unintentional vacation

My preceptor isn’t usually one to give very many compliments, so she completely brightened my day/month/week last week with the following conversation!

S: What textbook are you reading there?
F: The 5-Minute Clinical Consult Standard 2015!* I’m a little terrible with coming up with a differential diagnosis and treatment plans right now, so a friend recommended this to me and I figured it might help!
S: Well, that’s not  your fault. You’re not supposed to be good at differentials right now. That’s what this year is for. Now, if you don’t know these things next year at this time, then it’d be a problem, but this is your very first rotation! You’re doing really well. You’ve actually got a very good base of fundamental knowledge, so you just need to build from there.
F: Really? :O
S: Yeah! Most students can’t tell me the mechanism of action for all the drugs when I ask, and you’ve gotten almost all of them.

_{*This is an affiliate link, but seriously, I love this book. It’s been monumentally helpful in giving me some framework on what I ask about, what I should be looking for, what I should do, etc.}

This reaffirms the fact that I am probably my own worst critic. Cue my inner fist pump! :D

She’s actually out of town this week, which means I’ve been put on unintentional vacation again. For my last unintentional vacation, I managed to finish unpacking, getting some studying done, and finally go self-hosted, so I’ve been trying to be equally as productive this time around. For most of last week, I entertained all kinds of possibilities as to what I could spend my time doing, because, as weird as it may sound (how often do med students get to have vacations anyway?), I don’t want to be on vacation. I mean, I’m not gonna lie–the prospect of having spare time and the freedom to do absolutely nothing if I so choose is wonderful, but…this is the field I want to go into. I want as much hands-on experience as humanly possible! :O

• There’s the obvious–studying. I’d like to do reasonably well on my first set of shelf exams, especially because this one happens to be what I actually want to do with my life. I finally got around to doing the practice test and actually got all but one question right! Mayhaps I’m not quite as lost as I thought.

• Following around the sports med physician in town. I found out about him through Mike, who followed him for several days when he was on unintentional vacation a couple weeks back. (This whole unintentional vacation thing happens a lot with family physicians in the summer, haha. :P )

This is what my friend had to say on the matter. I’m probably about the farthest you can get from being a gunner.

• Following my Isaac’s former FM preceptor around! Isaac asked him if it’d be okay and he said I was more than welcome to come on by, so off I go! :D I’m a little apprehensive about this because Isaac is far more brilliant than I am and was seeing his own patients/coming up with his own assessments/plans for them by uh, week 2? I may pale in comparison, but he assures me that it’s very low-stress and that I can do whatever I’m comfortable with!
• Getting all my required assignments done + out of the way. I managed to finish all of that last week, actually, so I’m in the clear!
  
• Taking all the fitness classes I can at my hospital’s gym! (Might as well since they’re free, right? :P )
• Swimming in my apartment complex’s pool before it closes down for fall/winter. I think it closes after this weekend! :[ Sad times.

I only have about 2 weeks of Family Med left, and I’m very much going to miss it. :[ The charge nurse says she’s really going to miss having me around. I’m half-wondering if it’d be possible for me to go back every now and then if I happen to have a free day just to do more injections and all that. (I gotta see if my school will cover insurance on me past my assigned rotation dates! :x )