I haven’t posted in, damn, almost a week. And that can very well mean one of two things: I either a) have nothing to say or b) have finals on Tuesday. After a 2-hour review session and 6-hour study session today, my brain kind of gave up. (As a dorky side-note, my brain is starting to take on a Frank-Starling mechanism , whereby the more information I feed it, the more it gobbles up. This is a Good Thing.) I’ve had a bunch of thoughts over the past week, but kept’em in my head. Time to extract:

* We dissected the forearm on Thursday, and the more I think about it, the less human I feel, and the more… mechanical? Robotic? Manufactured? I feel. Part of the mystery–and majesty–of myself kind of ended when I accidentally pulled at the Flexor Pollicis Longus (it moves your thumb toward your palm) and the thumb moved. It was a completely human movement–the gesture of the thumb–without the human behind it. And now, when I stare at my thumb, it no longer seems to be so attached to my self ; now it’s just a bone and muscle that move in a certain direction when a cord is pulled. I’m a puppet. We’re all puppets. Self-controlled, but still. Calcified sticks connected to organic strings. Hell, tendons don’t even look organic. They shimmer and tear just like the white plastic twine used to tie up packages and furniture at Ikea.

* The more I learn in molecular biology, the more I discern in histo, the less my notions of God seem to come into play. Every mystery is explained away as evolutionary advantage; every organ, vessel, anastomosis , and molecule
is primed for efficiency and survival in a prehistoric world. Everything is a means to an end. Everything is predictable and statistical and understandable. Nothing is left to chance or enigma. I’d be curious to see how many scientists are agnostics or atheists–the pressure to trust in Science completely must be enormous. But as my friend Hugh (wise old soul) noted, there’s still room for spirituality. Just because we _can_ explain things through science, doesn’t mean Science is the End All. Not that religion was ever a big thing for me, but, I guess it was bigger than I realized it to be. Another item to add to the “took for granted” list.

* You can’t get very far in medical school without friends. I tried it. It didn’t work. Studying alone can only get you so far (namely, exhausted and cranky). But when I study with my classmates, it’s a whole different story. I spent 3 hours in the anatomy lab thinking only one had past. We’re stress-relievers for each other, emotional supporters, socializers, partiers, diners, entertainers, teachers–you name the role, someone in the class probably fills it for me or someone else. And it doesn’t take much, either, which is nice, since we’re fairly busy. I was feeling a little down earlier this week, and all it took was a “Graham, how have you been?” from a friend to cheer me up. Reminded me that we’re all in the boat together.

* I’m seriously frightened that my pasty, bare chest may be coming to a San Jose Business Journal in your area. My good friend Ben was interviewed about our new curriculum, and the paper wanted some pictures of Ben in some sort of doctorly pose. And, thinking the wise editors, “What better place to do it than the doctoring class where we learn how to palpate and use our stethoscopes!” I was paired up with good-friend good-pal Ben, and the photographer took a nice 15 or so shots of Ben stethoscoping me, my Steve Buscemi-like musculature up close. (My only hope is that my lack of color somehow reflected the flash and caused all the shots to be overexposed, rendering them useless.) Otherwise, let me please, *please* apologize in advance. No. Really.

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