miss akay

Two weeks through medical school

What a fantastic experience. This morning I am tired. So far, I've stuck with getting to the gym before my 8am classes. I get up at 5:45am. But over the weekend I stayed up late and partied with new friends. So I need to catch up on sleep. I can feel it. It is time to start studying. We're all having a tough time battling study inertia.

Orientation week is filled with group activities: silly games, scavenger hunt all throughout DC, community day at Marvin Gaye park where we picked up hyperdermic needles, met our big sibs, met our cadavers, bought scrubs and a stethoscope, went bowling, went to McFaddens, went to Karma, took a night time boat ride on the Potamac, went to The Improv for a comedy show, bar hopped Adams Morgan and of course we had our white coat ceremony.

Gross anatomy is an invigorating experience, at times. I felt brave in making the first cut and dissection. I think I know what I am doing, without really knowing my way around the body. I actually enjoy cleaning through the fascia and looking for the borders of muscles and underlying bones. To me, parts of it are really beautiful. I want every cut to look like art. I want a picture perfect dissection. That is fun for me. But learning all the muscle names, ligaments, nerves and what they do, will be a huge challenge. Our professor made animated Flash movies on every section of the body and I try to use them, but it is extremely time consuming. In our dissection group, I am the only girl of 6 people. Pretty amazing for a class of 166, where a hundred of us are girls!

Microanatomy isn't freaking me out in the least. So far I know everything all ready. If anything makes me nervous, it is that I already feel comfortable with the material. I am sure it will change! So I just sit back, relax and learn a few more details.

Neurobiology started yesterday. Again, it was all review for me. But I do not know all the fissures and gyri of the brain. Again, anatomy. Even as a visual person, it is a challenge for me because the names are ridiculous. The parts of the brain called "uncus" or "mammilary body"... wah? Are you kidding me?

Today we start POM (Practice of Medicine). The lecture is titled, "Medical Decision Making". This should be a very thought provoking course. I like my group of people. There are 9 of us. I am not the only girl this time. In fact, one of the girls I hung out with a lot this weekend, is in my group.

Tomorrow we are back to Micro Anatomy and will study connective tissue and fertilization. This is all a review of my work at Penn last year. From 2pm until 5pm, we have Gross Anatomy, which will be a lot of new material. Ending the day with dissection can be tiring. Everyone is ready to run out of the lab, after two hours are up. But I am sure we'll acclimate and spend three times that in a day, before too long!

posted by miss akay @ 8:44 AM