The Long Drive Home

Friday, August 29th
The drive from Madison to Chapel Hill was a 930-miles, Wisconsin to North Carolina is a looong day in the car but worth the effort. Yesterday I finished the first rotation of my 3rd year of med school, which means today I am a free man--and I'm spending that freedom via a month-long training camp in Carolina to prepare for Ironman Hawaii. The timing, which couldn't be better, is due to random luck, not careful planning, it's simply the schedule the med-school-rotation-lottery dealt me. One full month to go crazy, train myself into a happy and exhausted oblivion, and I couldn't be happier! Then back to Madison to start pediatrics just in time to taper for Hawaii. Not bad!

The drive was smooth. Erin burned me 12 hours of This American Life and David Sedaris' Dress Dress Your Family in Corduory and Denim, it's intensitya nd comedy kept my ears and mind entertained during what would otherwise be a mind-numbing drive. Only one traffic jam in Chicago, no speeding tickets (though the cops were out in force), and no accidents. Despite driving more conservatively than my usual "That depends on what the definition of 'Speeding' is," I still made good time. I was worried about getting pulled over because my registration is expired. The NC car registration couldn't be renewed from Wisconsin over the web because I haven't paid my car tax. You must be thinking "How did this irresponsible bum get into med school?!" My point exactly. I'm not an irresponsible bum, at least I wasn't 2 years ago when school started. But med school is all-consuming. It distorts a student's perspective the same way a massive star bends light rays coming from a distant galaxy. In the days leading up to an anatomy and histology exam normal daily activities like sleeping and showering just aren't as important as memorizing what structures traverse the pterygopalatine fossa. It's just memorization that will be immediately forgotten when a new wave of facts crashes onto the shore of our minds. And behind it another wave, and then another--an infinite ocean of facts and details. We'd be better served by learning where to find the information and to focus on why it's clinically important. Some of my thoughts during the drive that I was happy to put behind me, as my focus shifted to a month free from memorization. For the next four weeks, my thoughts will be simple: go faster! Let's begin...