Acceptance Letter (some time in April)
My mom gets the certified letter and she's ecstatic.. for some reason it didn't hit me fully at the time... but I got progressively excited. (I think I was emotionally spent with my retaking the MCAT and getting the score I wanted and getting accepted to my first US school prior)
Orientation
Scope out brown people and people I know in undergrad, coincidentally who were brown. Orientation was like the first day of High School except in this High School, Middle Schools from all over Georgia sent students and they came in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors.
Getting White coated was surreal. I didn't even grasp what a white coat means. It's a blessing and a reminder. It tells your superiors that you're still a tool who knows very little because you're wearing a short coat but it is the only real thing that distinguishes us as medical students.
First Phase
I learned that everyone is smart in medical school. Even the dopey looking kid is smart as is the hot girl who everyone seems to gravitate towards to at parties. Which makes for a nice segue:
Med School tunnel vision/ beer goggles/ Hardy-Weinberg in action:
In medical school , especially at a smaller school like mine that's not lecture based .. we get to know each other well. We see each other ALOT. Living in Middle Georgia also cuts down external interaction. So there is a strong tendency to skew your perceptions of people, especially those of that opposite sex. The cute girl with the quirky smile turns into the supermodel with the come hither look. The non-Caucasian girl who talks to you every once in a while suddenly becomes the Exotic Girl with good listening skills. Let's just say that somewhere between burying myself in books and trying to salvage some kind of social aptitude, I've fallen repeatedly head over heels which isn't healthy... for them [wink]
[as an aside/afterthought.. I tried once to drop the line "yeah, most anything is funny when you're in med school" at a barista at a Starbucks trying to be clever and indicate my medschooliness and charm her .... FAIL]
My first year was all about learning how to study which really isn't all that interesting. Basically, I've come to the realization that I study best where there are people around but people who don't or are smart enough not to interact with me. I learned how to play flip cup with Diet Dr. Pepper. Though I hear, it's strange to gulp down a carbonated beverage. Another point, med students can party hard. I suppose when your life is dominated by studying and late nights studying and waking up to study.. when it's time to party, party big. I did research over the summer of my first year which was interesting material but mostly I learned that I hate being organized and keeping track of my results, most of which failed repeatedly.
Second year has been much more exciting. Some highlights:
Smoking Cessation
So they paired us up with another medical student, one person would be the intervener and the other would observe and provide feedback. Basically we went room to room meeting "patients" with different stories and we tried to intervene and try to get them to stop smoking. My best observation was watching a classmate say "you know sometimes, you just have to crank a heater" - i had to try real hard to keep character but we all laughed afterwards.... I also discovered that I can be remarkably stubborn. The patient I ended up with refused to say that he smoked which confused me since this was a smoking cessation lesson. I basically refused to back down and came short of calling him a liar ... only to find out he was "dipping" not smoking... you had to be there...
Male GU/Rectal Exam
So I'm told to count as I slip my finger into "the receiving area" but I don't quite grasp this , being the first student to go so I end up counting out loud with my gloved finger in the air much to the delight of my peers.[ we're supposed to insert on 2.. not hold your finger in the air like a jackass] So every once in a while, one of my peers will go "1...2...3"
Female Exam
No comment. This was one of the best instructed exams but the most invasive and disturbing in the sense.. that you get "intimately familiar with the insides" very UNLIKE a man.. who's junk is all up and outside...
Anywho.. my memory is failing me right now.. so enjoy a song that I can't seem to stop playing:
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