Thread Drift

[Crankin]

How is med school treating you, Blueberry?

[ny biker]

I just tried it, and it's working for me. Might mean there's not good compatibility with their html, but it's there (Community -> TE Forums from the mail page).

I'm just not here much because I'm too busy with other stuff (med school). I love riding my bike and do it as much as I can - I just don't have time to talk about it here as much. I do try to check in every day or 2, but I usually don't feel like I have much to add to the conversation and so I don't post much. I've cut back on other forms of social media too - so it's not one taking over for another with me.

It's working for me, too. I hope things are going well with school.

I had noticed that we tend to respond to some posts from new people by advising them to search for old posts, particularly when there are questions about saddles. On one level that makes sense, but it also doesn't do much to encourage conversation.

[emily_in_nc]

Where is everyone? I have never seen this forum so dead.

Facebook.

At least for me, I'm not riding very much here in Mexico so don't have a lot cycling-related to say, and I can't answer a lot of the questions posted here since I am so behind the times on bikes. I don't have super new bikes and don't know most of what's "out there" these days since I'm not currently in a buying mode. I'm posting beachy, dog-related, foody, and other photos on Facebook and sharing interesting things I find online. And reading a lot more novels than I used to.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Akumal, a bit south of us, and enjoyed some great fish tacos, amazing homemade ice cream, and walking on the beautiful beach.

Here are a few of the photos I posted on Facebook:

Attachment 17825 Attachment 17826 Attachment 17827 Attachment 17828

That's about all I got! ;-)

[snapdragen]

I do check in daily, primarily to see what's new in the world of spammers.

In the spirit of Thread Drift, here is Mei -- a neighborhood kitty that thinks my patio furniture is just right for a nap. She and her brother Mushi are "freerange" cats, and sweet as all get out.

[snapdragen]

Have I mentioned that I also have a raccoon? (Chemo brain, I forget things at times) Anyway, he's trashed about 1/4 of my backyard lawn, but I don't care. I figure with the drought, he's having a tough time finding food. I even bought a "wildlife camera" to catch him. The pix are not that great, but it does the job.

[ny biker]

Facebook.

At least for me, I'm not riding very much here in Mexico so don't have a lot cycling-related to say, and I can't answer a lot of the questions posted here since I am so behind the times on bikes. I don't have super new bikes and don't know most of what's "out there" these days since I'm not currently in a buying mode. I'm posting beachy, dog-related, foody, and other photos on Facebook and sharing interesting things I find online. And reading a lot more novels than I used to.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Akumal, a bit south of us, and enjoyed some great fish tacos, amazing homemade ice cream, and walking on the beautiful beach.

Here are a few of the photos I posted on Facebook:

Attachment 17825 Attachment 17826 Attachment 17827 Attachment 17828

That's about all I got! ;-)

Nice!!

I ride my bike regularly but don't know anything about the latest stuff on the market other than what I see on Bikesnob's blog. And he's usually making fun of it.

I'm curious about how you decide where to go and how long you'll stay there. I cant imagine living anyplace where I couldn't ride my bike. I'd go insane, even with such beautiful scenery.

[Crankin]

I do look at Facebook a lot, but I rarely post. I respond to others, sometimes. My life is not that exciting, so it seems I end up mostly posting pictures of places I ride or x country ski. Stuff people here would appreciate. In fact, I tend to write about that stuff here, because I know you guys will at least understand why I do this stuff. Mostly I get "Don't you ever sit still?" from others. I also get extremely annoyed with the constant "I love my daughter" week, and supposedly cute animal videos. I have a lot of local restaurants or other places I frequent on my newsfeed, so that's what I like to read. Except for my one close friend I ride with, I really feel like I have more in common with the people here, than some of my friends in real life. I have a lot of acquaintances who have similar lifestyles, but they are not the people I am hanging out with all of the time. And, I have actually met a lot of TE members, including a couple I did ride with for quite a while, but now that also seems to have slowed down. Maybe I am too social?

[Blueberry]

How is med school treating you, Blueberry?

I'm loving it! Sure there are bumps and frustrating parts, but I love the (medical related) coursework and the clinical aspects. We've finished 2 blocks (Principles of Med and Immunology) and we're on to Hematology/Oncology. It's really not as bad as I thought it would be in terms of difficulty. Our class is really laid back and helpful (we're pass/fail, which helps). Sure there are stressful times - like the weekends before exams - but it's not all that bad. We just finished our first clinical week - where we spend a week in a local doctor's office taking patient histories and practicing our exam skills. Such a different perspective on what we're learning, but really welcome!

Some stress trying to figure out what I might want to do. I know it seems early, but for some of the really competitive specialties you have to do research between your first and second years in that field (mainly because there is no other time to do it) - and that has to be lined up early. Of course, all of this is for the residency match in our fourth year (and I'm in my first) - so it all seems a little silly!

I don't talk about med school stuff here much because I feel like I'd bore people to death. Maybe I need to not make assumptions about what y'all might want to hear and post more.

[Pax]

I'd enjoy hearing about your medical school adventure, I don't really know anyone who's gone through it so it would be interesting to hear first hand.

[Blueberry]

Fair enough. It was sort of a black box for me until I started looking into admissions and the related classes.

No med school today - glued to the TV streaming the ironman world championships. It's the only sporting event I actually watch. I need to go do a tri one of these years.

[Crankin]

I'd like to hear it, too, Blueberry. The only people I know going to med school now, are the children of friends. Well, one is in his residency in ophthalmology, and the other is a 2nd year med student at U Mass Medical School. He is a really nice person, and also an endurance sport/lifting person, and I think he is going into sports med. It would be nice to hear your perspective, as someone a bit older.

[emily_in_nc]

I'd enjoy hearing about your medical school adventure, I don't really know anyone who's gone through it so it would be interesting to hear first hand.

I agree -- and a doctor was what I always wanted to "be when I grow up" as a child, though I later switched to psychology after I found about all the chemistry I'd have to take (not my thing!) And then I switched again while in psych grad school when I determined I was too shy to deal with people and would rather deal with computers. So I was a software engineer for my entire career. Lol! The twists and turns careers can take, right?

BUT...I'm still fascinated by med school, love medical-related shows, always have. In fact, it was Marcus Welby and Medical Center that fueled my original career goal as a girl! So post away...when you have time. I know it can be intense and very busy!

I agree that it seems way too early to have to choose a specialty. But I guess it's not that different from most kids just entering college already knowing what they plan to major in. Not to say that can't be changed, but it doesn't seem to happen all that much. As an aside, I almost switched from psychology to health education mid-way through my studies at UNC, but for various reasons ended up not doing so.

[emily_in_nc]

I'm curious about how you decide where to go and how long you'll stay there. I cant imagine living anyplace where I couldn't ride my bike. I'd go insane, even with such beautiful scenery.

Heheh, some of our decisions are quite random, actually! Trial and error as we're trying different things to see what we like and what "sticks". We can ride bikes here; in fact, we brought our Bike Fridays with us this time, but the traffic really bothers me and takes a lot of the fun out of it. We were hoping we'd find some places farther west (farther from the town center, where we live) that we could ride with less traffic, but after checking them out, I found that the number of taxis, motorbikes, etc. along with the way people drive here (not well, for the most part, and speed limits are only a suggestion!) made riding even far from the center of town stressful and far from pleasant. So I prefer the couple of bike paths we can access because the rest of it is just more urban than I like. DH still rides 4x a week, but he doesn't enjoy it nearly as much as our rides in the US either. He's been disappointed as he was hopeful that it would be better. Last winter we only had beach cruisers and didn't really check out any of the western routes, so we just didn't have all the facts.

I am lucky that I also enjoy yoga and running and have been doing each of those 3x a week, so I can get by without as much cycling while still maintaining fitness and staying active. But DH can't run (knees) and has zero interest in yoga, so he's more limited. We walk a lot too, of course, since we don't have a car. We do love living car-free.

The big thing for us in choosing a destination is weather. We don't care for cold weather, and DH especially hates it. Unfortunately, there are few places in the US other than Florida that have warm enough weather for us year-round (and Florida is not very cyclist-friendly and also has lots of traffic). Even Tucson has some chilly weather in the winter, and that's probably about the best place we've found state-side. We spent February and March in southern Arizona two winters ago and really enjoyed it, but Dec-Jan. would probably be a bit cold for us.

Another reason for choosing Mexico is that we can live here for at least 1/3 less cost than most places in the US. Electricity is more expensive but pretty much everything else, including food (a biggie!) is less. My yoga practices come out to around $3-4 US each with a monthly pass. And we love the colorful culture, the kind people, and the fact that people walk much more here, just generally live more outside lives instead of holed up inside their homes in the suburbs. We also like being away from all the US politics!

We tried one winter traveling around to several different US destinations for a month each in the winter (that's when we spent two months in Arizona), and we did enjoy that a lot and may do it again. We're currently considering an RV as I've mentioned before. As much as we enjoy this part of Mexico, certain things about it do get old, like the noise, tourists, traffic and humidity. And not being able to ride the way we like to, of course!

As for how long we stay certain places, we found that with VRBO, Airbnb, etc. it really pays to spend at least a month in one place as weekly rates are really geared towards vacationers and generally put us above budget. So on our winter in the US, we spent one month in each of five different rental units/houses. But last winter we decided to spend six months here to see how we liked it without having to move around (pack/unpack, etc.) so much since we would have no car and our dog, making it harder to change locales. We liked it a lot and planned to do another six months this winter, but we found we could get a much better deal with a year's lease. So we decided to try that and leave early if we were tired of it and/or didn't want to go through summer's heat next year.

Right now, it is definitely looking like we'll leave early. We arrived here at the end of July, and through September, it was pretty brutally hot and humid. It's a bit more tolerable now; we've had some cooler nights and a couple cool fronts blow through. It's super hot today, but overall it will be gradually getting cooler as "winter" approaches. Still not too cool for short sleeves and shorts during the day, but nights and mornings might require a light sweater. But it will start heating up again in March/April, and I am sure we'll be ready to get farther north sometime in there. And we'll be wanting to enjoy some excellent riding weather stateside by then as well!

Sorry for the long, rambling answer, but that's because there really is no set answer. We're pretty much winging it. I am sure we would do some things differently if we weren't traveling with our dog -- go to some different countries, for example -- but it's just simpler for us now to stay in this part of the world. It's pretty easy to get back to visit our families as well, and a cheap flight from Cancun.

[Crankin]

Emily, in my first 2 years, I switched from Special Ed, to Social Work, to Psych (briefly), and back to Special Ed. I couldn't handle the math (statistics) for psych, although, curiously, I took stats when I had my brief period as a doctoral student. By then, we actually did the calculations on a computer, which in 1980, was very ahead of its time. So, you can see, I actually, in my second career, ended up doing what I really wanted to do. I briefly thought of law school, before I decided on education, but I was afraid of majoring in a liberal arts major, and I knew I wouldn't get into law school with a degree in education. I got my master's in special ed right away, at night, while I was working. Right when I got that degree, ASU was starting a PhD program in Special Ed. I had already quit my job and was waiting to hear from U of Arizona about getting in there (I don't think I would have). Then, my parents moved from AZ to San Diego, and I met DH. I deferred my admission to the PhD program at ASU a year, went back to work, got married. I started the next summer, and by December I was fried. Plus, I got obsessed with having a baby. It was really an obsession. Very unlike me. But, it would have been stupid to have 3 degrees from the same school. I went back to work, had 2 kids, and all was good. I was taking classes to get my CAGS (EdS) degree in Ed Admin around the time my youngest graduated HS. It's an easier version of a doctorate for educators. Then, right when I finished all of the classwork, and had to do the internship, I had no idea how I would get that done and work at the same time. Just like before, I became suddenly obsessed with not doing this, because it just didn't feel right. The nature of school administrators had changed, I was already making good money as a teacher, so when DS 2 dropped out of U of A, I decided that I would just go do something else in a couple of years. Basically, it took me 30+ years, but I don't regret my first career at all. I loved teaching.

[emily_in_nc]

Emily, in my first 2 years, I switched from Special Ed, to Social Work, to Psych (briefly), and back to Special Ed. I couldn't handle the math (statistics) for psych, although, curiously, I took stats when I had my brief period as a doctoral student. By then, we actually did the calculations on a computer, which in 1980, was very ahead of its time.

That's interesting to me because -- in my first year of clinical psych graduate school (1983-84), we also did most of our stats work on computers using SAS. I had never liked math all that much, but I absolutely loved it. That was when I became obsessed with computers and decided to leave the program after that year and change to studying computer science. I ended up going to a different university (NCSU instead of UNC), since they had a post-baccalaureate program in computer programming that you could do in the evenings. So I took a job as a technical writer and did coursework for two years in the evenings, after which I was able to get my first programming job.

It's kinda fascinating how careers can evolve with exposure to different things.

I briefly thought of law school, before I decided on education, but I was afraid of majoring in a liberal arts major, and I knew I wouldn't get into law school with a degree in education.

Interestingly, a younger friend of ours recently got into law school with a degree in English, so you never know! But she hated law school and left the program after one semester. Now she is looking towards a PhD in English.

Plus, I got obsessed with having a baby. It was really an obsession. Very unlike me.

Boy, that is something else we have in common. I went through this very same thing. Total obsession. Although in our case, it ended very differently. We were never able to have a child despite multiple interventions (after trying for a year the natural way, of course!) I did finally get pregnant using IVF/ICSI but miscarried. I was devastated. By this time, we'd been trying for 7-8 years and were just burnt out, getting older all the time, and decided we couldn't continue on. We never wanted to go through the whole adoption roller coaster either. So this is why we were able to retire early -- the silver lining in this cloud. If I hadn't miscarried, I would have an 18-year old right now, which boggles my mind!