Daily Schedule & Fun Fact #2

One thing I wondered about med school before starting, and people ask me now, is if it is possible to have a life during medical school. Fortunately, school has been treating us very well so far. I understand that it will become very busy and hectic during the clinical years, but for now it does not feel too hectic. Thankfully, Tatia and I get several hours together each night, we get to have dinner together and work out together. She is also working on me to watch Gilmore Girls with her, her favorite TV show. I'm sure it will get crazier later on, but life during this part of medical school is nearly ideal. For my curious family, here is my schedule for this last week (pretty typical of non-test weeks).

This depicts all of the classroom time, so there is plenty to study during those white spaces. It is a little tricky to motivate yourself to study after spending so much time in class, but most of the lecturers are excellent and help you be excited for studying the subject.

Fun Fact #2

Now we are knee-deep in metabolism, so we recently discussed fat digestion and metabolism. The interesting thing about fats is that when you digest them and they are stored in your fat tissue, they are stored as the fats that you ingested (as opposed to carbohydrates you eat that get modified for storage). So say the only oil you ate was canola oil, and that you took in a little more than your body needs for it's daily energy (and that's probably all of us Americans) then the fat composition in your tissues will tend to resemble the composition of canola oil. So with fats, you really are what you eat!

I don't know if that really is a FUN fact, but I think it's pretty interesting to know what's going on with things after you ingest them.

Fun Fact #1

Today our biochemistry lectures covered our cells' usage and storage of sugar, which includes what I remember fearing in BYU's biochemistry course: THE KREBS CYCLE.

I just remembered going over every step and every enzyme in such detail that it felt incredibly difficult to learn! The picture above illustrates how I felt about it, like a complicated spiral of doom. Med school has a different approach to things like this. As there is so little time to cover everything, where at BYU we spent about 1 week on the above illustration, today we spent about 15-20 minutes on it. In fact, the illustration below depicts the level of detail with which covered it:

We had so little time that they basically had to say, "Krebs Cycle? It's just a wheel that spins round and round! Don't you forget it!" I hope that illustrates about how fast we have to cover some materials in school, thank goodness for remembering some things from BYU. Most importantly, today's lecture material covered:

FUN FACT #1

We were all taught in school that you breathe in oxygen, then use it in cellular respiration to create energy and carbon dioxide, which you breathe out. Just like all things you learn, there is deeper truth: The oxygen you breathe in is used in cellular respiration, but it becomes water. The food you eat and "burn" as fuel is broken down to carbon dioxide which you breathe out! So you pee out the air you breathe and breathe out the food you eat.

2nd Test & Adjusting to Med Students

I feel officially like a medical student now! This is indicated by
1.) my set of scrubs finally being stinky enough from anatomy to bring them home to be washed
2.) we had our 2nd Biochemistry exam this last Friday, and as you can see below, I'm feeling pretty hardcore with my new found highlighting skills. All of us students find our different methods for studying, I just happen to like the Fluorescent Triage method, where different colors represent my understanding of the material.

Now to jump back to one of my transitions into medical school:

Time circuits on. Flux Capacitor... fluxxing. Engine running. All right!

One of the exciting parts of starting medical school was getting to know our fellow classmates. Southwestern had a special retreat weekend for us to get to know one another and the faculty which was great because we quickly became so engrossed with learning once school started that we stopped meeting new people. At that retreat, I found out that a fair number of my classmates already finished graduate work, several having PhD's already. Now that school has begun, seeing these brains in action only makes me more impressed. For example, one student doesn't take notes in class from what I have seen, but from what I hear he knows the information with greater depth than anyone else and so far he has finished the tests in one hour where most students take 2.5 hours. It's incredible.

I feel like my class is just incredibly intelligent which makes going to school a lot of fun. Although it's great to have smart students to study with, it's even more fun to have smart students to discuss ideas with as well. I never really liked discussing politics at BYU because politics tended to inflame passions one way or the other (Granted, I was in the College of Life Sciences, not a political science by any stretch... and I did have quite a few good experiences at forums in the Kennedy Center). Here at Southwestern, with a generally similar student body, the students also have strong opinions but are much more willing to have friendly discussions. They leave me with better answers and help me refine the questions I ask myself as I examine my own values. I'm loving that.

(Don't get me wrong, I loved my time at BYU, but this comic reminds me of many discussions there)
from toothpastefordinner.com

One thing the pre-med advisers didn't warn us about medical school was the danger of bringing into proximity so many brains. Not only does our class consist of great intellectual potential & the great future doctors, but also the biggest local chapter of Overachiever's Anonymous. Basically, I think everyone that made it into our school is at least a mildly neurotic overachiever (including myself) such that if at any time you are not doing something productive, you feel guilty. One of my fellow LDS students compared this to being on an LDS mission where we feel like the need to use all of our time to promote sharing the gospel, now we feel like we should be using all of our time to prepare for the next test or the day when we'll need this information to help a patient. It's pretty hilarious actually. Pre-med advisers warn you about the long hours, the many pages of you will read, but they don't warn you that at the end of the day, medical school will make you feel just a little guilty when you're sitting down, relaxing, and enjoying yourself.

Don't you have enough studying to do?

Medical school is an interesting experience, one that I've been talking about for quite some time. I was a "pre-med" student for the last 3 years, planning and talking about medical school the entire time. As medical school started for me this fall I wasn't so sure if medical school would be as fun experiencing it as it was to talk about.
With a grand total of four weeks experience, my current estimate is that medical school is perfect for me: I love the experience and I love talking about it. There are many interesting experiences that make medical school unique and sometimes restricted to only health professions students. For example, anatomical dissection is something I'll only perform in entirety once... and it is experiences like that which I want to share with my family and friends, and record for my own memory. But really I'm doing this because my dad asked me to give it a try and I have a mom that would probably enjoy the anatomy lab more than I do.
Since my initial transition is complete, I'll be writing about the past for my first entries because those first weeks contained important experiences in moving from pre-med student to med student.

PS: You may also wonder why I'm not simply including this on our family blog - I just felt that some aspects of medical school simply aren't cute enough to fit onto our family blog... I mean, have you seen how cute our blog is? It's dang cute, and I think I'll need the liberty to include some less than cute topics in my record.