Brain purge required...

Well, finished the first week of school & the first day of real classes which we had on Friday. At this point, what can I say? I’m PUMPED! It blows my mind for some reason that everyone I encounter in the school (everyone that speaks to us as a large group of 260 medical & dental students or as a small group tutor) is either a physician or a dentist. Even the librarian is a dentist. I think one of the things that’s really cool about it is that it’s just showing me the diversity of work that people with this background can do. Very interesting to have that thrust in your face so early on in the program, especially since I have such a love of variety. On Thursday, we had a really helpful demonstration by the 2nd years as to what the problem based learning part of the program looks like/how it works. Basically every Monday we’ll be given a case of a patient and their symptoms. We discuss that case with our team, clarify any terminology that’s unfamiliar to us and then decide might possibly be relevant to her that we need to know (e.g. The first one is a newly pregnant woman, so we decided that we better find out things like how to calculate conception date, what are the stages of development of a fetus, etc). Then on Wednesday we regroup and share with the team the answers to the info we found out and Friday we wrap it up. We have a tutor in our group (in our group, it’s one of our 2nd year profs) whose role is to make sure we don’t totally go off in the wrong direction, but otherwise he will be evaluating us on the basis of preparation, presentation/participation and professionalism. In addition to the problem based learning stuff, we also have lectures scattered throughout the week. I think I’m going to enjoy the two kinds of learning styles. (I’m glad it’s not all lecture based or I’d fall asleep at not being able to talk!) On Friday, we had a couple of lectures and our first gross anatomy lab where we met our cadavers. In a lecture just prior to the lab, our prof did an excellent job at communicating the ground rules about decorum in the lab (no one is allowed in the lab but us, if we bring anyone from outside the program into the lab we will be expelled). It was really good since obviously people have been so generous with their bodies to donate them to us to learn from. I have to say that on my team, we were all absolutely fascinated by the work that we did in that lab. Unfortunately though, one person on my team had to step out because she was so distressed by it. (Not an unusual first reaction, someone else fainted) I’m curious to see how busy I’ll be this semester (it’s supposedly our lightest one) but I realize that the volume of information that I need to cram into my head over the next few years is massive. I expect that “light” will be a relative term to describe this fall.