Yo estoy maloliente.

Another week down. As much as I love Cardiology, after the first week I sadly came to the realization that it is not the field for me. Crossing Cardio off the list. And since then I've had a bit of trouble being excited about being at the hospital. Love the part when I'm actually with patients, but for the rest...sigh.

Ever since we started having the Latin doctors as instructors back in 3rd semester, I quickly learned I had to pay attention when a name was called as I'm not always called Christy. My middle name is included on the student list to the doctors, and as Mexicans have four names sometimes more the Latin doctors go through a guessing game with their international students as to what name to pick. They pronounce Marie as Mari. I don't correct them anymore and just make sure I answer when I think I'm supposed too. I normally get either Mari or Christy Mari, sometimes it's just the Christy, but for the first time one of my Cardio doctors from day one has called me Mari Christy.

I can tell my fingers are getting used to typing in Spanish. The left pinky goes down for the ctrl when I need to add accents, and now when I need to capitalize I'm messing up a lot because my pinky over-reaches the shift and hits the ctrl instead. I'm getting annoyed by it and have started to just leave the accents off alot to get my finger out of the habit. I figure all the Mexicans leave the accents off so it won't really hurt anything. I'll just be considered more Mexican writing incorrect Spanish.

I finally took the time to write down names of my original classmates that are in 5th semester with me. There are just 29 of us, fewer than I had originally guessed. Of that 29, 15 of us have taken and passed the USMLE step 1 and will be continuing on to 6th. There are a few that are going to try to retake the step quickly and see if a few strings can be pulled to allow them to continue on, and one more of us just took his step this past week so hopefully he'll make us 16. But currently there will be 15 of my original class starting 6th semester in January. 15 of an original 119 that started 1st semester July of 2008. I wonder how big our class will be in January. There's about 100 upper semesters that are with us in 5th right now so they could potentially make us a large class. It's just sad to me that in 6th semester, students that are actually originally supposed to be 6th semesters will be very much a minority of the class.

I'm staying in GDL this weekend. Praying I can be as productive as possible!

Hasta!