Orientation and "Are you nuts, too?" :)

Orientation, while painful at times, has actually been quite useful. I have felt quite lost around the UC Davis campus the past couple of days-- but at least I'm not alone.

Monday, I joined the new OB interns (6 girls--Gaea, Gemma, Lucy, Julia, Alex, and Charmian) for a welcome breakfast with the chiefs. They all seem like wonderful people and I'm sure, being such a small intern "class," we will be close. We then shuttled to an Evalue training session with some other interns (I think there are somewhere about 100-150 total; FP is one of the biggest departments) where we learned how to log our resident work hours and all that (UC Davis is very good about being compliant about the 80 hour workweek, etc., which is good to hear).

I met up with my FP colleagues and, with the peds interns, we had a neonatal resuscitation lecture and written test (the practical portion is on Thursday). There are 12 other FP interns starting with me-- 2 (Adeel and Michelle) are FP/psych (5-year program) and the other 10 are traditional track FP. Two (Betza and Susanna) went to med school here at Davis, and most have some ties to this or the Bay area although may have moved away for college or med school. There are 4 men (Phi, Jeremy, Adeel, and Brenden) and 8 women (Betza, Rocky, Anika, Susanna, Amy, Michelle, Mahsheed, and Phuc). 6 are married, 6 are not.

I spent Monday afternoon mostly with OB, doing suturing, tying, learning episiotomy repairs, etc., but felt a bit torn because FP had all this clinic orientation stuff that they had to do separately for me later because I missed it. I actually missed some of the OB triage stuff because I was trying to sort things out. I think I will feel torn a lot in this residency (or at least kind of like I have a split personality), especially this orientation week.

FP had a nice welcome dinner at an Italian place in town, Espanol, where we got to meet residents and their families from the other years, as well as some of the other faculty and staff. Everyone seems great so far!

Today, we had an FP welcome breakfast, where we got to share, among other things, one thing "about us" that was not on our application. I felt the need to (so as to not alarm people later) share my feelings about throwing away food, so, from now on, I'll probably be labeled as the "freaky klutzy girl who eats rotten bananas" (although they don't know about the blog yet :)). But I guess there's no sense in trying to hide something that is just going to come out later :) People still talked to me :) I hope I'll be able to make some friends despite being slightly weird*....

We had some more clinic orientation stuff, including briefings on the different community outreach programs we'll be involved in, resident policies, and then spent some time in the Simulation center doing mock codes, deliveries, etc. Tomorrow will be a full day of human resources and computer orientation. Yay :)

*Speaking of weirdness... while home in Virginia, I read a HILARIOUS article by Peter Carlson in the Washington Post that discussed a recent Reader's Digest (one of my favorite magazines although I don't subscribe and thus didn't read this) article about "Are you normal or nuts?" If the first link doesn't work, you have to get a WashPost login and read it in its entirety, as I shouldn't reproduce everything here. Anyway, Digest readers wrote in "things they do" that are borderline wacky, and psychological professionals answered whether or not they were truly weird. Here are some snippets from Carlson's article quoting some questions:

Q. "'I'm 47, and I love to rub satin,' wrote one Digest reader. 'As a child, I would rub the satin on my blanket while sucking my thumb. Now I carry a satin hankie with me everywhere, and I can rub it in my pocket. It always calms me down. Is that nuts?'."

According to Carlson, the therapist and RD writer William Speed Weed (I can't believe that this is his real name, but whatever) responded, "no," saying "as an anti-stress device, satin-fondling beats smoking or overeating. A little private satin rubbing never hurt anyone."

Regarding a girl who could not bear to have her food touching and required different plates for different foods (i.e. meat, potatoes, etc.), Carlson quoted Speed Weed replying with, "Ask yourself what will happen when you go out on a date. Will you demand that the kitchen send you five plates and five forks? Good luck getting a second date." Ha. At least my problem is getting a first date :)

Carlson mentioned a third person who wrote, "I hate choosing things," [such as silverware out of a drawer]. "When I finally choose a spoon, I feel bad for all the others. I even sort of apologize to them: 'Sorry, guys. Next time!' Is this weird?" Hmm. Does this sound a bit like me feeling bad for "lonely" pieces of food/fruit on plates? If so, I'm in trouble. The experts marked this person as genuinely wacky.

I learned that there is a disorder (on the OCD spectrum) characterized by compulsive counting known as arithromania. Other wacky people included someone who couldn't bear to drive next to a car going the same speed and another who is unable to throw anything away (Does this include food? Uh oh....)

Anyway, we all have our idiosyncrasies, right? I dare you to comment with yours! :)