Big News!

Haven't heard about my big, exciting news yet? Check out the new header image for a hint...

Celebration!

I survived. Barely, but all that counts is that I'm still here. Yesterday was manageable, today was deadly. I'm not making any predictions as to whether or not I passed -- if I did, I wouldn't be surprised as I felt fairly confident about most of my answers; if I failed, I also wouldn't be surprised, as I knew my answers weren't in as much detail as they could have been. But now there is no point in dwelling on how I did or what I should have studied differently... there's nothing else that can be done until I find out how I did, sometime within the next few months.

In the meantime, I have more important things to worry about, like trying to cram an entire winter break into three days. Since I spent my whole break studying, I now get a three-day weekend which has to satisfy my entire vacation need for the next 6 months since I probably will not take off another day until June (okay, maybe I'll get to take one day off if I can go home for a Passover seder). My mini-break started off on the right foot -- my boyfriend surprised me with a dozen peach roses (I'm impressed he remembered my favorite rose color) and dinner reservations at Jaleo, out favorite tapas restaurant, to celebrate the fact that I survived comps! (I think I should have been the one to take him out for putting up with me the past few days, but then again I had to put up with him for the entire month when he was studying for his medical boards -- at least I was away from him for most of my study period!)
As for the rest of the weekend, I plan on (hopefully) getting my first decent night of sleep in a month (hopefully sans the comprehensive exam nightmares that have been plaguing me lately), reading something other than Molecular Biology of the Cell or Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology, hopefully finishing up the border on the giant afghan I haven't had time to crochet in months, and watching the re-runs of Grey's Anatomy on abc.com since I've been too busy studying to watch any TV since before Thanksgiving. I think tomorrow I'm also go to go to the pet store to set up a new fish tank and then go back on Monday to buy new fish -- two months ago, I bought a fish for my tank that came with a parasitic infection and it wiped out the whole tank, so it's time to start over. Basically, I will be enjoying a totally SCIENCE-FREE weekend. Since my PI is out west for a conference and apparently has a good possibility of being snowed in on Monday, he canceled the lab meeting so I am going to take the day off like the rest of the world to just relax before I head back and immediately have to start working on my abstract for the poster session coming up next month.

STICK A FORK IN ME BABY, BECAUSE I AM DONE WITH COMPS!!!

12 more hours to cram!!

My day-before-the-start-of-comprehensive exams breakdown pattern:

Denial: Comprehensive exams? What comprehensive exams? I still have a long time to study! January 11th/12th isn't for weeks! Plenty of time to study.
Anger: SCREW YOU, UNIVERSITY, AND YOUR STUPID RIDICULOUS COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS WHICH ARE WAY HARDER THAN OTHER BIOMEDICAL PHD PROGRAMS HERE. AND MY FRIENDS AT OTHER SCHOOLS DON'T EVEN HAVE COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS - THEY JUST HAVE TO WRITE A GRANT PROPOSAL FOR QUALIFICATION AND THEY CAN GET HELP FROM OTHERS AND DON'T HAVE TO MEMORIZE ALL THESE STUPID PATHWAYS. I HATE THIS PROGRAM!.
Bargaining: Dear Biomedical Science Gods -- I promise that if you help me pass this exam, I will spend every weekend for the next 4 years in the laboratory pipetting my fingers to the bone in an attempt to make a new development in the field of oncology. Just please let me pass! I don't care if I do WELL, I just want to pass!
Depression: I can't believe I am going to fail out of this program. What will I ever do with myself? I am a failure. I don't even deserve to be here. Why did I ever think I was smart enough to go to graduate school?
Acceptance: I am fucked.

Tomorrow, I go in for part I of the beating. And then tomorrow evening I drag myself home, wash off the blood, and attempt to regroup to go back for the beating part II on Friday. Wish me luck, because I'm really going to need it.

Sniffle

Things that suck: comprehensive exams.
Things that really suck: comprehensive exams starting in 3 days.
Things that really, unbelievably suck: comprehensive exams starting in 3 days and waking up with a 103 fever and raging sinus headache rendering me totally dysfunctional on the studying front.

Clearly, the powers that be do not want me to get this Ph.D. :'(

I think my only hope now is knowledge osmosis... as I spend the rest of the day miserably curled up in bed trying to sleep, maybe if I put my epidemiology notebook under my head the information will pass through the pillow and into my poor overworked little brain. I didn't realize that figuratively being sick of studying would manifest itself as physical sickness, too.

>:o

It is Saturday.
It is a beautiful 70 degree day in January in Washington, D.C.
I am stuck inside, eyes glazed over staring at my laptop, trying to remember whether flipase or flopase rotates lipids inside-out versus outside-in in the membrane bilayer.

I've learned one thing from all this studying for comprehensive exams: I really don't like science.
New career suggestions, anyone?

Current Panic Advisory: SEVERE

It is after 2am and I am bashing myself in the head with my biochemistry textbook. I practically have to keep poking myself in the eyeball to stay awake. My index finger is literally dripping blood, as it has been snagged in my binder more times than I care to count tonight. My mind is focus solely on attempting to absorb as much information as possible, so I don’t dare dart my eyes off the notes for the three seconds it would take to look at the binder as I snap it shut. I cannot possibly cram one more peptide sequence or drug inhibitory pathway into my brain, and yet I still have all of epidemiology and biostatistics to cover, and I’ve already forgotten all the methods and pharmacology I studied two weeks ago during my miserable winter “break” which consisted of being locked in my room studying for ten hours per day. Studying which, by the way, has proven to be absolutely useless because I can’t even remember important facts like the difference between Bcl-X(L) and Bcl-X(s)… one is part of the pro-life pathway and one is part of the pro-death pathway in apopotosis but I can’t remember which one belongs where.

I have considered, multiple times, weaving all my printed out power points slides together into a noose and just hanging myself. I wonder how many Ph.D. students are sent to the loony bin due to breakdowns while studying for comprehensive exams. Ironically, my boyfriend is currently doing his psychiatry rotation at the moment – perhaps I will wind up paying him a visit. The least he could do is steal me some Xanax or valium, or at least some Ritalin -- I could use a little something on the side to help me focus more on the actual studying and less on what I will do with my life after I fail the comprehensive exams and am forced out of the program, kicking and screaming.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached full out panic mode. And it is not a pretty sight.