Dishes

It's Friday night and I've spent the last hour cleaning my living room and bedroom. My dishes are done and my bed is made- a facade to mask the lack of order in my mind as I've been grappling with memorizing anatomical terms. With an exam on the horizon, stress has started to kick in and I've forgotten how I best deal with it. To be metacognitive for a moment, it's interesting how when I become hyperfocused on one thing, "distractors" tend to be more annoying and must be fixed before I can continue the task at hand. Tonight, the distractor was dishes. As much as I'd like to blame these distractors for creating more stress, in reality, they are not all detrimental. For instance, they remind me of the world at large, outside the niche I've been in since coming to Pomona. We get new/clean lab coats every Wednesday for dissection. It is one of the most blissful simple pleasures that exist and because of the fourth of July, this week the schedule of cleaning changed by a day. The anatomy lab coordinator came on Tuesday to inform us of this schedule change mentioning "the holiday" as the cause. It took me several minutes to realize that we are already at the end of June and the holiday was reference to July 4th. Being reminded of the outside world is a benefit- just make sure we get clean coats! Secondly, distractions can be generally productive- putting gas into the car, cleaning, grocery shopping, eating, etc. are all lifestyle sustaining chores that should be done regardless of an exam schedule. At the end of the dissection Tuesday we ran out of gloves. My lab group, being the studious students that we are, decided to have a fast dinner and form a study group immediately after leaving the lab and go to the bookstore in the morning (being almost 7, the bookstore had already closed for the day) for more gloves. The next day, we discovered that the bookstore was closed for summer inventory for the rest of the week! (A sign and email announced said closure a week in advanced but being singley focused, we all neglected this useful information). Bottom line- No gloves. Luckily, I was able to beg and borrow a pair for the days dissection. Needless to say, Wednesday night included a shopping trip to restock on essentials- 600 medium gloves. In retrospect, dealing with chores and distractors, sooner rather than later and not letting them build up is worth the sacrifice in cram time. Tonight, while I can't boast a deep understanding of the flexor digitorum profundus muscle of the forearm, I do have clean dishes.