three weeks of summer left, you say?

It's been just over a week since I got back from Auckland, and it's been so great. I had the house to myself for a while too which was so relaxing, not that I mind my parents in the very least, but the quiet, the not being woken up at 7am by their talking and moving around the house, just the stillness was... refreshing. Plus it gave me an extra incentive to cook, which was so much fun!

Auckland was so full-on; I didn't even leave the country and yet by the time I got home I felt almost as tired as I was last summer after my mini-OE to the UK! I think it was just the various dramas that occurred while I was over there and the fact that I was staying in my sister's (funky albeit) small studio was, if anything, physically and emotionally draining. Maybe having lived in Dunedin for six years now I've become more "Hobbit-like" than I realise because after just two weeks I was more than ready for the smallness and the routine of life down yonder.

After my trip I gave myself a week off of summer research to just be away from the hospital for a bit. I got a lot of writing done which was just fantastic, as well as -- drum roll, please! -- spring cleaning! Well, technically it's "summer" cleaning, but I managed to re-organise my closet including donating two bags of clothes I never wear anymore, in addition to my desk/general study area... dusting, moving, buying book-ends, clearing up space, etc. Just slowly getting ready for fifth year that is oh-so quickly approaching.

But I'm excited. I've forgotten so much medicine, from the first year basics to second and third year theory, and all of psych and surgery which weren't even a year ago! I hate that feeling of 'information leakage' which I seem to get every summer, making the study -- the blood, the sweat, the tears -- of the year past feel like it was all for nothing. However, over the past four years this dreaded feeling has been so faithful a companion that I have learnt to make peace with it at this point. Whoo-ray for me!

Which brings me to the spring cleaning and the fact that, although most of my classmates will either hate me or judge me for saying it, I am pretty darn excited for the year to start. Because the faster we get a move on, the faster I can start to re-fill my brain with all that which was lost via the aforementioned unavoidable 'information leakage' process.


I went back to the hospital today to start work on my summer research project, and, surprisingly enough, it wasn't as painful as I thought it'd be. I think I was just too emotionally and psychologically (and physically) invested in my clinical trial up until Christmas, but luckily enough it was nothing a good dose of complete exhaustion and subsequent madness couldn't cure.