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[kieulogram]

Study, study, study

December 7-8, 2019 (Saturday - Sunday)

I’m going to combine these days because I don’t feel that there was enough done to constitute 2 posts.

On Saturday, I ran a few errands before studying. I woke up around 10AM and headed out to UTC (a local shopping center) to pick up my Secret Santa gift for my group. Picked up my gift (not going to say from where, just in case) and as soon as I stepped out of the store it started pouring, which resulted in me hurrying back to my car. 

From UTC, I headed to Convoy Strength. Convoy Strength is a powerlifting-focused gym located in Convoy and is about 10-15 minutes from school with no traffic. The workout consisted of squats and bench. Squats were a complete nightmare in my opinion. Ever since starting to school, I haven’t been able to find my groove and weights have been feeling uncharacteristically heavy. Bench was fine, nothing great, but nothing bad. 

After the gym, I headed to the grocery store to get groceries for the week and pick up lunch from a nearby poke place. Ended up getting some stuff to make pasta with. When I got back home, I destroyed my lunch and just proceeded to get work. I did laundry intermittently so I wouldn’t be studying the whole time. 

And that pretty much was the rest of my day. Very exciting I know. 

Sunday was no better. Woke up around 9:30AM and decided to wash my bed sheets just to get moving. While waiting for my sheets to wash I started studying again. 

The topics that are going to be on the final are: vital signs (heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate), constipation, heartburn, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, gas, insomnia, patient adherence, patient drug abuse, administration techniques, special populations, patient diversity, prescription verification, pain, headache, musculoskeletal, fever, common cold, allergic rhinitis, communication, and the top 75 drugs (brand/generic name, what they’re for, and what they do). Typing it out makes it seem like a lot, but it really isn’t that bad. But, I guess I’ll see tomorrow (December 9th, Monday) on the final. 

On my last post, I did say I’ll try to include some pictures. So I just took a picture of study setup, which is very bare:

(Yes I know this table is used for beer pong, I ordered a new table today and it should be arriving on Tuesday this week)

[kieulogram]

The calm before the storm.

December 6th, 2019 (Friday)

To be quite honest, this was an uneventful day. But, that’s how it should be with this week being the last week of the quarter before finals. So, no complaining here.

The day started off with biostatistics, where everyone had to give group presentations. Our professor originally had the class scheduled to start at 8AM and end at noon to ensure we’d get through all the presentations in an adequate amount of time. Thankfully, she sent an email the night before saying we didn’t have to start class until 8:30AM. Those extra 30 minutes of sleep are always amazing. 

The presentations were about studies that we had conducted and we were attempting to find some sort of conclusion from them. Some of the studies my classmates did were quite interesting. The class finished around 10:30-10:45AM, so a 4 hour class turned into a 2 hour class. After class, my friends and I dawdled around for a bit to figure out what we were going to do. Most of us ended up going home, while others went to the library to go and study. I elected to go home.

When I got back to my place, I was planning to go to the gym and get some studying done. Instead, I took a nap for a couple hours lmao (something I need to be better about). Upon waking up, I forced myself to study a couple hours before having to meet up with my big for dinner. I started studying for my Pharmacy Practice final that’s on Monday. The material for this class isn’t particularly difficult to understand, it’s just the sheer amount of information that we are expected to know. I’ll probably list out these topics in a later entry just for my own sake.

Around 6pm is when I started getting ready to go out for dinner. We ended up going to a Korean place called Friend’s House. Got the beef soondubu with a little spice. Really hit the spot with all the rain that is coming down here in La Jolla. Stayed and talked there for a little under 2 hours about various things like life, school, and personal stuff. 

Got back home around 9pm and got ready to go out once again to hang out with some friends before we study hard all weekend. I barely participated because I was just super tired, but they were playing Mario Party when I came in. They then switched over to JackBox which is essentially a collection of mini games that are playable through your phone. We all stayed there until about 11:45PM.

Made it back home for the last time that night and knocked out almost instantaneously. 

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I think in the future to avoid these huge blocks/walls of text, I might start adding some pictures to them. Which means, I’ll have to start taking more pictures. I think it’ll be a cool addition to this little project to give it a little life and have it be less drab. 

[kieulogram]

A little bit about myself.

My name is Michael and I’m 24 years old. At the time of writing this, I’ll be 25 in just under a week. A quarter of a century, that statement has got some weight to it.

I went to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona for undergrad and received my B.S. in Biotechnology there. I am currently in my first year at University of California, San Diego where I’m pursuing my PharmD degree. To be perfectly honest, a doctoral program is a whole different ballgame compared to undergrad. I feel inadequate being here sometimes because of how insanely intelligent and hard-working everyone else is. I’m not sure if other people feel the same way in my class, but for myself, it seems like I’m never doing enough.

Aside from school, I’m an avid and competitive powerlifter in the 74kg (163lbs) weight class. I’ve competed three times and my best numbers so far are a 227.5kg (501.5lbs) squat, 137.5kg (303.1lbs) bench, and 252.5kg (556.6lbs) deadlift. I’m unsure as to whether or not I’ll be competing during school, but I hope to at least compete during the summers between academic years.

The purpose for this blog is for my own benefit. To be honest, I don’t really care whether or not this becomes popular or not. I think it’ll be interesting to document my journey through pharmacy school by trying to write daily/weekly. By writing more frequently and consistently, I hope to become a better writer and become better at expressing myself. There are other small goals I want to achieve with this as well, but I’ll express those goals when they become a bit more real.