A Med School Memoir

I wish I had a good excuse for why I haven’t updated in so long.

Oh, wait, I have several… The weeks stretching from the last part of July into the early part of August were hectic for me.  “Hectic,” actually, would have been nice.  No, those few weeks were something more–intolerably frustrating, perhaps?  Maybe they would be better described as “maddeningly overwrought with thousands of trivial loose ends that I was ethically and morally bound to tie up.”  Either way, from about July 15th to August 5th, I realized what it must feel like to be a pinball, bouncing around from one bumper to another at the whims of nothing/no one in particular except the force of gravity and whoever/whatever is controlling the flippers.  I was holding down a job and moving to another city, somehow, AT THE SAME TIME.  I wish I was joking, but I’m not–I actually moved to another city (hundreds of miles away) to start med school, then went BACK HOME to finish out my last two weeks of work, before moving AGAIN the weekend before school started.  Not the smartest way to take care of business, I know, but it was the only way I could make it all work.

And if all that business wasn’t enough to keep me from updating, there was also the lack of internet… that’s right, I didn’t get the internet hooked up until today, so it was pretty much impossible to update until now.  So, I apologize for the lack of any posting whatsoever for this last stretch of time, but I promise that you can expect more updates now that I have a reliable and private internet connection.  (I had thought about posting from the school library, but I’m still paranoid that someone might see me posting and put two and two together.  I’m not quite ready for that.)

Well, I have a ton I want to talk about, but it will have to wait until a little later, when I have a bit more time for a really good post.  Suffice it to say that I’ve recently completed my first week of medical school!  There was a quiz on the third day of class, and thankfully I knocked it out.  (Only missed one out of 15…)  There’s a test next week, too.  My, my, my…

During the first week, I went to lecture everyday, then when lecture got out, I went straight to the library for a few hours (until dinner), and then, after an hour or so of dinner, I hit the books again until midnight or so.  It was intense–Like 14 or 15 hours of class-related, ass-in-seat, nose-in-book learning every day.

I already know I can’t keep up that level of commitment, or I will do one of two things.

Either:

a.) go insane from lack of even a quasi-regular social life

or

b.) lose all normal cognitive function from lack of sleep, and wither away into a shriveled mass of lumpy tissues from lack of proper nutrition, exposure to sunlight, and exercise.  (In other words, I’ll turn into a World of Warcraft player.)

I’m hoping I can circumvent either of these two unfortunate outcomes by finding the happy medium between studying and living a healthy existence.  The problem is, I don’t know if such a thing exists.  We’ll see what I come up with.

Okay, so I promise I’ll give a more thorough update this weekend when I have a little more free time.  I just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I haven’t disappeared, and that I fully intend to keep this thing up!

Best of luck to those who, like me, have recently started med school!

Tags:   first week · M1 · why I was a lazy blogger this week1 Comment