37.5% M.D.

I have a goal of updating this blog at least once a month, and I have utterly failed over the past few months. But here we are! I have completed the Pre-Clerkship portion of my medical education. That means, supposedly, I have learned everything I can learn in the classroom setting, and now it's time for real life learning. Next month I will start rotations (Clerkships) in hospitals around the country. Some of my classmates posted pictures of their massive stacks of notecards or other physical evidence of the hard work put in over the past year and a half. I tried to go as paperless as possible, so all I have is over 28GB of notes clogging up my laptop.

I guess Neuro was a big module

After completing 5 modules last year (fundamentals, musculoskeletal, cardiopulmonary/renal, neuroscience, gastrointestinal) we had 2 more this past fall to finish up the pre-clerkship curriculum. The reproduction/endocrinology module included some rites of passage, as standardized patients taught us male genitourinary and female pelvic and breast exams on themselves. I also learned some fun vocabulary, and may never look at orchids the same way.

https://greattriad.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/why-i-love-etymology/

Repro/endo was one of the more enjoyable modules for me, but I had a hard time with the multisystems module. It was a ton of immunology and microbiology, neither of which are my forte. Additionally, we had a total of 7 exams over the 8 week module. We had the usual 2 midterms and 2 finals, as well as a Clincal Diagnosis exam, OSCE, and a comprehensive history and physical exam. All to make sure we are prepared for Clerkships! They made sure to throw in a couple 4-day weekends (Thanksgiving and Veterans' day) to keep us distracted from learning all this material.

After finishing up, we had about 3 weeks for winter break. It will be the last break for a long time! I spent about a week visiting Justin, a week celebrating Christmas, and the last week doing boring but necessary stuff that just needed to get done. Next week I'm off to San Diego to start my first rotation in OB/GYN!