Did I Ask For Fries?

Back when I started this blog, the thing that appealed to me about WordPress blogs versus Blogger blogs was that you could have entries about all sorts of topics, and they would cohesively come together in the one blog.  If you were only interested in one sort of topic, you could filter by that category and ignore the rest of the posts.

Recently I’ve realised that although yes, potentially, you can filter like that, the odds of someone actually being bothered enough to do that are pretty slim.  Speaking for myself, if I wasn’t interested in over 50% of the posts someone made, instead of applying a filter to categories that interested me, I’d just stop reading altogether.

I’ve also come to realise that the posts I make are either about Uni, or about the rest of my life.  Since these areas are so disparate, I strongly doubt that people interested in medicine are going to care about what food I ate that night, and conversely people that want to read about how I went in the City to Surf don’t really want to hear about how I got to witness 25cms of someone’s anus and colon being resected the other day (it was damn cool btw!).

The solution is pretty obvious: split this out into 2 separate blogs.  Coincidentally enough, that’s just what Blogger is great at doing, so I’ve decided to make the move, and have a fresh start, like a lot of other blogs that I read have done recently.

I’m also hoping this will give me some renewed vigour about the act of blogging, to make it a useful tool for working towards goals, rather than simply being a dumping ground for recounting what I’ve done during the day.

Maybe this will work, maybe it won’t, but there’s only one way to find out.  If you’re so inclined, you can now check out how my studies are going, what I’m learning, and how I’m trying to integrate all the snippets of information we come across in 3^rd year in Did I Ask for It Stat?  Otherwise if you want to read how the non-medical aspects of my life are going, please continue to read Did I Ask For Fries? in its new location.

I’m not going to shut this blog down, because I want to keep these posts from the last year or so.  If at some stage I workout how to export WordPress posts to Blogger I’ll do that, but for now that’s in the too-hard basket.

So adios for now, hopefully I’ll catch you on the flipside!!

I’m not even going to apologise for my absence this time. If anyone still reads this, then I guess you have come to expect it already.

So from now on I will not apologise, nor will I explain my lack of apologies, mokay? Otherwise this entire blog will become as mundane as these last two paragraphs have been!

So anyway, it’s cold here. Winter has arrived with a vengeance, and brought with it a crapload of rain, which I would be happier about if it was bucketing down as much in the catchment areas as it has been in Sydney.

In response to this nasty weather I have done two things.

Firstly, I’ve gone out and procured a pair of reindeer boots that are possibly a little immature for someone of my age. But they’re cute, and they’re warm, and with a 15% off sale and a voucher at Target they cost $12.50, and I’m over seeing people walk around in ugg boots.

And don’t worry, over my dead body there will no WEARING THESE OVER THE TOP OF JEANS¹.

Second thing I have done is hibernate. I only leave the house when I have to. As well as keeping me warm, it gives me more time to study². My exam is 3 weeks – 2 days away now.

Expect this self-imposed vegetation to continue for the next few months. But right now there is a break in the rain, and we need bread, so I might actually leave the apartment for the first time today.

¹ Although I reserve the right to wear them over a pair of pyjamas only within the privacy of my own house, where no-one else will see, STRICTLY to keep out the cold and in no way, shape or form a fashion statement of any kind.

² Amongst other things of course, like reading blogs, watching TV, making soup and FREEZING TO DEATH IN THIS DAMN WEATHER.

So I had my PPD interview last week (the whole reason I started this blog). I have actually enjoyed the outlet this blog has given me, despite not having used it to its full potential. A situation I hope to remedy soon.

But anyway, my point (I did have one, didn’t I?): the PPD interview.

I had actually thought this was just going to be a brief formality. Something along the lines of:

Me: “Oh you read my entries?”
Interviewer: “Yeah. Do you think you’re going ok?”
Me: “Uh, well, I guess”
Interviewer: “Ok well thanks, good luck with that” *signs form*
Me: *bids farewell*

But, *shock horror* I actually found it to be quite encouraging, and dare I say, inspiring. Who would have thought an assessment task would have accomplished that eh?

The main take home message: don’t settle for mediocrity.

Our course is quite bizarre in that the only grades that you get are either satisfactory or unsatisfactory. No credits, no distinctions; you either pass or fail. Now there are some very good reasons for that – to not encourage inter-student competition, to get you to focus on learning, rather than passing exams – but there are some downfalls too.

It is very easy to coast through from week to week, month to month. To get to the end of the block and realise that there is still a lot that you are very hazy on. Then to get to exam time and completely freak out because it feels like you have to learn (not revise) several cases all in the one week.

But the point of the interview was: this course is designed to have us pass. But really, it’s what you do after graduation that matters. Being able to cram for exams and then forget all short-term knowledge is just going to disadvantage you and your patients, so don’t settle for that. Don’t just coast through. Be the best you can be. Ball, court, yours.

This is going to be a constant challenge for me, but hopefully this entry will help capture the inspiration I was feeling after that interview.

Today I made an earth-shattering move and finally gave this blog a name. Unless I’ve for some reason decided to rename the blog between now and when you read this, the name I’ve decided upon is “Did I Ask For Fries?” This name may mean nothing to you, but for me it is nostalgia with a capital N.

“Did I Ask For Fries?” was the name I gave to an online journal I created in 2000 when I was in my final year of my first degree. Funnily enough I was actually doing my Honours thesis on online journals at the same time. What I was basically exploring in my thesis was why people choose to publish the details of their life on the Internet, for both people that they know, and complete strangers to read, and both the benefits and negatives that these authors experienced.

Gosh it feels like a long time ago. Even more so when you look at what has happened with the “blog scene” since then. I don’t think anyone uses the term “online journals” now, it’s all about blogging. Interesting how things change.

Anyway, despite the transition from journals to blogs, I think some of the benefits and pitfalls of this medium still stand. On the plus side it is a great way to express your thoughts in a way that allows you to reach other people who are interested in what you have to say. It allows you to keep a semi-permanent (depending on how good your backups and hosting are!) record of what you have done and thought throughout the year.

Of course it isn’t all rosy. There are also issues of what you say about other people – are you sharing just your own experiences, or those of others as well? What happens if someone you know “in real life” finds your journal/blog and finds out more about you than they knew before? What if a complete stranger reads your journal/blog and decides they want some kind of interaction with you? It really can be a can of worms.

When it comes down to it though, I think the benefits outweigh the negatives. I think this medium has great potential to be both explorational and expositional. It allows you to both record everyday life, and to reflect upon it.

So when I found out that for uni we had to do a “personal and Professional Development Portfolio” with pretty much the same aims, I immediately thought, what better way to combine the two.

I stopped my original online journal at pretty much the same time I graduated from uni in 2000. In a lot of ways I have missed my lack of publishing over the past four years, and I don’t know why I waited so long before starting another one.