As I'm reading through my friend's "First Aid for the Boards" and seeing all her crazy color coding, I am brought back to anatomy, when I realized that I really was in kindergarten coloring class. I bought a pack of colored pencils, and I would literally sit drawing all day calling it "studying." You know that picture of the kid who is coloring and looks like he's screaming and at the top they put "I fucking love coloring!!!"? that is totally me. And I would think that in my head every time I pulled out my colored pencils to draw whatever the professor had put on the board. Then it got time to study in the library so I'd rent some expo markers and make my color coded maps all over the white boards in there. All my notes had to be color coded. That continued on through the rest of medical school, even when I didn't have to draw things quite so much. I gained comfort from color coding my notes.
The problem is, eventually I got too many colors, and I didn't know what they coded anymore. So looking back on my old notes, with fifteen different highlighted sections, all of different colors, all supposed to mean something, just gets confusing. I remember sitting with four different highlighters, I knew what yellow meant. Occasionally pink was for drugs. Or diseases, depending on what I was reading. Blue was for something I wanted to stick out. So like a word, and then I'd highlight the definition in yellow. Sometimes something would be important but didn't belong in the blue category, it was too important for that. So I'd bust out the orange. And pretty soon I was just highlighting things for the hell of it.
My first aid for the boards literally is a coloring book. I don't know what the colors mean, each day I'd just grab a different pen and get to work. I always intended for it to have some purpose. Purple underlining was supposed to represent something distinct from yellow highlighting. But underlining never really works for me. So then I'd start boxing words. And each section I'd use a different set of colors. And sometimes there were pictures that I seriously would sit and color in. Every artery a different color. Those were my favorite days. Now I look back on my notes and think to myself "I have no clue what that means, but it sure is pretty."
And as I'm sitting here studying from someone else's book, I have the overwhelming desire to bust out my colored pens and finish coloring in the pictures she left blank. Not because I actually think it will help me to have everything color coded, but mostly I just fucking love to color.
Another friend of mine loaned me a book and told me what all the colors stood for. Blue was for something, purple for drugs, green for diseases, pink for co-relates. I was amazed. "You actually know what your colors stand for?" I asked. She seemed surprised that I didn't. I mean, I have a general idea of why I decided something needed to be in orange instead of blue or green, but I can't really put into words what that reason is. Pink=drugs, that I know for sure. But the rest of the colors, man they are a mystery to me. But my book sure is pretty.
This time around studying I'm not highlighting anything, or writing things in the book in different colors, because I don't have time. I just sit down, read, and write things on a notepad with a red pen, not even to look over again, just hoping hte act of writing will get some of this stuff in my head. But man, it is hard work to control myself this way. To not try and figure out a system of organization that is going to take me longer than actually studying does. To only use one pen every day, and it represents everything. To not highlight every word in the book. I'm surprised I can do it. But it really is good for me, because I did spend more time coloring and organizing than actually studying. And the worst part was, my system changed pretty much daily. So now the organization makes no sense. If anyone else saw it they would be totally flabbergasted as to what all the colors were. It made perfect sense to me as I was coloring, but now, I have no clue.
So here I sit, trying to decifer my friend's colors. If I don't think about it too hard, it all makes sense. Yes of course that would be green instead of yellow. But if I really try to figure out why she decided something should be green instead of yellow, I will go completely crazy. And I wonder if it makes sense to her, or if she just fucking loves to color as well.
My life has really become kindergarten art class all over again. except I can no longer stay in the lines. Coloring things in is still the best part of my day. And even if my books/notes make no sense, they sure are damned pretty...
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