Welcome to Medical School

"This is your education. Who do you think you're fooling?"

--Dr. Paul Shanley on "just getting by" and learning material just enough to know it for tests.

He explained a scenario in which a student would get by in the first two years medical school then experience a sensation of vague apprehension in the clerkship (3rd and 4th) years of medical school. The student would continue to avoid participation and shrink to the back of the group. By the time that person is a doctor, he or she feels totally unprepared to be a physician and is sent out into the world unable to fake  what he or she should have been learning the whole time.

So, this is what I'm going to avoid doing.

Today is my fourth day of medical school. Lectures begin at 8am every day except for Thursdays, and my whole class of 154 people attend every lecture together. The class is 36% women, which is unusual for medical schools these days, but we have conjectured it was more due to the women opting to go elsewhere rather than admission statistics.

The lectures are dense but not hard to follow. Before class began, I was terrified of not being able to understand a word of lecture or just getting so lost that it was useless. Fortunately it has all been quite interesting and the school gives us very detailed hand outs of every lecture that we keep in binders, so I've been taking notes on those as well as on notebook paper.

We have an hour for lunch every day. The cafeteria in the school is all right and very cheap. Today I tried the cafeteria in the hospital with some friends and I was very excited by all the options, and my black bean burger was great. Yesterday during lunch I sat in on a Neurosurgery Club meeting, in which food was served, a third year spoke because he had just completed his Neurosurgery clerkship, a Neurosurgeon/Professor spoke and showed videos of his procedures, and there was a panel of residents. I found the procedures in the video very interesting and satisfying, but a seven year residency (including two years of research) isn't too appealing to me. Everyone has said it is really important to keep your mind open to different specialities though!

As for people I've met, I'm very very happy. My class is small enough so I feel like I am getting to know a good number of people at a reasonable pace, but large enough to feel like I still have many wonderful people to meet. 90% of the class is from New York State, and a great number of my classmates took two years or more between undergrad and coming to medical school. My classmates have done interesting things and come to medical school with many interesting perspectives. I feel young and inexperienced in comparison.

My apartment mate and I have been getting along swimmingly, and we have a very pretty apartment in Geneva Tower, the student housing high-rise. She and I have been making friends together and apart, so we are building a web of lovely people  with whom we study, eat, work out, and go out. Dancing last weekend was very fun and I am hopeful about the downtown Cuse bar scene. I think I will only go out once a week, because I lose my voice from the loud music and my sleep schedule gets all wacky, but I will look forward to it when I do!

The work outs have been some of the most fun I've had in the past week at Upstate. I've been to two "boot camp" classes and today I attend a Tabata (High Intensity Interval Training) class, which are all taught by second and third year medical students. It's a great way to meet people, exercise, break up my studying with something productive, and have some fun. Even though I do not have the stamina (yet!) for all the exercises, I have a big smile on my face as I attempt them. Today, the medical student leading our class told us to rest on our "sit bones" for an ab exercise, and everyone laughed. Then she replaced it with the technical term, like for real the technical term, which I don't know, and everyone laughed again. It's very humbling to be associated with such smart and accomplished people.

I love putting on my badge every morning that has my ID and says "MEDICAL STUDENT." You have to look really closely on the ID to see that I'm a first year, so I know that no one can tell what year I'm in as I walk through the hospital to get to class. I feel a bit proud and at the same time a bit like I am just pretending. I hope that the latter will go away soon.

That's all I have to report for now. I miss the scenery at Cornell and I miss my cats and my family and my friends from home and college and Israel. But, I can tell this is going to be amazing, and these friends are going to get right up there with my dearest, oldest friends. I'm impatient to get in the swing of things and have best best best friends and know everyone and feel like I belong, but in the meantime, I will soak it all in with a smile and try my hardest and enjoy being a freshman again.