Electives

The top complaint of most medical students is toooo much free time. Underneath all the lectures, small group work, studying, volunteering at the student clinic, sleeping, trying not to get fat, trying not to lose all contact with family and friends... you can usually find med students wondering how best to fill the remainder of their days.

Luckily that far too common extra-time problem has been solved with non-credit electives and interest groups! Non-credit electives are exactly what they sound like: classes that you can elect to take but that you do not receive credit for. I am currently enrolled in four (because apparently I do not like free time OR sleep): Intro to Health Care Reform, Intro to International Health, Intro to Emergency Medicine, and the student-run health clinic.

he was bored too, until he joined some electives!

To avoid (a) making my posts so long that no one will read them and (b) running out of posting topics in less than a month, I will talk about each elective separately. Also we've only had one introductory lecture for each of them so far, and they were kind of boring. And by kind of boring, I mean make-you-want-to-bite-your-fake-nails-off-because-you-don't-know-what-else-to-do-with-yourself boring. But only the health care reform and international health are in a lecture format, and each week is a different topic with a different speaker. The emergency medicine elective involves shadowing residents in University Hospital's emergency room for four-hour shifts, and the clinic is... volunteering in the clinic.


I also joined a global health interest group. On Tuesday we had our first session where we talked about the problem of maternal mortality which was, as you would expect, extremely uplifting and fun (that was sarcasm in case it didn't quite come across in type. IMPORTANT NOTE: this blogger does not find any type of mortality either uplifting or fun).


I will leave you hanging for details on the rest of the electives until I get more involved with them and they (hopefully) get more interesting. I am expecting two very special arrivals by next week - so stay tuned for some pictures.