So medical school kicks-off tomorrow with orientation day. I’ve been asked if I’m nervous or excited, and the answer is neither, really.
I’m just ready. Ready to start climbing from the bottom of first year to the top of fourth year – one rung at a time.
Vaughan Penn
In a concerted effort to minimise conflict in my life, I will no longer argue every point, nor will I be as forthcoming with my opinions on certain behaviour or views as I have been in the past.
Instinctively, I feel this may be taking a risk; those that like me do so for who I am, and this is bound to change me a little bit.
Nevertheless, for now I am closing some of the doors to my mind and heart for the sake of peace.
Roisin Murphy
Well, hello.
I’m back from the reef, feeling very energised and ready to get going.
The week working as a research consultant was amazing, and it’s now obvious to me that my reservations in going were completely misplaced. Lesson learned? Never turn down an opportunity. Quaint, cliched, yet true.
After a little bit of a low period, I’m feeling a lot more optimistic about the world. I feel lighter. I feel like I’m walking on sunshine.
And don’t it feel good?
Katrina and the Waves
Today was a good day.
A friend of mine was eagerly awaiting first round university offers with all of the other hopefuls, and it turns out her internal transfer into Griffith University’s Bachelor of Nursing was successful. Congratulations, Rayah!
I’m also so relieved and excited about an email I recieved today. I have been confirmed as a lab demonstrator for first-year anatomy and physiology labs for nursing – I’ve got a decent academic job to carry me through first year at least, as well as continuing my work as a research assistant in the School of Physiotherapy & Exercise Science.
Things are all falling into place, and it feels great. Do I want to say elated?
Yep.
I leave tomorrow morning for Heron Island, and though I’m only going for a very short time (7 days), I will try to get a blog or two in, but not too much – the snorkel beckons!
Iron & Wine
It seems another reef sojourn is on the cards. I leave on Saturday, but this time it feels more like fulfilling an obligation than following a desire.
When I think about what awaits me, like swimming through a shark-infested ship-wreck or live turtle birth, it seems like a truly amazing experience. And it is.
I think perspective is everything, and we view the events in our life relative to whatever else is going on. I have so much to look forward at the moment that the reef trip seems to pale in comparison.
In reality, I’m incredibly lucky. Not everyone gets to see what I see, or do what I do. Bringing photos and stories home can never really communicate what these research trips are. I don’t know what it is, but being a researcher on this tiny, insignificant fleck of coral makes you feel connected. I’ve spoken to other researchers about it, and they agree. The holidaymakers are right there across the track, but they may as well be on another planet, so different our experiences are.
So when I think of it in these terms, I am excited to go back. It really is somewhere only we know.
Keane
Her skin is alabaster – a flawless, smooth white. Her long and wavy hair - jet black - contrasts with her cherry lips and nails. She is lying on a bed of white pillows and chiffon, which is pocked with tiny diamonds and crystal; you can’t tell where her dress begins, because it too looks like a white night sky.
Her eyes are drawn and at half mast, but there is still something alluring in her direct contact. Her long eyelashes frame her cold blue eyes.
She is holding an apple – bright red – from which she has taken a single bite. A stream of black poison runs down her arm; an unexpected product of the fruit.
The image is disturbing, but also beautiful. She has fallen prey to temptation, but remains pure in all her white.
She is Snow White.
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I had this idea for a photo shoot a while ago. When you photograph high fasion, everything becomes a potential photo shoot. Lately, fairytales have provided me the perfect muse. I’ve not yet done the Poison Apple shoot, but I have fixated on it so much that it has become a point of obsession for me: I will complete this set as soon as I find the perfect model for the part.
Keep your eyes peeled!
Today I got my stethoscope! What a proud and silly moment. It will be eons until I really understand how to use it, but right now I don’t care. It is clearly symbolic, but I also like it’s heavy expensive feel.
It is a navy blue Littman cardiology III with ‘Adrian V Castelli’ – my name – engraved on the bell. Finally, the whole medical student thing feels real.
Guess what? I’m going to be a doctor!
Yes, indeed.
Most of us active bloggers on WordPress know about the stats page that allows you to view what search engine terms people have used to find your blog. There have been funny ones and strange ones in the past, but I’ve never bothered to post them here for a laugh. Today, as I was scanning through the usual list of search engine terms (cystic fibrosis features at the top of the list, consistantly) I came across this one: FUCK DISEASE.
Instead of laughing, I was immediately struck by the motivation behind it’s existence. Someone, somewhere, sat at a computer and in a moment of anger, perhaps, but certainly bitterness and futility, typed FUCK DISEASE into google. Who was this person, and what had driven them to write this?
I don’t want to know.
Whether it was because of a recent bad diagnosis or the death of a loved one, I felt like a prying idiot for reading it.
I know what lies beneath. I’ve seen the flash of teeth.
Conspiring with the reef, to sink our ship.
The wind’s a cheating wife; her tongue a thirsty knife,
And she could take your life with one good kiss.
Can you see the sky turn red?
As morning’s light breaks over me.
Know tonight we’ll make our bed,
at the bottom of the sea.
I know the ocean speaks. I’ve heard her call to me.
And smiling in my dreams, she whispers this:
The stars retreat behind their veil;
The clouds are clinging to your sail.
The storm is coming; can you see?
There is something unseen that lurks under the surface of our lives, making currents that influence the flow of our day to day. I believe, anyway. It may not be a ghost or a creature from the bottom of the sea, but it is there. The past couple of months have conspired to sink me, and ironically the thing that is going to pull me through is the reef. One week, paid this time, and then medical school, and teaching anatomy & physiology to nursing students.
I only hope that, with the strange and tempestuous skies we have experienced on the eastern border lately, we do not encounter a red sky.
It’s all very exciting with just 29 short and expiring days until medical school starts, and it has been made all the more real with the indication of my preferences for clinical placement:
1. Gold Coast Hospital (closest to home)
2. Tweed Hospital (2nd closest to home)
3. Logan Hospital (not close to home)
4. Murwillumbah Hospital (nowhere close, and is that still Queensland?)
Even though 2007 was good to me, it hurt the ones I love. Because of this, I welcome 2008 with open arms, and may it be a safe and productive year for you all.
