A Med School Memoir

First day of third year right now. Registration and orientation was yesterday. Among the various official business I took care of yesterday, I received a packet with my assignments for this morning printed on a green piece of paper. The paper said to be at the hospital at 8am. I’ve known that internal medicine was my first rotation for a few weeks now, but they didn’t tell us where to show up until yesterday. Last night I made sure to iron my shirt and wash my white coat and have everything ready to go for this morning. My goal was to be fifteen minutes early, because I have an inkling that I want to go into Internal Medicine, and I wanted to make a good first impression. I set my alarm for 6:30am and went to bed early to make sure there was no chance that I would oversleep.
When my alarm went off this morning I leapt out of bed and started getting ready with a supreme efficiency. I was almost completely ready by the time I got a text message at 7:10 from a friend of mine starting out on the same rotation.
“The room is 226.”
That’s odd, I thought, why would he be sending this to me? I texted him back.
“Okay… Starts at 8, right?”
“No. Get here ASAP.”
I immediately start freaking out. I run to the bathroom and brush my teeth, my hands starting to tremble with anxiety.
But I mean, seriously–what the hell? I double-checked that piece of paper. I triple-checked it. There’s no way I got it wrong! I went out to my living room and rifled through my messenger bag until I found my schedule. I looked it over, and I was right. It was right there in black and green: 8am. I sent another text back.
“You’re messing with me, right? My sheet says 8.”
A few minutes later, I got another text.
“Check your e-mail.”
Shit.

Eventually I arrived, thirty minutes late rather than the fifteen minutes early I had hoped to be. In the end it wasn’t really a big deal because it was a very informal meeting to just fill us in on policies, and the attending was very laid back and didn’t seem mad or anything. That, and there were at least 5 other people who were as late as I was. But seriously, though–my med school has the WORST organizational abilities EVER.

Lesson #1 for third year: check your e-mail. All the time. I guess it’s time to go in on a smartphone that will let me check it at all hours of the day.

Tags:   clerkships · e-mail · internal medicine clerkship · late · M32 Comments