Monday Nights and TV

I learned to appreciate the value of Monday nights during med school. Mondays are the most dreaded days of the week. It's still basically the same for a medical student like me. I guess you can call it "Manic Monday" still as The Bangles sang during the 80's. I don't get enough sleep on Sunday nights. I barely sleep on Sunday nights preparing for a 50 item exam with a coverage of usually a 100 pages with font size 8.

Last year, we go out on Monday nights. Wear our hottest new clothes as if we were teen stars of this decade. Eat, shop, karaoke, drink and even party after a sleepless night of no fun and cramming. Medical students like us reinvented Mondays. During second year, Monday was the night to paint the quiet and sleepy town red!

However this year, due to an increase demand of effort and workload at school a.k.a. even harder exams, more challenging discussions and junior clerkship at the hospital, we get off at Mondays at around 7 pm if you finish your history or progress notes early then off you go. If not, then there you'll stay. So in summary, I am usually in Dead Man Walking mode during Mondays, that when I get home as much as I love to go out and unwind, I end up staying in by sleeping realizing that my body needs rest to recuperate from the day's beating. Also I find it a little late and short malling at around 8 pm, when closing time is at 9. Conclusion: Not a good time to shop when under time pressure. And I am resigned from drinking alcohol to shake off the frustration from the exam. I am recently in economic recession too! My savings are depleted and I got to recover it before December due to mostly senseless spluring and impulsive consumer qualities. Because of that, this semester I turn to TV! Yesterday I watched TV from 7:30 till 11:00 pm!

Monday nights probably have the best schedule in my opinion! It is really hard to keep track the shows. I usually start off with reruns of Friends in Starworld at 7:30. By eight I usually scan the Discovery Channel for interesting documentaries. Last night I caught an interesting feature on the same channel about the History of South Korean Cinema. It was a learning experience. If nothing catches my interest, I watch I Love Betty La Fea, MYX or MTV for the latest videos or HBO. Then at 9 p.m. I alternate between The Amazing Race US (13th Season already!) and Fight Quest on the Discovery Channel. It's a show about learning martial arts from different countries like Kali, Pencak Silat and Taekwondo among others. Really got me hooked! I never knew Martial Arts could be this exciting! At 10:00 pm it depends so I usually watch House on AXN, Brothers and Sisters on Studio 23, Don't tell my mother on Nat Geo, it's a travel show on the world's wartorn or dangerous places like North Korea and Palestine where people rarely go or anything on TV 5. Then if I find the episode of Sex and the City funny, I change the channel to Velvet on 10:30. And if I'm not yet subdued by 11:00 I tune in to MYX while waiting for Backtrax at 11:30. I love it when they play videos from the 90's or during high school. Right now, music from the early college years around early millennium is already on that show's playlist!

If I could only watch this amount of TV during the rest of the week, I'll be less cranky! But somehow that is wishful thinking. It's either watch TV or fail med school! Yikes!