anatomy and winter sales

Hello! I've rotated to my option unit now, which is Anatomy. My task is to dissect a hand and forearm and identify as many structures as I possibly can. Most of the time I am alone with the hand-forearm, which is okay. It is a good opportunity for practical learning, and not really all that tedious except when I am trying to work on the hand.

When I leave the room for lunch, I have to walk through the room where we had our Anatomy labs in first and second year. It is coming up to the University exam time, and I can see the stress/curiosity/blank looks on the students' faces... it is almost like stepping back in time for me; the air is exactly the same.

Then there are times when I step into the corridor between the Anatomy lab and where I work, and I can see through the windows above the doors that lie at the end. That's CTEC. The surgical trainees learn there, they are scrubbed and gowned and practice on simulated patients. And in that instant there is that heart-pull feeling again. Just when I thought I'd become too rational and too pragmatic, and too numbed by routine and the currents of a structured assessments and a University degree. I realised I still have passions.

It is mere coincidence that my next topic of discussion, shopping, should follow my last comment on passions. The thing is, I can only dissect for so many hours before my neck is uncomfortably stiff, which leaves me with free afternoons. And this is how I know that the Winter sales are truly upon us; I went shopping three days in a row :/ This is in fact even more terrible than it sounds because my new year's resolution was to not shop (groceries and toiletries are okay) for a whole year. I lasted until the 27th of February.

I think I would have lasted longer had there been a positive component to my resolution. As in, I should have said something like "I will stop shopping in 2010 so that I can give the money I would otherwise have spent on clothes, to children in [insert poor country]". But the fallacy in that statement is that my mother buys my clothes, so in reality my resolution was more like "I will stop shopping in 2010 because I have way too many material possessions and I have just realised that shopping is really quite a meaningless activity".

The DJs and Myer sales start this week *deep breath in*. Here we go.