Back to Iowa

I just returned from a week off in Iowa with my parents. It was pretty low key. I'm on a Community month this month which is where we don't do a lot of clinical work but learn about a lot of resources around the community. I did some interesting things this month including learning a little about public policy and advocacy, public health, disaster preparedness plans etc. We also are required to do a couple of projects, one with one of the community organizations and one quality improvement project for the hospital/residency. Since the month is on the lighter side of things, I decided to take Step 3 of my USMLE exam. It was a two day test this time and I think after a fair amount of studying, that it went okay. Even though it's a multiple choice test, I won't know the results for a couple months. Since I spent the majority of the month studying for the test, I kind of put off my other projects until my vacation week. So even though it was 5 days off at home, I spent the majority of the day working on the projects. I did, however, spend the evenings with my parents and just kind of bumming around. We went and watched my highschool's volleyball team play (they won and they're ranked 3rd in the state) and in general did a lot of reading too. It was nice to get away!

I came back a day early and was able to do some touch up work, spackling and painting, in my bathroom because of the removal of the old countertop and sink. I also went on a Haunted Hayride last night which was kind of fun! It was one of those outdoor fields with a corn maze, a couple of haunted houses and the hay ride. So, I didn't dress up for this Halloween (I'll be on call on the 31st) but did get to enjoy a little bit of the festivities. This coming month I'll be doing an ER month so that means shift work with some weird hours but at least I'm in my own bed everynight! Nothing else too much to report...