Second Week, Second Year

Well I am officially done with my second week of my second year of med school. The problem with being a second year is that you're no longer a first year. As a first year, no one expects you to know anything at all. When you're a second year, I think people assume you know sooooomething. Since the expectations are higher, it's just that much more disappointing when it turns out you still don't know anything at all.


Since I am living in the exact same room in the exact same building with the exact same people, the beginning of this year felt a little bit like the Twilight Zone or Groundhog's Day. Nothing has changed. On the first day of class, everyone even sat in the same spots in the lecture hall as they did all of last year. Other than the requisite, "OMG hiiiii how was your summerrrrrr?" conversations, it really felt like we had taken a week off from class, not an entire summer vacation.


There are two big differences from last year though:

• The first is the presence of all the new first years! I was finally getting used to all the people I would see around campus, and now there are all these new faces that I don't recognize at all.

• The second is what should be the absence of last year's fourth years. Their absence wouldn't be so weird since I knew very few of them, and they were not on campus very often anyway. But the lack of absence is funny. For example, the other day I ran into last year's student council president (who I guess is doing his residency here at NJMS) wearing a LONG white coat. Just a few months ago we were emailing him about the lecture hall being too hot, and now he is a DOCTOR. Like a real, live doctor. Sometimes I forget that that's what will happen when we eventually finish.