Big test at the end of the week and I’ve been studying pretty intensely for the past week and a half.  Put kind of a strain on my social life, but my friends are pretty understanding even though they don’t quite understand how two weeks before a test is “crunch time” (understandable considering our study habits in college).

My study habits now are pretty regimented: wake up, read for class, go to class, waste time online, study for 6-7 hours and sleep.  And on the weekends: wake up early, study, play Rock Band, study, go outside for some natural light, resist a nap, study, sleep.  I try to get all my new material done by about 4 or 5 days before an exam so I’m just reviewing for the rest of the week.  And the day before the test, I do my best to be done studying by 4 or 5 so I can relax, make a nice dinner and get a good night’s sleep.

Hopefully all will be the same this time.  First real test of second year.  Wish me luck!

One week until test

Nothing to do but study

Want to play Rock Band

Second year started about three and a half weeks ago, explaining my recent lack of posting.  It’s been a rude awakening, especially after my laid back summer, and the content is already clearly different and more in depth than the previous year.  We start out with an extensive review and analysis of the immune system and all its parts, and although interesting, I find myself getting confused by the 50+ acronyms that we’re expected to remember that all seem to incorporate two letters and a number.  It’s only about 3 weeks in and I already feel the burnout.

Before starting medical school, I took a year off between college and worked at a (relativley mindless) job that paid the bills and allowed me to focus on my application to school.  When I started, I felt refreshed, excited about starting school again, excited about learning something applicable, excited to become a doctor.  Starting med school, I really needed to change my studying and learning habits, but my adjustment was relatively rapid and by a month or two in, I think I really understood how studying could work for me.  I know a lot of people who have gone straight through from college to med school and by the end of last year, a lot of them were really starting to feel burnt out.  I ended the year excited for it to be over, but still excited about school.  I thought I was immune to this burnout that everyone else was talking about.

Then this year started.  I feel like I have to totally restructure my study habits again, that this year is focusing so much more on memorization than on salient topics and general understanding, that it’s difficult for my brain to handle.  They tell us that brute memorization is not the way to study, but how else am I supposed to remember that E. coli are a small gram-negative bacillus living in the GI tract.  I hope that this feeling is going to be exclusive to this block, that once I get this stuff down, it’ll all be downhill from here (until Step 1 that is…), but right now I’m not so sure.  I’ve had my confidence shaken, and it’s not so easy to build it up again.

But I can do it.

So my summer continues.  I’ve been out of the anatomy labs quite a bit lately, whether by my choice or others’ but it’s been nice.  Getting back today, after almost a full week away (I was literally in the lab for about 5, rather than 30 hours last week), my knowledge of the lower limb is beyond pathetic and I have to fake my way through understanding the knee.

Anyway, my away time last week brought me to a friend’s house in Chicago and since I live in NYC, we flew.  I knew that I really wasn’t planning on studying all weekend, but, like most people, faked myself into believing that during any free moment, I was going to take out my dissector and learn the innervation of the adductor magnus.  Three of us flew and on the flight there, we all sat separately (and in the middle seats…).  I decided to be obnoxious and take out my dissector and atlas during the flight to see if I could gross out the 40-something drugged up business woman on my right or the 20-something urban hipster on my left.  Sure enough, a few minutes into studying I hear a gasp to my right and a quick shift.  I looked up and realized that Sleep Aids didn’t like what she was seeing, and when she saw that she had gained my attention, she timidly asked what I was studying.  I gave her my med school teaching speech that I’ve been spouting off all summer and she seemed genuinely interested.  She started asking more questions and as I gave her answers such as, “Yes, they’re totally naked when we get them,” and “no, the blood is already hardened in the arteries,” I could see her visibly wince.  But the questions kept coming, and she continued to gain confidence in asking them.

I found it interesting that this woman was clearly both fascinated and disgusted by what I was telling her.  But I suppose that’s how most people react to it.  And that’s how most people react to anything that is new or different or scary to them.  They want to know more, they want to understand it.  Even if in the end, it’s just grossing them out.

A lot.  About whatever they can.

I just finished my first year of medical school.  It was tough, but I expected that and I appreciated learning something that actually had some bearing on my life unlike quantum mechanics or the inner workings of an NMR machine.  And hey, now I know what my funny bone really is (it’s your ulnar nerve in case you were dying to know).  Now I’m in first year summer.  The last summer for a very long time…  And guess where I’m spending it.

My school works on a block system, which, unlike most medical schools, splits your year up into organ-based learning, so instead of taking 10 straight weeks on nothing but anatomy and physiology, we have it incorporated throughout the year.  I think it’s a good system and although I (and most administrators probably) don’t believe the curriculum is anywhere near perfect, it’s a good way to learn the material. So, we started down in the anatomy labs in mid-September after an introductory block to get people back into school mode and to get non-science majors on the same page as everyone else.

Most people asked if working with the cadavers was weird.  As strange as it sounds, it wasn’t.  I don’t think I ever really considered my cadaver a person.  I think most people don’t.  It’s our first real experience with death; we try to separate ourselves from it as much as we can.

My group was good and we all did pretty well together.  It was funny not having any idea what we were really doing, and somehow making it work out.  People in the class who did the best got asked to TA during the summer for the PA and PT students and I managed to make it in.  So that’s where I am now.  Rather than just working on one cadaver, I have the opportunity to work on about 20.  I’m actually learning a lot this second time around.  Plus, I know a few more things now, and even if I don’t, I can normally think something up for the students.