Things are chugging right along. Time is flying by, and that's fine with me. Every day that passes is getting me closer to Thanksgiving break and then the big one, Christmas! I'm not sick of school, I just really want to get out of Jackson and be spontaneous for a change.

During Thanksgiving break I'm loosely "planning" on either going to Atlanta for 4 days or to Houston and Austin for 2 days each. This'll be with Pedro, a friend of mine from Belhaven. See the sights, maybe go to a concert or two, maybe an NBA game, etc. Basically, the goal will be to get my mind off of med school for 4 days before we have to get back and start cramming for cumulative finals and board exams.

The last week has been the most hectic of med school for me thus far. It wasn't stressful, but I did study more than usual. And did it pay off? We'll see. I felt like the anatomy tests today went fairly well, but the grade improvement (if there is one) will probably not be big enough to justify the extra time spent studying.

So, after a good post-test workout and run, I was on my way to the store to do some shopping, and I got to thinking. Is there really any reason to go all out for As in classes? I don't think so. There's a huge amount of material covered on each exam, and in order to get an A on a test, you need to study a whole lot and know almost all of the material (unless you're lucky or the test happens to be easy). However, making a B on a test is not that difficult, and doesn't require nearly as much studying. This is because every test has a good number of easy questions, and then several questions that test minutiae that you probably won't know unless you've put a lot of work in. Yes, there are people in my class who study relentlessly and make all As. I'm happy for them. But I don't want to be like that. As for me, my goal will be to get a B in every class, have minimal stress, and still be a human being outside of medical school (which means taking part in the activities listed in prior blogs). I think this has been my mindset this whole semester, but I just hadn't thought about it. And I'm sure I'll get some As this semester and next, but that'll just be icing on the top of the cake. But no Cs. If that happened, I'd have to change things up.

So that's that. Nothing much of note has happened. I watched the New York City Marathon on Sunday morning, and that was highly motivational. I've made up my mind to run the New Orleans Half Marathon in late February, and then possibly the Boston Marathon in late April. I really want to run Boston, since that's THE marathon to do, but I don't want to go by myself. Finding someone to run it with would be ideal, but I'd settle for a friend who would just accompany me up there for a good time. I'm not in terrible shape right now, but I've just been maintaining a base of between 40 and 50 miles per week. Not really killing myself in workouts. Now I'm excited about running again. I might go out and run 10 tomorrow afternoon, because the weather is absolutely gorgeous here these days.