The Gift That Just Keeps Giving

Does the Henderson-Hasselbach equation EVER go away? 

I think I have learned it almost once a year starting with freshman year of high school in Biology - and then again in AP Biology senior year, and then in both Intro to Biology and Intro to Chemistry in college, probably in Physics, again for the MCATs, again in Biochem in med school, definitely again in Physiology, again to teach the MCATs, and now again in Pathology.

I think I actually understood it for real for the first time last year in Biochemistry.  The seventh time's the charm, that's what they* say!

Even though I get it now, pKa still gives me nightmares sometimes.

*by they, I mean me, when it takes me seven times to learn something

Med Student Stereotypes #1

When I recently re-read my very first blog post, I realized I talked about treating medical school as if it was a new, FUN experience like going abroad (in the blog, not in real life - otherwise I'd be a total weirdo). That way, the blog would seem to be about all the cool new things I see and people I meet in this strange new land called med school.

While I've talked a lot about the things I do here, I realized I haven't talked much about the types I've people I've met. So this will be the first of many posts on some of the stereotypes of the people you meet here in med school land.


Stereotype #1: Surprisingly enough, Med Students have NO attention span.
Physiology for the most part consists of two one-hour lectures per day. That does not sound like much, but you'd be surprised at how hard it is to sit and pay attention for those two hours. And professors know this about us. Yesterday we only had one mega lecture for an hour and a half, but the lecturer still gave us a 10-min break halfway through. Really? We can't sit and listen for more than an hour at a time? Apparently not.

We've never had anything scheduled for more than three hours, and if there ever was, believe you me, there would be lots of complaints (or at least lots of no-shows).


I'm not sure how our collective antsiness is going to work out when we graduate med school and actually have to work for like, 16 hours straight (More? Less? I'm sure the hours will change again by the time we get there) and are not offered a coffee break every hour on the hour. Do residencies have class representatives and student affairs that we're allowed to complain to when we're unhappy?




(picture from "A Cartoon Guide to Becoming A Doctor")

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!

I planned on starting this in August, at the beginning of my med school adventure, butttt turns out that I'm lazy (surprise!), so here we are mid-September and most of you know NOTHING ABOUT MY LIFE. The horror! How are you all even getting through each day?? But don't panic, that will soon change.

First I'm going to tell you guys a secret. I don't really want to be a doctor. The last five years of my life have all been a ploy, Joaquin Phoenix style, so that I could get the inside scoop on medical school life and eventually create an investigatory documentary (based of course, on the investigatory blog in front of you). OK fine, I'm kidding; Joaquin Phoenix's rap career was obviously meant in earnest and not as a hoax.

my inspiration

So I figured I'd pretend that med school is something cool that people normally blog about, like going abroad, or... going abroad, or I don't know, traveling abroad, and write about things I see and people I meet. While I'm actually quite close (maybe too close?) to most of my family and friends, med school is still a new adventure for me, and one that most people I know aren't experiencing. I think that qualifies as enough of an excuse to be self-centered and to think that people might be interested in reading the things I have to say. So I hope for your sake and for mine that I have time to do interesting things other than studying! (ok, more for my sake than yours, because you can always stop reading if I get boring.. I however have to actually live it as my life)