Part One: Me

I'm an only child which means I'm expected to be self-centered and self-concerned. Therefore, where better to start all of my updates than a discussion of what's going on with me!

The dino was mine before, but thanks to Laura
for the jellyfish, bunny, giraffe, pumpkin,
Frankenstein and snowflake! I work the snowflake
in clinic yesterday and everyone LOVED it! 

• Christmas break: Simply put, it was WONDERFUL! I'm very much so missing it! I celebrated Christmas for 8 days in a row with friends and family (I don't know how the lady survived 12 days of Christmas with her true love, cause I was utterly exhausted after 8 days!). This year was the Christmas of scarves. If you have any wonderful ideas about how to organize an overly large scarf collection, I'd welcome your suggestions! 
• ID Badge Holders: Truth be told, these were Christmas gifts. But they're so adorable that they get their own bullet point! Now I will be seasonally appropriate and stylish whenever I have to wear my ID Badge to clinic! Hugh, I know your snowman was very adorable, but you have to admit that my whole collection is quite charming!  
• New Year's Resolution: (Let me preface this to my Grandma and Captain Murphy...this is not a prior admission of guilt!) My resolution this year is to not speed when I'm driving. Let's just say that the drive from Hastings to Omaha is actually longer than I realized... It's been super hard, but I'm doing alright! I've also noticed that my (apparently) ridiculous road rage has decreased. 
• January challenge: This month's challenge is to wake up early. Soooo.... I haven't been doing super well with that. The issue is that I haven't been falling asleep until well after midnight so 6 am (or earlier) is ridiculous. BUT I'm still trying!  
• Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine: I'm currently reading it! It's a tough read, if I'm being honest. It's a sociologic study of how religion and medicine are addressed in major academic medical institutions. She interviews docs, nurses and everyone in between. I'm not very far into it, so more on this later!
• EMET: Last year I talked about how I was thinking about applying for an enhanced medical education track, but I got too sick to do it. The beauty of repeating 1st year is that I have the chance to do all of the things I missed out on! So I applied to the Humanities and Arts track. We shall see if I'm accepted!
• School: We are back in session (have been for a week and a half already!). Cardiac physiology. Test a week from tomorrow (eeek!). 
• Jamaica:  My loyal readers will know that I'm heading to Jamaica over spring break for a medical mission trip. There will be 30 of us heading to Falmouth to provide services for over 400 people. We're bringing all of our own equipment and medication. In order to defer these costs, we're doing several fundraisers and here is one (shameless plug!) that you too can get involved with! Anything helps, even if it's just a small donation! 
• Shout-out: Just a special "hello" to my classmate Danny! Thanks for being such a loyal reader :) (And now, you are just as good as Hugh because you both got a shout-out today!)

That's all until tomorrow! 

oh, that's right...I have a blog

Full disclosure here: I have honestly been so busy and wrapped up with school and other life happenings that I completely forgot about the blogging. My apologies to my faithful readers! Here's a seriously quick breakdown of the happenings over the past few weeks!

• Technology fast: I am back in the social media realm. I think the fast was a really good thing for me. And honestly, I didn't miss much while I was gone for a month. Still considering deactivating everything all together...
• Challenges: This month's challenge is write a letter/note/email to someone every single day! As it turns out, I am UTTERLY failing at this challenge. Like I've only written two letters. And I wrote them both on the same day because I forgot to write one on the first day of the month. Sooooo it looks as though I'm taking a break from the challenges this month. No worries though, I shall start up again at the first of the year! Perhaps I will do both January (get up early) and December's challenges...I could write my letters early in the morning! 
• Ambur Lane: Mister Justin had a show with his band and I went back to Hastings to surprise him! I also spent some quality time studying at Morrison Reeves Science Center and Perkins Library. Needless to say, I miss both of those buildings immensely! 

  

  Ambur Lane! 

• Celebrations with food: I celebrated Thanksgiving 5 times this year. I think that means I'm extra thankful! :)
• Frozen Tundra: I continued to have class in the frozen tundra. Thank goodness for my orange blanket and snuggle buddy! 
• do juSTIce: Lots of great meetings and partnerships in the works for the jail/youth facility.
• Christmas sing-a-long: Dr. Binhammer has a sing-a-long every year. This year's was as fabulous as expected! 
• Holiday parties: Potlucks and Ugly Christmas Sweaters. Gosh, I LOVE this time of year. I have a perpetual stomachache from all of the sweets I've been eating...absolute perfection! Oh and an excuse to wear Christmas socks (btdubs, I fit into children's sized socks apparently...if you're looking for a good Christmas gift, socks are always welcome!).

  

  I <3 potlucks!

• NAP: Always an adventure at Nebraska AIDS Project. Last week was no exception!

• The Nutcracker: Ballet Nebraska outdid themselves with an INCREDIBLE production of The Nutcracker! And my wonderful friend and dance teacher was THE most beautiful sugar plum fairy!
  
• Husker Volleyball with the fam bam and roomie: we watched the 'Skers beat San Diego to continue on in the NCAA tournament. Unfortunately, they lost to Texas the following night. But it was fun to go to some games! 

  

  Papa, Mama and I!

• Test week: I keep telling myself that all of the sweets I've been eating are preparing my body for all of the energy I'll use up in the next week studying/taking my final test of the semester! This one is still on biochemistry, but focused on metabolism, the immune response, cancer and clinical genetics. 
• Christmas concerts: a capella jazz concert with my mama. Pure awesomeness. 

• Gingerbread Village: Mister Justin finished finals last week and returned the surprise favor by showing up on my door late one evening! It was really wonderful to hang out. We even made this nice gingerbread village. Straw poll...do you or do you not eat your gingerbread villages after creating them? 

Note: I did not do all of the decorating. So, if you are upset that things
are not symmetrical and/or without a nice pattern, I am not the person to blame.
If you do not care how your gingerpeople live, then this is the village for them. 

In other news: I like this video... Take a look!

Just a seriously quick review of what I've been up to since Thanksgiving! I hope all is well with everyone! 

Smörgåsbord

Admittedly, this will be a super random post. But that's what happens when I haven't blogged much in the recent past. Here we go...

• I recently found out that one of the conferences I'm presenting at in November is featuring Parker Palmer as its keynote speaker (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I'm about to nerd out real hard, please prepare yourself. For all of you science people that don't know who Parker Palmer is, let me direct you to this nice little bio. He is a rockstar. He's a writer about education, leadership and vocation predominantly. He is also a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker), so that's pretty darn awesome. We read one of his books in undergrad for the Christian Ministry program I was in (we read "Let Your Life Speak"...if you're interested in reading it, I will absolutely let you borrow it!). It was all about finding your calling/vocation and doing that with your life because ultimately it makes your life more full and affects those around you in a positive way. Well anyway, Parker (Do you think he will become my bestie at this conference? Gosh, I hope!) is speaking at this conference because it's all about service learning and community education. I think he is talking about his recent book, but I honestly don't know. I don't really care. He's awesome. He could be reading out of the dictionary and I'd still probably think it was interesting. So, I'm a little star struck and it's making it hard for me to put together a cohesive blurb about Parker Palmer, but the moral of the story is that I'm excited.
• This week I went to "Book of Mormon" with some friends. It was INCREDIBLE! Offensive, hilarious, gorgeous music, great choreography! I really wish I were more talented in the areas of singing, dancing and acting cause I would absolutely LOVE to be in musicals! Biggest bummer of my life that I'm not...boo.
• I had a test this week! It's done now though. Thank goodness. Still plenty more tests for weeks to come. I'm so looking forward to Christmas break (when I still have assignments to work on, but at least I don't have a billion hours of studying on top of that!). Perhaps I will get a countdown going on my computer so it will inspire me to survive until then!
• This week was Spirit Day (a day dedicated to eradicating bullying especially against LGTB youth). In honor of Spirit Day, I present you with this incredibly done video about bullying. It's been floating around the intrawebs for a few months now, but it's still just as powerful now as it was in February. As someone who used to be bullied endlessly as a child, I'm so glad teachers are better now about combating bullying--whether it's about a child's orientation or about their overall nerdy and awkward nature, it's not okay. We really have to start teaching our kiddos not to bully because otherwise they don't grow out of it and they are bullies as adults too. Adult bullies are so very not cool.

• Continuing on with the videos... Here's this video about STI prevention. I think this might be the best parody of a Taylor Swift song ever.

• A final installation of the videos for today...a very impressive tap dance to the song "Cups"! I love tap so much! They did a reallllll good job with it too!

• Challenges update: I have been stretching at least 15 minutes per day every day this month. It's been a bit harder than I expected to fit it in each day, but it has been really helpful! I've missed two days I think because I was absolutely too exhausted to do anything other than collapse into my bed by the end of the day. But I always stretched extra long the following days. Next month (in just 12 days!) I will be giving up my phone for the most part and basically all of the internet, so I'm guessing that will be MUCH harder, but absolutely worth it! I'll likely be much more productive with the studying, at the very least! Don't worry, you will still be able to contact me via email, snail mail, smoke signals and owl post. I will also be updating my blog throughout the month. You can subscribe to get emails whenever I post (shameless plug much?) since I won't also be posting them on the facebooks.

That was just a teeny tiny snippet of my life as of late. Perhaps soon I will write about something directly medically related. Perhaps not. But I hope all is well with everyone!

A challenging year to come!

So I recently stumbled upon this blog/article called 30 Challenges for 30 Days. I HIGHLY recommend the read (and listen to the TED Talk included in it...delightful!).

The whole premise (for those of you who didn't listen to me and just read it yourself) is that it takes about 30 days to form a habit/break a bad habit. So challenge yourself for 30 days to do something new or quit doing something you don't like. They suggest 30 challenges--hence the article title "30 challenges...", they sure are smarties over there at High Existence--to get you started.

I really like this idea because many of them deal with living intentionally--something I think is pretty darn rad. But some of the things they suggested just are things that I have any interest in or that I don't have the time to do during school, so I've created by own list! I plan to do one challenge a month for the next year.

• Stretch at least 15 minutes per day. (October)
• Media and technology fast...no Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. And I'll drastically cut down the hours I use my phone, computer and iPad. Obviously I can't cut it all out completely because I'm in school and email is an essential form of communication from professors. And I need a computer to write blogposts! (November)
• Write a postcard/letter/email to someone each day. (December)
• Wake up early each day. I haven't decided how early is "early" yet, but I can guarantee it won't be as early as my new friend Hugh--4:30 am...is that even a real thing? (January)
• Meditate every day. (February)
• Don't complain all day. This one will probably be hard. I'll have to have the people around me remind me if I fall off the wagon. (March)
• Practice self-compassion and self-love. I'm a perfectionist, it's true. My self-talk isn't always the most positive. It's something to work on! (April)
• Run one mile each day. This is going to be a rough month. If you've known me very long, you've probably heard me whine about how much I hate running. I doubt I'll like it by the time the end of the month rolls around, but at the very least the running should be much easier. Maybe I'll even up the distance by the end of the month...run in a 5K or something as a "reward" at the end of the month. (May)
• Take a 30 minute walk each day. Without technology or anything. Just enjoy the outdoors. (June)
• Write a blogpost each day. Obviously I won't have time to do this during the school year. Thus a summer project! (July)
• Take a photo each day. It has to be creative somehow. (August)
• __________________________ (September)

So obviously my list isn't complete. Does anyone have suggestions for my final month? I'll take your suggestions under consideration if they will actually help me somehow (listening to country music does not make me a better person, Nathan). I'm sure I'll come up with something by the time next September rolls around. My monthly assignments aren't set in stone by any means. I might have to shuffle things around based on how I'm feeling...I don't think jeopardizing my health for a challenge is really worth it!

Anyone else want to participate in their own goals over the next year? Or maybe for just a few months? I could definitely use accountability partners in this endeavor! Let me know what you decide to do!