Two thoughts

Well hello!

Amid the hustle and bustle of studying, lectures, and required events, the little things to make life run still must happen. Laundry needs to be done; food needs to be bought. I’ve been doing all of my grocery shopping at Meijer, my mainstay from my time at Hope. At Hope everything was so convenient. At every block there wasn’t a stoplight; pedestrians didn’t haphazardly decide to walk out into the middle of the street; hills didn’t make biking to another place an intense workout. (This isn’t to say that I don’t like Ann Arbor – I love it – it just takes more time, effort, and frustration to get anywhere. Everything, regardless of distance, is twenty minutes away.)

During my first few weeks here I was glued to my GPS; I would ride my bike, holding onto the handlebars with one hand and in the other hold up my phone, receiving directions to wherever I was going. I’ve been weaning myself off of the directions: I can proudly say that I navigated to Meijer without any electronic assistance. (Side note: I need to make only two turns to get to Meijer. Yes, I am directionally challenged.)

During my drive, not using my GPS, riding with the windows down, listening to John Mayer, I thought to myself: “This feels normal.” It was the first time in the first three weeks that I felt like I was going about a normal rhythm of life, not embarking on a quest with an unsure ending. It hit me: I am going to be in Ann Arbor for the next four years; I am here for the long haul.

Yesterday I went to play soccer with the other medical students. After the rainstorm hit, the sky cleared up and the afternoon was an absolute peach. 75 degrees and blue skies. It was a great time – two hours of running around and chasing a ball is strangely therapeutic. We played at Mitchell fields, which is located right next to the helipad for the hospital. During the two hour period during which we were playing soccer helicopters landed at least 10-15 times.

Myself and many of my classmates continued to run around, chasing the ball, while this occurred, not stopping to think about the reality of what was happening: someone needed help so desperately that they had to be flown to the University Hospital. The situation was almost ironic; we continued to play soccer while someone was nearly dying. Leisure and death, side by side.

As I was faced with this juxtaposition, I had another big thought: all of the people playing soccer will be saving lives someday. All of the people in our class are going to become a doctor, and we are going to be the people waiting for the helicopter to arrive, rather than the people playing soccer next to the helipad.

On an aside, I’m going to a Demolition Derby on Tuesday – it’s going to be a great time!

And so it begins...maybe

Well hello!

First quiz: donezo!

Yes, after two weeks of class, I had my first quiz. No, it was not terrible, but all the same, it felt good to get it under my belt. Right now we're covering things that I've already learned about for the most part (with the exception of pathology), so I'm not being washed over by waves of new information. Yes, there is a different spin on most of the material that has been presented, but it's no surprise. Transcriptional regulation. Basic statistics. DNA. Translation.

Additionally, we don't have any labs, which will come soon enough.

In summary, medical school has started...maybe. When I'm dissecting cadavers and learning physical assessment skills, the maybe will became a "most definitely". Until that time I'm going to relish Patients and Populations.

On an aside, there was a birthday party this past weekend. Streamers, anyone?

Orientation!

Well hello!

The past two weeks have been a blur. 169 new classmates. A number of new professors. Navigating through a new city. The past two weeks have also been two of the most exciting weeks of my life.

There are a number of things that need to be taken of during orientation. Class introductions. Curriculum. Honor code. Team building. Computer policies. Three days of all of this. At the end of it all I was ready to be done.

Today was the first day of class. Three lectures: medical genetics, introduction to pathology, and principles of uncertainty in medicine. Interesting, but nothing to call home about. What made the day was the first patient presentation.

For patient presentations, the entire class actually dresses the part of a medical student: church clothes and white coats. A woman came in and talked about her experiences having a child, a child who happened to have Down's Syndrome. Hearing, and gaining even an understanding about, her experiences and how doctors have walked alongside her and her son, from the initial knowledge of the son's disease, to the multiple heart surgeries, to the countless other trips to the hospital for other "small" incidents, to their life today, was truly moving. It was wonderful, at the conclusion of a long time sitting through rather dry orientation sessions, to be reminded of the true reason that I'm entering medicine: to be a doctor, along with everything it entails, for patients.

On an aside, here's a picture from my first day of school: