1st wk of school

This past week was my first week of classes at medical school. It was fun to meet a few new people (although I find myself gravitating back to the people I already met over the summer) and start learning more about our bodies. I am amazed daily at how incredibly complex our bodies are! That's why I'm doing what I'm doing!

Classes are good because they are mostly review (for now, at least). I am really glad I took genetics and cell biology as an undergrad, because if all this material (plus anatomy, which I did NOT take) was new, I'd pretty much be a basket case. I sat next to one guy that found out I was MD/PhD, and when the lecturer made a slightly confusing analogy, the med student said "So MD-PhD, explain that to us MD's in terms we understand." I like the sciencey aspect of the material, but I can already tell that most of these future clinicians are usually thinking "So what?" to most of what the PhD's have to say. Or maybe it's all in my mind. The fact is we could all be a little more integrative in our thought process, but how do you teach that in a classroom setting?

There are a ton of clubs, interest groups, organizations and associations, and most of them support worthwhile causes, but there are just too many to count. Luckily, every day this past week and next week, five or six orgs/clubs each day provide us free lunch and give a little presentation about what they do. I've been pretty well-fed this past week, and even after the organization intro's end next week, there still seem to be plenty of "free lunches" on the horizon. I am planning on doing a few, but it'll be sad not to be able to do 'em all.

Maybe it's just because it's the first week of class, but I think I will really enjoy my time learning here.

Oh and an interesting thing happened. I didn't want to fork over $150 bucks for a stethoscope, so I bought one off of ebay for $30. I got an email from the company a few days later saying that their warehouse got struck by lightning, so they will take a little longer shipping it to me. A day or two after that, PayPal sent me a message saying the company refunded me $5.50 for late service. I'll make sure to leave an update on whether or not the lightning did something to the acoustics of the stethoscope:)