So I Started Med School Today And...
...yeah. Orientation begins! Lots of random crap has happened, but lets hit some highlights:
-Getting up at 5:45. Which sucks, but will seem downright luxurious by the time I'm a resident. /sobs
-Breakfast catered by Denny's. Mmmm... bacon.
-Random Anatomy professor assigned to our breakfast table gave us a breakdown of various aspects of Western- the neighborhood, rotations, etc.
-Apparently the anatomy course takes a bit of a unique approach: we'll be doing labs in the morning with the cadavers, then lecturing afterward. I love this.
-The dean's attempt to give a short speech. HA. Still, he's a cool dude. Is your school's dean a doctor and a former Rear Admiral? Didn't think so.
-Lots of personal/educational/professional philosophy and such from him, but he concluded with a thought from Mother Teresa: "Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is not yet here. We have only today- let us begin." Good call.
-We got introduced to Every. Single. Faculty. Member. Seriously. It took forever, and we won't see half of these guys until year 2/3/4. Names I remember: zero.
-Random faculty member: "So like Dean Adams said, something about yesterday, something about tomorrow, whatever. Welcome to Western!" lawl
-Heard from our very own lobbyists the Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons of California. They're actually doing good work in promoting and protecting a branch of medicine that is often poorly understood.
-Example of poorly understood: earlier this year, our illustrious Governator randomly and quietly decided to assign Naturopaths to the Osteopathic Licensing Board. What the hell?
-We got a speech by Dr. Lally on professionalism. Dude was hilarious and borderline inappropriate, which apparently for him qualifies as best behavior. Still, he managed to be amusing while telling us to take this seriously. Impressive.
-Watched a music video of faculty and students dancing and singing to a student-made parody of Nickelback's Rockstar ("Hey, hey, I wanna be a D.O.!). Win.
-Got a speech on wellness and stress management. As if we could have gotten this far without any of that.
-Met up with my friend Justin from Pepperdine, who is a second year, for lunch. He made me even more excited for all this.
-On to student processing! An afternoon running around figuring out how to differentiate between the HSC, HEC and HPC buildings.
-Took my student ID picture, immediately followed by my... graduation photo? Apparently it's too hard to track everyone down for this while they're on rotations, so they just do it now. Well, now I guess I have to graduate...
-Received an OMM examination from a second-year student to make sure I wouldn't break during that class. I'm apparently fine aside from a flattened curvature in my c-spine and crepitus in my tempero-mandibular joint. Sure?
-Got my white coat and name badge. Woohoo!
-Spent a while banging my head against the desk trying to configure my email to work with Outlook. Why they don't want me to just do this online is beyond me...
-Began trying to figure out financial aid... gah. I hate money, and I have a feeling this is going to be a headache for at least the next four years...
So yeah. That's about all that's fit to print. The second years are apparently running a "Disorientation Week" in the evenings this week, which is pretty much what it sounds like. There seems to be a "work hard, party hard" atmosphere that's pretty common among medical students, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Still, I'll probably at least stop by a couple events, like the one tonight.
For those of you who just tl;dr'ed: Lots of fun stuff! This year is going to be crazy hard, but all kinds of awesome! Woohoo!
In the meantime, the penultimate entry in the music meme!
Day 29: A song from your childhood
Hmm... I actually didn't listen to music much until I got to high school, believe it or not. However, I do have one song with a story attached...
Click to viewSo, this one time when I was like nine, we were driving to a cub scout camp in Santa Cruz. The cubmaster was goofing around with us a little bit, and having fun with the music that came on the radio. This song came on, and he started throwing his hands in the air (read: not on the steering wheel) briefly with every "Shout!", presumably to screw with us. I'm sure he was being safe and just exaggerating the motion, but he nevertheless succeeded in terrifying young Kevin, and if any of you *cough*orelle_peredhil *coughcough* have ever driven in the Santa Cruz mountains, you know why.
Anyway, I'd almost completely forgotten about this little incident, until last year when I was at a wedding where this cubmaster was also in attendance, though I hadn't seen him in years. This song came on, and after of course dancing around to it like a crazy person, wandered over to him and said, "You know what this song reminds me of?" He cracked up laughing that I still remembered that. Good times.
Songs that I probably didn't listen to before my age hit double digits:
Day 01: Your favorite song
Day 02: Your least favorite song
Day 03: A song that makes you happy
Day 04: A song that makes you sad
Day 05: A song that reminds you of someone
Day 06: A song that reminds you of somewhere
Day 07: A song that reminds you of a certain event
Day 08: A song that you know all the words to
Day 09: A song that you can dance to
Day 10: A song that makes you fall asleep
Day 11: A song from your favorite band
Day 12: A song from a band you hate
Day 13: A song that is a guilty pleasure
Day 14: A song that no one would expect you to love
Day 15: A song that describes you
Day 16: A song that you used to love but now hate
Day 17: A song that you hear often on the radio
Day 18: A song that you wish you heard on the radio
Day 19: A song from your favorite album
Day 20: A song that you listen to when you’re angry
Day 21: A song that you listen to when you’re happy
Day 22: A song that you listen to when you’re sad
Day 23: A song that you want to play at your wedding
Day 24: A song that you want to play at your funeral
Day 25: A song that makes you laugh
Day 26: A song that you can play on an instrument
Day 27: A song that you wish you could play
Day 28: A song that makes you feel guilty
Day 29: A song from your childhood
Day 30: Your favorite song at this time last year