From the Med School dept:

Alright, so now I'm in med school. That's about all I have time to write, but I'm going to write more because otherwise this will have been a completely unjustifiable waste of time.

Here's the Hit Parade of things that I've observed.

1. The rumors are true. Med school is hard.
2. You can't prepare beforehand. Don't even try. I didn't.
3. Med students are, by and large, not douchebags.
4. I get 7-8 hours of sleep every night.
5. I perform significantly (quantitatively) better when I've had 2 cups of coffee.

It took me a couple of weeks, but I think I'm finally getting into the groove of how the next two years are going to roll. Since I had been out of school for over a year, it took me a little while to find out just exactly what was needed of me. I've gotten to the point now where I go to the gross lab and 1)know what I'm looking for and 2)am able to review all the structures I'm supposed to know. My most useful tool--teaching. I have found that if I know something, be it the branches of the facial nerve or the muscles of the forearm, all it takes is me teaching it to somebody to cement it into my brain forever (read: until the end of the test block). This has become a great aid, and my goal for the next GA lab practical is 100% (missed 3 last time.)

I am actually starting to undergo a change where I'm understanding that the stuff I'm learning is going to serve me in the future. Up til now in undergraduate, many of the things I learned seemed useless, or only required as a stepping stone along the way. Now, everything I learn will help me make a diagnosis or understand a patient's illness better, and for that reason I feel compelled to commit it all to memory efficiently, and accurately. I'm also beginning to appreciate the human body more. It's becoming less of a magical thing and more of an incredibly intricate, mechanical machine. Every day, some Ph.D. somewhere is discovering some enzyme, some chemical pathway, some process that accounts for a phenomenon of previously unknown causes. What this means is that every day, we find a new piece of the puzzle that is the human condition. At the moment, the puzzle is the equivalent of an edgeless, 5000 piece puzzle of a wheat field and we (scientists and doctors) are a 5 year old kid whose neurons are at least a decade from being fully myelinated. Slowly but surely, however, we approach completion, and while it won't be in my lifetime or even in my childrens' lifetimes, I fully believe that one day we will understand the meaning of life. Either that, or we will understand that there is no meaning.

There will probably be more later (may take some more prodding). However, if I want to get the aforementioned 7-8 hours of sleep, I must begin now.

Til next time,
DT