4/11/00

Auuugh. I haven't had a moment to myself all day. The fact that I stayed up until 2 a.m. last night playing Sim City 3000 hasn't really helped my state of mind any, either.

I had to give a presentation for my old lab today--just a summary of the work I did while I was rotating there. It went OK, I guess--I suppose I could have prepared more, but that's really the whole problem with school: no matter how much you do, there's always more you could be doing. For a high-stress type like myself, that's bad news.

It's not a problem for everyone, though. There's this one guy in my class who as far as I can tell seems to be completely devoid of anxiety. He never stresses about anything, and he's always in a good mood. We're both rotating in the same lab right now, and the other day we were sorting flies at adjacent microscopes and talking about dreams. He said that he wished he could remember all of his dreams, and I replied that since I have unpleasant dreams about as often as I have pleasant ones, I didn't think that remembering all my dreams would be so great.

"Really?" he asked. "What kind of bad dreams do you have?"

I told him that for the most part, my bad dreams were anxiety dreams: I often dream that I'm late for an important meeting, or that I have to take an exam that I'm not prepared for, or that I have to call someone, but the phone won't work. I have dreams like that all the time. But not this guy--he said that he'd never had a dream like that, and that the only bad dreams he ever had involved people chasing him. "And they're usually chasing me because I've committed a crime" he added.

See what I mean? No anxiety!

I guess my anxiety isn't all bad, though. It's probably the most potent motivating force in my life. I'd probably flunk out of school if I didn't feel constant anxiety that I'm not studying enough. This guy doesn't seem to have that problem, though. He went to Princeton, and now he's getting an M.D./Ph.D. I'm fiercely jealous of his ability to be so accomplished and so relaxed.

My arm hurts. Yesterday I had the third shot in my hepatitis B vaccine series. The vaccine, along with about a zillion others, is required for school. It's pretty astonishing how many needle sticks are required of me in order to stay in school. Before I started I had to have my measles/mumps/rubella vaccination, a chicken pox titer or vaccination, the first two shots of the hepatitis B series, a tetanus shot, and a TB test (that's 6 needles, although I had the MMR one when I was a little kid). Then this year, I've had to take another TB test and get the last hepatitis B shot (2 more needles). In two months, I have to come back and have a hepatitis B titer to make sure the vaccine series worked (1 more needle). And then I have to have a TB test once a year for as long as I'm in school here (at least 3 more needles). That means that in order to get a Ph.D. from UCSF, you have to endure a minimum of 12 needle sticks!

Anyway, my arm hurts from the last shot. I don't remember the first two hurting. The nurse who gave it is the same person who administered my TB test, and that didn't hurt, either. I remembered the nurse because she looks like my cousin Jane, who is also a nurse.

I'm tired, but I feel oddly hyper. I think I have too much adrenaline in my system from feeling stressed. It's getting to be a chronic problem. Last night Jay came over to help fix my CD-ROM drive, and I was really cranky and irritable towards him. Of course, he partly deserved it, because he came over almost two hours later than he said he would, and then tried to defend himself by saying that he'd "lost track of time." Of course, if I were really smart, I'd just realize that Jay will never change, and next time I'll tell him to come over two hours before I really want him here.

The forum: had any memorable dreams lately? and are you an anxious person?