25, 25, 101

I haven't blogged since last winter.  Let's see: Finished M2, took Step 1 of the boards, passed Step 1 of the boards, Intaglio moved in, did a preliminary rotation in internal medicine, started in the lab, started grad school in earnest.  Life update complete!

It's been a strange transition.  I've never been one to handle life changes with what one might call exceptional grace.  There are no clear answers in the lab.  Did that assay work well enough?  Are these controls good enough?  Am I doing enough work?  Am I doing the right experiments?  Are my priorities straight?  Who's to say?  My PI seems okay with my performance, is that enough?  Am I spending enough time on my classes, or should I throw those to the wind and focus more on research? 

25% of the way through grad school, turning 25 in two days, and in many ways I feel more tentative and wide-eyed than I did when I first started med school.  Maybe even more so than when I started college.  It's somewhat disheartening.  And, when I get disheartened, I tend to respond in the same way I have since I was in middle school: grouchiness, elevated sugar consumption, foot-dragging on intimidating tasks, generally teetering on the verge of being unbearable to others. 

In the interest of getting it together, accomplishing things, and generally acting like a 25-year-old and not like a freshman overwhelmed by OChem, I started to set goals for myself, some more ambitious than others ("Jog 6 days a week", "Send that damn email to your PI about your thesis committee already", et al).  Coincidentally, a friend in my cohort started the 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge.  I read her list, and poked about online looking for examples of this challenge.  Some seemed like fun, some seemed a bit trite (Collect 10 colors of nailpolish?  Why?), and some seemed worth doing.

With that in mind, I put together my own list: some meaningful, some fun, some trite.  I'm planning on using my own 101 as a sort of compass, a way to track achievement outside the lab.  I'm also planning on posting here more; there's a lot I like about grad school, but the relative isolation and shrinking of my day-to-day social circle was a bit of a shock.  My hope is that by making it a habit of posting here (with pictures! I found my memory card for my camera), it will both draw me out of my shell and, well, encourage me to do things that are worth writing about.