresh guava margaritas every 30 minutes.

yep. that's exactly how it will be.

...i was told recently by an aficionado of my blog that i can seem somewhat hard on myself regarding school and learning, and tend to be hypercritical (so brace yourselves, here it comes again)...but honestly, when i don't know answers, it worries me not for my grade or getting my license, it worries me for how i'll be under serving my patients if i don't have the body of knowledge to know how to diagnose and fix them. people keep telling me i'll 'learn a lot on the job' over the first few years, and i'm sure that's true. but i worry about those patients i'm seeing during this learning period and how they won't get as good of care as they should because i'm a rookie. i don't think there's any way around this, it just is one of those things i choose to dwell on. :( to comfort myself, i keep chanting, "you've learned so much, you've come so far, you can always ask for help, you can always look stuff up...."

plus, i'll have the added pressure of making sure i'm competent enough to keep the big-money making gig i get so that i can support harold, bridgette, and the rest of my growing entourage.

so, PHEW, i am relieved that test is done. but, YIKES, i still have much anxiety about the future. i'm working more on the job hunt this weekend. no interviews yet, but some good leads. and i'm going to shadow an Ob/Gyn PA next week and pick her brain on how to proceed w/ my career from here. so that'll be good.

great. now i'm craving a margarita. but i still have to make it for my own stupid self as bridgette has the weekend off. oh, and is a figment of my imagination. that, too.