Eighth Entry: Spilling Bee

LOG 8
March 20, 2009

“Under heavy fire! Repeat, under heavy fire! Falling back and holding position at checkpoint Alpha. Need reinforcement ASAP. Over and out.”

I’m under heavy fire from incoming events, assignments, and current studies, and am considering to fall back to apathy-mode...

I don’t know how, but all of a sudden I got all these lot of job on upcoming events, a higher position in my organization, and assigned in a national research contest. It’s not that I’m making a fuss about it, but… I just want spill out what I feel about this. And sorting them out by writing this log. It’s gonna be a really long post…

First, to understand what I’m in, I need to make a list of jobs that I got. Here goes:

- Committee Head of Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) – consists of two classes, 1st class on May and 2nd class on September or November. 1st class will be held on May 22nd-24th, Open registration on March 25th until April 20th. Preparations ready for the 1st class, general meeting on March 23rd, and promotional posters will be spread to nearby Medical Faculty on 25th. More details on the next post...

- Coordinator of Science & Education Division of AtmaSEARCH. SE Div has 3 major routine activities: Litview, PF, and my newly announced Case Study. As an organization that moves around research activities and scientific purposes, one might consider the activities of AS are “heavy” or “hardcore” or “utterly prodigal” depending on one’s point of view. Indeed it’s brain-exhausting, but I found myself to be somewhat attached to this organization and the atmosphere is quite comfortable. But yes, needless to say, being a Coordinator doubles your experience of exhaustion than “just” exhausting.

o Litview – due on April. Maybe on the 2nd week. Now prepping my presentation of new rules of litview. Another homework to do…
o PF – due on May ("not May again…"), 2nd or 3rd week, depends on the situation :D. Still haven’t thought much of it, but I need to make it interesting… Hecting and other Emergency skills (Tracheostomy, anyone?) comes to mind… still far from realization though.
o Case study – concepts are now completed. Need to start prepping the test-run. It’s basically like a simulation of a clinical case based on case reports or something like that. Preparations will totally exhaust the “Pathfinder Team” since they need to make scenario, data, presentation, handouts, event planning, and consult them to a valid & reliable doctor… more details of this *interesting* activity will come soon, but my goal on creating this is to provide AS members a decent way of thinking on facing clinical cases, so we’ll be prepared when we face our clinical phase.

- Committee Head of Med E-Search 2009 – an activity of AS held in August/September, or as soon as we have new members from the freshman class. The goal is to give AS new members a heads up, tips, and skills to search and basic-appraise medical literatures such as journals and articles. Med E-Search is under direct responsibilities of Science & Education division. It’s been a *tragic* tradition that the Coordinator of SE Div = Med E-Search Committee Head.
“noo… not another committee head… *sigh*”

- Coordinator of Utilities of Medskills 2009 – held on 1st week of May, Medskills is a kind of workshop/training of – as the name implies –medical skills for Medical Students of former curriculum (now, the main target is the class of 2005 since class of 2004 is now going on the clinical phase). The goal is to prepare the old-curriculum Students for clinical phase or at least, the OSCE test. Unlike us, the students of old curricula have never had training of medical skills before. Some of them even can’t do percussion techniques! (we were taught the percussion skills since 2nd semester)
Back to topic, it’s not really much of a job for now, since Utilities will prove what they’re worth on days prior to the show. It will be REALLY TIRING to carry 52+ Mannequins from 3rd floor of Building A, go down and take them up to the 4th floor of Building B with only 4 members including me!

- Member of Publication & Documentation of Science Fair – held somewhere on 2009. Back when I was high school, I always get the job in Documentations Division of any events on my school (Canisius College! The best All-boys School in Indonesia! …or so we think~). It’s quite a simple job, since all you need to have is a camera, and all you need to do is to take pictures of the events, listen to all your buddies’ narcisstic needs, and you can get pics of cute girls with an excuse of “being a committee” :D. But here, they combined PUBLICATION with DOCUMENTATION. Means, the member - like me - need to make posters, handouts, fliers, banners, committee name tags, etc, AND take the pictures of the events. Twice the job, twice the weight. Four times the tiresomeness...

- AtmaSEARCH delegation of TEMILNAS 2009 – starts on June 29th ‘till August 3rd. It’s an event where research-oriented organizations from Medical Faculty throughout the country send their delegates to compete their skills on researching, scientific poster-making, and essay-writing. Ridiculously, all participants must PAY 1.500.000 excluding transport in order to participate. Where should I look for the money that much??! I bought Sinanju which is half of the fee with my 8-months worth of savings!
("I'm planning on robbing a bank now. Any suggestions on where and when? Seems like the TEMILNAS Committee wants their participants to have some criminal skills as an addition to researching and medical skills...")

I’m excited, challenged, afraid, and angry at the same time.
Excited because this is my first participation on a national-scale competition, pretty much like when I was participating the Contest at Atmajaya as a participant from Canisius College about a year ago.

Challenged because I want AtmaSEARCH to be *at least* the finalist – to be specific, I want MY piece that brought AS to the finals! :D – or even win the competition.

Afraid because I realized that it’s not only MY name that I’m betting here, but also my partners from AS, AS itself, and even the University, and I know that I’m SUCK at public presentation and I lack knowledge since I’m still a 1st-year Med Student!!! See how slim my chances for winning? or even to make it through to the finals?

Angry because… well, everything. Now any subtle things can annoy me like hell, and I feel my limbic system is overly charged or overstimulated. From a little mismatch with my research partner, the ridiculous cost of participation in TEMILNAS that I need to pay, the monopoly of internet connection in the house (so I need to use CDMA modem and again it costs me money), the unethically abstractive and confusing studies of ethics, religion, culture, and logic…

It’s been months since I had a good sleep, and I slept only for 2 hours or so in the past few weeks, I don’t even dream since last week, I’m tired of getting into meetings until dawn and discussing trivial and important matters for hours, or studying about ethics I can’t comprehend and religion I no longer believe in, and I’m really really ANNOYED when people keep chasing me and telling me what to do!

*** Medical Intermezzo: Researches proved that REM phase during sleep is responsible for what people remember as “dreaming”. On REM phase, muscle tones are low but brain activity is as high as conscious state. It is speculated that REM phase is a way for CNS cells to keep themselves healthy and working, and recalibrating synapses to maximize the process of learning. Elder people has lower frequency of REM phase during their sleep, as opposed to the high frequencies of REM Sleep in newborns and infants whose brain is still under rapid development. Researchers conclude that lack of REM sleep in adults causes emotional fluctuation, irritating behavior, and even psycho-somatic sickness due to the decreasing chance for brain to refresh.***

~I need to take a break…
seriously, I need to be less serious…

but I can’t let that happen, since I’m responsible to these lot of jobs & activities, and I can only literally rest when they are all finished, because I promised and I WILL see through all these jobs that they are DONE perfectly well.

So I guess, I’ll just calm myself down and get back to work ASAP. Stuff all these emotions back in the box like usual and I should be fine – for the time being… I’m lucky it’s not an overflow of memories about ‘someone’ I kept inside and I don’t intend to let her out. If she broke loose, I’d be in a mental retardation state by now~

Now.. what needs to be done is to properly regain my physical health… any suggestions? Don’t say “REST” since I don’t have time for that…


End of LOG 8