save the daylight

November 1, 2004

i’m not sure how i feel about the recent daylight-savings-time-change. i really do appreciate the light in the morning, because i’m sort of a morning person anyway, assuming i don’t sleep so late that i miss the whole thing. but the 6 pm shroud of darkness — well, i’m not such a fan.

i have to say that while these seasonal changes may not always be welcomed, it’s nice to have enough time to actually notice them occurring. last year i remember looking outside one day and thinking, ‘huh. winter. last time i checked, it was july.’ instead of gifting an extra hour of sleep, fall-back last year provided me an extra hour of overnight ob/gyn call! and the extra hour of morning light was a complete bust, because i was in the hospital every morning at 5, and by the time the sun came up i was always ready for lunch.

waah, waah. i know. i knew what i was getting into when i signed up for all this, right? actually, not quite. i had a vague idea that doctors work hard and for long hours, and i knew that my ob/gyn uncle was always ‘on call’, meaning that he would have to get up and leave in the middle of thanksgiving dinner. but i didn’t really know what it was like to work in a hospital. i had never heard of ’rounds.’ i didn’t think about the fact that weekends are no different than weekdays when it comes to people getting sick. and i never thought about what it would feel like to be the attentive and good-hearted listener to people’s problems, over and over and over again.

if i had known, would i have made a different decision? i honestly don’t know. but these past few months of living like a normal human being have helped me understand how much it means to me to have time to notice things like the leaves falling. during my residency, i know i will have to sacrifice this privelige, but after that i hope to have choices which will allow me to opt out of a time-crunched, exhausting lifestyle. life is too short.

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in other news . . .

1. my sister started a blog! you can visit the fabulously named http://icantbelieveireallyhaveablog.blogspot.com and think about lovely the riviera would be this time of year.

2. i am armed with a new binder and paper (quad-ruled, for extra dork-points) and plan to attack biochemistry starting tomorrow. this will be the 4th time i have tried to commit metabolic pathways to memory. here’s to persistence.

3. election day tomorrow! i’m not getting all riled up about it, though, because i have a feeling we aren’t going to have results for quite some time. i can’t wait for the whole thing to be over.

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