"Drink up me Hearties - Yo ho!"

It's a rainy Sunday evening. This has been a slow, although fairly productive weekend so far - yesterday after a morning of studying, Nicole and I went the gym and then to a birthday party for the husband of one of our good friends - Glynis the P.A. It was nice to get out of the house and socialize for a bit (I've always been accussed of being a little antisocial). After that, Nicole and I researched some of the hotels we're thinking of booking with in Buenos Aires - we found some bad reviews we hadn't expected, so it was nice to narrow down our choices and make some serious headway in the matter. (Oh dear...I hope that isn't a surprise to anyone...)

This morning, Nicole, Glynis and I pounded through some endocrine histology. We've got a very picky professor who seems to take pride in writing tricky questions(I only say that because it's true), so we dug down through thyroid hormone formation and ovulation. It's ironic -for all the pride he takes in his trickiness, his lectures left a lot to be desired; I had to go do a lot of outside research to get things to make sense. But you know what? I'm all OVER the pituitary gland.

I'm sure that's useful to someone. I mean, if I had a pituitary adenoma, I'd care. Endocrinology just doesn't interest me that much - it's something I have to learn, for the grade, and that's that. On the first day of this semseter, our anatomy professor (of whom I'm not the biggest fan - he talks too much, and still manages to not cover a whole lot) presented us with a quote from someone old and dead and Latin - "Non scolae sed vitae discimus" - which means "Don't learn for school; but for life". Give me a break. I'm learning all of this insignificant minutiae so that I can pass tests right now - I'm learning so that I can jump through hoops. Will some of it be useful? I'm betting on it. Will some of it form a firm foundation upon which I can build a mental library of medicine, which I will revisit every day during my practice? I'm betting on that too. However, is the most important reason I memorize the difference between red-staining and blue-staining pituitary cells because it's useful in practice? I...uh....I think that's just a test question.....I think for now, I'll scolae discimus.

Speaking of useful versus non-useful information, why can't someone explain to me why the theme song from the Pirates of the Caribbean ("Drink up me Hearties - Yo ho!") has become stuck in my head more profoundly than any other song I've ever heard? I have no idea! I remember when I dissected out the abdominal vessels - I closed my eyes, and I saw arterial arcades on the jejunum. This is like that, only so much worse! I'm listening to the theme song by Hans Zimmer right now, but if I were to turn it off, it would keep playing on loop just below my conscious perception, as if somewhere in my superior temporal gyrus (primary auditory cortex, that is), a new tract has been formed - one that connects to all memory stations, and somewhere, swimming in the neuronal cell bodies, are miniature Jack Sparrows!

Maybe it's just because I'm IN the Caribbean, and I really AM a pirate. Well, if med school doesn't work out.....