EVENTS OF THE DAY:
1. Sawed off a man's skull.
2. Went to AsiaSF for Dine About Town with med school peeps for dinner tonight...this is a restaurant where all of the waitresses are transgender ladies
3. Had a very graphic/interesting conversation about heterosexual male sexual preferences from my favorite homosexual male at Stanford (well, maybe tied? there's two faves). Wtf, I thought I'd heard it all then he told me about "donkey punch" !?!!?
Needless to say, today has been quite an interesting day. Anatomy was slightly disturbing - not worse than the day we sawed off the legs for me but a very close second. The lab was filled with what looked like a combination of saw dust & parmesan cheese (sorry for the potentially inappropriate food reference...) while everyone was busy sawing through their skulls. The smell was really the worst part of it all...it was unexpected and unlike any other smell we've experience thus far in lab. The smoke from incinerating the bits of skin left on the skull is apparently why it smelled so...strangely?...and I really did not expect that. I put a mask on pronto. I tried to use the bone saw for a little bit in my group but I don't think I have enough upper body strength for it & having to try and force it only made the whole situation that much more real. I opted for skinning the skull instead (which I realize may not sound like a more humane task, but it really is). A few of the MD peeps posted about how incredible it is that someone would donate their body for this type of learning, which I fully agree with. They also said that they asked about how to donate their bodies after lab, which I still think I will never do. Totally down with someone else using my organs after I'm done with them but something about what we're doing to their bodies seems like you'd never be able to rest in peace. There were quite a few times in lab today where we had to turn him over to saw a specific part of his skull or look at this particular cranial nerve & since we still have his entire torso (as opposed to just his head, like most of the other groups) but only concerned with his head academically, it was impossible to flip him over without his intestines falling out one way or his heart rolling across the table. I don't think it's so much a religious/moral issue for me with donating my body to science as it is how I'd like to treat any prized possession I've had my entire life. If someone else wanted to take my favorite piece of jewelry or pair of jeans & wear them after I was done, I'd be okay with that. I wouldn't want them to just hack it up to see what the insides look like? Meh, different strokes for different folks...
Again, DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS! AsiaSF was very very interesting...the girls were mostly in amazing shape. Makes a girl want to work out! (maybe) One of the girls had apparently just gotten the final shebang so there were lots of references to "the grand opening" and the fact she had "an extra pair of lips". Gahhhh so caught off guard! Fun night though, even though the food wasn't super super delicious. I'm sure there will be pics on fb soon ;)
Sex is such a weird thing. Right? I understand it's basic to human survival or whatever but I think I have such a strange group of friends that I'm never quite sure how to feel about it as a conversation topic. I have two, maybe three, distinct groups of friends when it comes to sexual opinions - (1) Sex is bad/morally wrong-ish before marriage. (2) Sex is good. It happens. People probably shouldn't discuss it publicly and/or enjoy it too much though. (3) Sex is a-m-a-z-i-n-g!!! Do wild crazy unimaginable, possibly illegal things.
I think moving from a small town (Stockbridge) to a more liberal town (Athens), and then from the South (Georgia) to the West Coast (Cali) is really a study in the breadth of sexual opinions. I think my initial high school discussions of sex were pretty frank...I was friends with girls who were pretty much in the same sexual boat, with us all having our first serious boyfriends (I think?) and figuring out what sex meant & what our boundaries were and how far we could push things with still living in our parents' houses. My parents had never really talked to me about sex & with a shockingly pregnant sister in the house senior year of high school, there was really no time to discuss these types of things with la madre. Great. Fast-forward to freshman year at UGA, where I had this really serious boyfriend & mostly single friends, and all of a sudden I was the most experienced one among the people I hung out with. Huh!? I remember being really uncomfortable with that, and feeling the need to lie because I was still confused about a lot of sexual things when there was no one to discuss it with. Then I was relatively single for junior & senior year of undergrad when a lot of my friends decided it was a good time to get into their first serious relationships. I think there's some disadvantages to doing this later in young adulthood but I think one major advantage of starting to think about what your sexuality means in college is that for the most part, you have the freedom to do so. There aren't really any boundaries or rules you're supposed to follow. Which there definitely are in high school. (Momma's rhetoric was something like the guy's from the Mean Girls - "Don't have sex because you will get pregnant and you will die. Don't have sex in the missionary position, don't have sex standing up, just don't it!! Promise?) I think a lot of my friends are much more liberated when it comes to their opinions on sex because of that. But then I'm also still friends with a few prudes (teeheehee) so I'm never sure exactly where I fit in that spectrum. Who knows man?? No one has a "normal" opinion on sex, I'm just always surprised to hear new sides of the people in my life that I thought I knew pretty well.
Um, I think that's it? There was a new pairing within the med school class that I found out about today that is...surprising. People are all about the hooking up right now. I had a nice thought yesterday, which is that I'm pretty happily single. Because if a really amazing guy came along tomorrow, I really wouldn't have any time to spend on him or with him. Then he'd probably be sad, and who would want the amazing guy to be sad?? I told one of my friends today that it'd be perfect if he came along right after I took qualifying exams next year. She reminded me that I can't exactly plan these things...I did have a moment of missing Brien (Boston Brien, not home Brian obviii) last night because we got along so so well & always laughed together. I'd be okay with him coming back after he got his stuff together & I passed quals ;) I really am starting to appreciate the importance of balance in my life & what that looks like and (sort of) how to get there from where I am now. I think it's a really hard thing, and something you have to work at consciously every day. That's more of what I'm trying to do this quarter & hopefully it will only go up from here. So far, so good
Happy Wednesday!! <3
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