Charlie goes to Medical School

Sphygmomathingy by CDC

Alright, everyone take a deep breath and begin relaxing…NOW!!!

I have a million of those jokes.

It turns out this blog is a good barometer for how quickly time is going.  Last night I was talking with a friend about time slipping away.  So much is going on in such a short amount of time, that you just don’t realize where the days go.

I had no idea, but the last post was practically two weeks ago.

I have a test this week.  The neuro/psych module is well underway.  We have wrapped up gross anatomy lab for the time being and have started a brief neuroanatomy lab section.  We have had about two labs a week for the last little bit.  Basically we float around from station to station.  There are around 6-8 students per station where we review tag sheets of items to identify.  Occasionally an instructor stops by, and we’ll review a few sections of the brain.  The instructor will walk through the internal structures that can at times seem like two tiny objects of very similar shades of the same color on contiguous field of another similar shade of the same color.  It really isn’t that bad, but you do have to appreciate how complicated the brain is considering how similar most of its structures are.  Much like histology there is also a lot of two-dimensional presentations of three-dimensional structures, so there is a lot of spatial reasoning (the non-dominant side of the brain) that must go on.

One of these past weekends, I had a nice break from studying.  Our class went out to one of the local homeless outreach organizations and set up a health fair.  The first year dental students were there as well.  We had booths talking about dental hygiene, foot care, health in general and stress relief.  There was also some high school students who I think were on the back-end of a coat drive, handing out supplies for the upcoming winter.

I was in the stress relief booth which was pretty slow until a second year student stopped by with a blood pressure cuff (i.e. sphygmomanometer).  The main point of the booth was to promote stress relief practices (diet, exercise, socializing) and for us first years it gave us a chance to learn and practice taking blood pressure.  I had actually done this in my freshman A&P course that I had taken right before coming to medical school, but doing it on other people…who are waiting…is much different than taking your own in lab.

Most of the last few weeks have been spent with my notes.  I’m actually quite stressed about this upcoming exam.  I think I’m getting the material down, but I’m just repeating a lot of this stuff over and over again to make sure that I know everything.  The good and bad news is that I have the last time slot for my practical this time around.  This means that I won’t be in one of the groups getting the test out of the way, but I’ll have 3-4 hours to study in between the written and practical exams.

I’m going to get back to studying.  I actually wrote like half of this earlier in the week and just now realized that I left the draft just sitting here.  Hope everyone is doing well.

And don’t let the stress get to you…

From Real Genius.  Go rent or buy it at your local video renting/buying place.