Sorry that I haven't posted for a while, second year is kicking my ______

I am sorry that I haven't posted anything on the bl0g for a while. The only (extremely lame) excuse I can give is that the second year of med school is kicking my______(this word has been omitted in an effort to keep my blog G-rated and family-friendly). I am currently in a state of post-test euphoria so I will spend a few minutes giving you a quick update on my life.

I just started the 7th week of our 15 week "quarter," and we have already completed 2 classes! We have 5 hours of class Monday-Friday and our classes are divided up into quarter-long classes and block classes. Pharmacology and Introduction to Clinical Medicine II last the entire quarter while other classes only last a few weeks. The first class, the Skin System, we completed in only 2 weeks. The second class we just finished was Endocrinology and that class lasted about 4 weeks. Some good news: I passed both classes! Whew! Those of you who talk to me (which we know really means listening to me freak out) regularly know that I was particularly concerned with passing Endocrine. In the end I passed the course and decided that I really liked the material - endocrinology is absolutely fascinating! Now we are studying the Cardiovascular System and the Urinary System as block classes.

The REALLY good thing about second year is that the material we are studying is much more interesting and is directly applicable to taking care of patients which makes studying it more fun. Learning in detail about different aspects of the human body is fascinating and it makes you feel smart too! Therefore the 4-6hours you have to study each day to stay caught up seems much more bearable than the study load last year even though we have more work.

In addition to coursework, I have had a few other things on my plate. My laptop I use to take notes on everyday, gave up the ghost and is currently being repaired (thanks to the Staples warranty). Also, for my trip to Uganda last summer I had to create a poster about the project I conducted in Kumi making shoes for diabetic patients. The poster was due earlier in the quarter, but I will be presenting it at the School of Medicine Poster Session in November.

Here is my poster. It might be hard to read on the blog, but you can probably get the gist of the information. It is a lot of work to try to line up all of the boxes on the poster!


As far as my study methods go, I am probably don't have the most efficient methods possible, but I have been doing anything I can possibly think of to help me learn the material. Recently this has taken the form of using many different pen and highlighter colors with my studying to keep things interesting.

This photograph is the current artistic representation of my life - studying a lot! Featured here are my Endocrinology notes, my pens and some of my highlighters. When I put a full day of studying, I go through an average of a highlighter a day or a pen every other day. I know, I live an exciting life.


Here are the coursepacks for the two conquered subjects so far - Skin and Endocrine. A long time ago I used to have this reverence for textbooks. I somehow thought that it was wrong to write in them, highlight excessively or otherwise defame such a precious source of knowledge. Now I have a completely different approach - textbooks are my slaves! Their purpose in the scope of the universe is to help me learn and therefore should be abused in anyway possible that can help me understand the material. These abuses may include, but are not limited to: highlighting, annotations in the margins, scribbling in frustration, or the writing of sarcastic commentary/mnemonics. In case you were wondering, my highlighting color scheme does have a rudimentary logic: yellow is mildly important, green and blue are moderately important, and orange and pink are extremely important/pay attention! If a figure or concept is very important or hard to grasp I write a summary statement in the margin. Therefore, when it is time to review for an exam I can go through and read the orange, pink, green and blue highlighted text, review figures and read by notes in the margin and come away with a pretty good review. OK, now you probably know way more than you ever wanted to about my study habits...

How do I feel these days? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words... :)