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:
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