Ramblings from Quarter 4

Yet another quarter has come to a close and I have managed to come out unscathed. I am now over the half way point as far as med school classes goes (4/7 down!). The next three quarters won't be a cake walk though. I just calculated how many lectures will be on the first exam and it is a whopping 57. I then proceeded to kick myself for having counted during my break from classes especially since looking at that number made me feel like I needed to be studying right this instant.

This break has made me realize how jaded med school has made me. It is sometimes funny and often very sad. My time has become a very important commodity and I often get exasperated when people are moving at a leisurely pace. In my head, I often quote Miranda Priestly from "The Devil Wears Prada" saying "by all means move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me". I also find myself lecturing my mom or friends about whatever fad diet or supplement they have heard about on Dr. Oz after they have attempted to relay what they have heard. Lies! Admittedly, I have also lost a great deal of respect for one particular faction of health care. It isn't because I think they serve no purpose but I disagree with how they are currently allowed to practice as their training is not near the level of the physicians they are trying to act/practice like.

One thing I must do before my next break is come up with a crazy interesting story to be able to come back and tell people when they ask what's new. I know I do more than just school down there but away from it it is really the only thing I feel like I do. The post-final block daze doesn't help matters much because though my mind might be going through a tail spin of information I have learned over the past few months, my ability to string more than three words together is significantly impaired. Sometimes I feel like Goldie Hawn in "Overboard" when she is sitting on the couch making incoherent sounds with a blank stare and has to be dropped in a barrel of water to bring her out of it. I need a barrel of water!

So just for the heck of it, here is a run down of highlights of this quarter:
-My site visit to Jefferson City was amazing. The doctor in charge of the site is a pediatrician (!) (and a female!!!) and is connected to MU Hospital in Columbia so there is definite possibility of doing rotations there for peds and peds oncology. She also practices in a Community Health Center and since my interest is in peds I could alter the normal rotation of doing peds under the hospital pediatricians to doing part in the CHC under her. I could also volunteer at the CHC on my off hours to get more exposure.

-First year orientation was a couple weeks ago and it was really fun to dress up and be silly to welcome the new batch of med students to school. It is crazy to recall how naive we all were back then. I think our class has done a really good job of offering guidance and support. It really does remind me how much I love our class. Even though we have the odd balls, there are a lot of really good people who outshine the bad eggs.

-Nothing, not even block exam studying could keep us from watching some of the Olympics. I think many of us found ourselves watching sports that we never thought we would be interested in (for me: archery, water polo, synchronized swimming) because they were always more enjoyable than studying. We also would watch events between classes and admittedly a couple of us were watching the women's soccer final during our pharmacology lab.

-I think I might have over committed myself this year. More and more things keep being shuffled under the coordinator position I hold on SGA and I'm starting to feel like I'm boiling over. I now oversee five committees, one of which I chair, and they are all very important committees which can't really be put off (Board Review, Rotations, Disaster Advanced Responder Training, Osteopathic Pride & Service, and Political Awareness). Add to that being president of the UNICEF club and just for the heck of it I signed up to do an ultrasound elective. Hope I can pick up juggling real fast.

-Paranoia and self diagnosing has still yet to set in. Neuro this quarter affirmed something I have suspected I had for a very long time but other than that I am not afraid of spiders, mice, mosquitoes, ticks, pork, toilet seats, door handles, etc........ because of what I might get from them like some of my classmates and physicians I know. There are a few on that list that I don't like in a general sense though (spiders, mice, and pork top the list).

-And last, my favorite class moment of the quarter was during a critique (an OTM skills test) when my evaluator checked me off and gave me an extra ++ and then attempted to talk me in to applying for the fellowship next year. Those moments when you are reassured you are doing something correctly in med school are so welcome. This moment barely surpasses another moment in OTM lecture when the instructor made a point to tell us not to dangle anything in our patients faces as we were doing a certain technique. It is amazing how talking about dangling things in people's faces turns a class of 170 professional students in to giggling teenagers.