Medical School and I

This is Week 3 of uni and I am getting my ass kicked! An expression that is used in Canada and the US with regards to medical school is "it is like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant." This is exactly how it is. Since Monday's PBL (a huge case about an infant boy who has Severe Combined Immune Deficiency), I have been trying to keep my head above the pages upon pages of immunology. I am quite cognizant that I don't have to know/learn all of this stuff in a week; the learning objectives provide an outline of what we need to know from this week (which is certainly doable - if there were 35 hours in a day). It's just a bit daunting knowing that there is so much that you don't know, and that the more you know, the more you don't you. Good god.

I had one lecture this morning and then a microbiology laboratory. I attended half a lecture on how to secure evidence-based medicine articles and sources onlines using PubMED, Medline, and other online medical sources. I sat down in the biological sciences library at 12:00 and left at 5:30pm. This has been the longest day of revision for me thus far, considering that I don't have an exam tomorrow. :) I know that this is going to be a regular occurance, which is something to look forward to as it prescribes some level of routine.

I came home at 5:30 and quickly made dinner before rushing off to a study group session with Dan, Dave, Dave, Meliene, and Pete (All Aussies, except for Dan, whose a Kiwi). We went over the issues from last week's PBL (cardiovascular) and the formative assessment questions. I realized that I don't know as much CV as I thought. God damn. I had a few moments of "HOLY SHOOT, I need to get out of here and start examining all the holes in my knowledge and learn what I don't know." The group worked well together (at least that's what I thought) - we got through all the objectives (and then some), had our nerdy medical conversations, and watched a new episode of The Simpsons. I felt as if I didn't contribute enough to the group (definitely a first time for that one to happen); the learning curve is huge and I respect that. I know that for the next meeting, I need to get my ass into gear (which I have been doing since the group study session) and maximise my studying time.

Speaking of maximising time, Graeme (IronMan) and I have decided to help each other out. I am going to teach Graeme the basics of cooking and he will train me into a leaner and meaner Veevek. :) I am going to keep up playing squash with Dave (and rumour has it that others have come out of the squash closet and want to play as well), and try to run with Graeme 3 to 4 times a week. I will go over all the basics of shopping for groceries, preparation, and cooking with Graeme. This is his first time from living away from home; due to the fact that he was either in school or training, a lot of his domestic skills are underdeveloped. This combination of me teaching him to cook and him helping me get back into a peak physical condition is quite exciting! By allocating time to excercise, I reckon that that will put take out the extraneous time for other things that would be 'useless' (note: I am using that word in it's loosest sense).

Alright, it's a little past midnight. What does that mean? It's means that my dress will become rags and my coach will turn into a pumpkin. No, I haven't been wishing I was Cinderella. However, the moral from this is very similar to the tale of Cinderella. See, Cinderella's fairy godmother told her that she was able to go to the ball, in all her finery, if and only if she would return by the last stroke of midnight. Okay, how does this fairy tale apply to me? Well, first off, I wish that I could be the princess at the ball...hahahaha...just kidding. Seriously though, on a uni night, midnight is the time that I want to bring things to a close and get to bed. I get up early (6:15am or so) and want to make sure that I can get enough hours of sleep without sacrificing study time (I haven't decided if this will be the case for the weekends, but I have been getting relatively early on the weekends - between 8:30 and 9:30am). On that note, I am signing off.