Call me Sisyphus.

I've been in a funk this week - thankfully it's going away, but it had begun to get alarming. I don't know when it started, really, but studying was just incredibly difficult. Normally, I can find something within the pages to get excited about, but this week has just been tough, leaving me feeling like I'm rolling a huge stone up a hill, with no end in sight. If I was honest with myself, I'd have to say that it probably came about around the same time we began studying the fetal heart - it's like an entirely different language. Normally, I can reason my way through things, creating littel mental hooks that I can use as anchors to integrate things, little bread-crumb trails that help me find my way back to earlier information. Normally, the words I'm learning make sense within the greater context of everything, but in the fetal heart, it's like I'm swimming in an unfamiliar sea. Ductus arteriosus? Bulbus cordis? Septum Primum and Secundum? There's no anchor for these terms - it's just rote memorization. Instead of laying down a hook and just letting my mind follow the trail back to camp, I feel like I'm swimming around in circles until I find a familiar patch of water. Thankfully, though, this next exam will focus heavily on physiology, where those memory hooks and anchors are all we've got.

Maybe I just need more coffee. On a more exciting note, though, I held within my hands several human hearts yesterday. Previously, I had been going through my Rohen-Yokochi-Lutjen-Drecoll atlas, and realized that the coronary arteries are, in a word, breathtakingly beautiful. I'm not kidding - they're absolutely gorgeous. Staring at the heart in my hands yesterday, with ill-fitting nitrile gloves stretched over my palms, that Sisyphean rock got a little lighter.