M2 Year: BEGIN!

After a glorious two months of attempting to pretend that I am not a medical student, I have officially began my second year of medical school. Therefore, I can no longer avoid reality, sleep in, cook real meals, watch TV on a regular basis, and actually have a real life. As a result, I shall return to blogging the chronicles of life as a medical student. 

Let me compare the beginning of medical school as a first year to the beginning of medical school as a second year. Side note: Today was my 21st first day of school. How 'bout that?

M1 Year: 

Hello, children! Welcome to Orientation Week! You have five days to get to know each other, go out and have some fun downtown, go on tours of the school and hospital, and be excited to finally begin the exciting journey towards becoming a physician.

First day of M1 class: 

8:30: Let's go get our badges!

9:30: Intro to clinical course: Physicians need to be good people. Be a professional. Don't do drugs. Don't get arrested.

10:30: First anatomy lecture! This is anatomical position. This is the front of the body, but we can't just say that, so we are going to call it the ventral aspect. Say goodbye to left, right, above, below, middle, side, top, bottom. Say hello to ventral, dorsal. Anterior, posterior. Lateral, medial. Proximal, distal. Superior, inferior.

12:30: Get confused about where to go for free lunch. Show up late and miss the pizza. Don't get to eat. But, it's okay, because the day is over and you're going home!

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M2 Year:

First Day of M2 Class:

7:00: Wake up, get ready for school.

8:00: Take my car to get fixed, since I know I won't have time to do it in the foreseeable future.

8:00-8:30: Read the first few pages of BRS Anatomy while I am at the car garage. Figure I might as well prepare for school. Immediately close the book when I realize I know nothing. Hate myself for taking summer off. Love myself for taking summer off. Decide to worry about it later.

8:30 - 9:00: Go home, make my bed, eat breakfast, RE-CURL my hair. Why? Because I am well rested and have time to kill (this will probably never happen again). I enjoy it immensely.

9:00: Hitch a ride to school. Enter building feeling like a bad ass M2. Immediately get taken down five pegs when they hand me a three-inch note packet for my clinical course, and it contains only the first six lectures. Knocked down three more pegs as I am handed seven more inches of notes.

9:30: Go to first class, which is basically the intro to my clinical course, where the director tries to convince us that the PA's did the entire first year of medical school in 3 months, so they deserve to be in class with us. Hmm.

9:45: Get punched in the ribs for falling asleep. Attempt to stay awake for rest of class. Actually succeed. Win.

10:30: Refresher on a little something known as Evidenced-Based Medicine (EBM). Basically, get thoroughly confused as a librarian shows me for the fifth time how to run a real search on medical databases. One of those things that you never want to learn, but really need to know. We all suppose we will learn it on the wards when we have no choice. Fingers crossed.

11:30: Intro to pharmacology, where I find out this beautiful 212 page packet I received only covers the first exam's material. I have three weeks to learn these 212 pages. Each page has three slides. 636 slides to memorize in three weeks. For one class...

12:30: Bolt into a meeting to get free food. Beat all of the M1s because I have special tactics to get to the food first. I ain't a rookie.

1:30: An hour on taking sexual histories. This was actually a very entertaining lecture, as you can imagine. My favorite slide read something like: "Sex is common. Many patients have sex. Many patients think about sex. A lot. A whole lot. Doctors are sexual experts." I also learned that 50% of marriages and 70% of non-marriages have a third party enter the picture at some point. Way to refuel my commitment phobia! Other take home facts included: 40% of 18-22 year-olds get chlamydia (at least here), and spontaneous orgasms are often triggered by certain pitches.

2:30 - 4:30: Pathology small group. This was definitely the best few hours of the day. We finally get to do some awesome thinkin' like doctahs. We are given a few cases that we must prepare for every week. Each case has clinical symptoms, and we have to create a list of possible diagnoses, aka a differential diagnosis. We then have to review labs and pathology to narrow down the list and reach (hopefully) the correct diagnosis. Probably going to be one of my favorite aspects of the semester.

4:30 - 5:00: Have a half hour to kill before a board meeting. Get out notes to study. Get on facebook instead.

5:00-6:15: Longest meeting ever.

6:15 - 8:00: Meet friends for dinner and drinks, because we still have time to do this! YAY!

8:00 - 9:15: Get home, realize I am exhausted, immediately pass out. 

Moral of the story: It feels great to be back. Even though I can already tell this year will be a lot more demanding and challenging than the first year, I missed the structure and organization that medical school provides. A small part of me is terrified and already missing the laziness of summer, but most of me is bored and ready to dive head first into the bottomless pit that is medical school. I wouldn't have it any other way. BRING IT ON!!!!!!!