Sometimes you find that you're right where you're supposed to be. That might be the right city or town to live in, or it might be in the right kind of relationship with the right person. Maybe it's as simple as the right place at the right time, and events around you seem to be working solely for your favor. For me recently, it is finding that I am heading in the right direction on that oh-so difficult path known as a career.
Wait, I'm going to have to admit something here first. I just spent about 15 minutes coming up with that catchy opening. Don't worry though, at least a third of that time was in retyping it after it suddenly disappeared for reasons known only to...well, no one really. Alright, now back to telling you just where I'm going with this new blog of mine.
My name is James, and I'm a first year medical student at the University of Missouri - Columbia. I just graduated college this past May. It was in college, between my first and second years, that I decided I was going to try and head towards medical school. I didn't really know much about medicine other than it was science-oriented, they were paid well, and got to poke around on people and deal with the human body. I progressively gained experience volunteering, shadowing doctors, and having other involvements on campus to pad the good ol' application to medical school, but hasn't been until now, in medical school, that I realize that it truly is what I have been made by God to do with my life. And that being said only 10 weeks into the whole endeavor.
Ten weeks and a few days ago I began the first week of block one of the first year. I was a wetback, a fresh fish, a full blooded rookie. That doesn't stop them (a.k.a. the faculty) from throwing medical cases at you and expecting you to teach your classmates medicine, as you learn it yourself, on day one. On day two they hand you the scalpel and tell you to start cutting skin off your cadaver and memorizing muscles. Day three your right back where you were on Monday, doing more cases, teaching your classmates whatever you learned or think you learned since Monday, and....well, you don't really need to hear my week-by-week schedule. But anyhow, in the last ten weeks I went from, “I think it’s cancer,” to “It seems like she’s got a problem reabsorbing amino acids in the kidney which is leading to a nutritional deficit.” I don’t know if you realize this, but when you don’t know much about medicine, really strange (or even very simple) medical problems make you want to say cancer. In your list of suspicions, it’s almost always on there until you finally know better.
So now that I’m a little bit wiser, and a little bit smarter, I thought I’d start this blog to keep you informed of what’s going on in my medical school life. I will write about medicine as a profession and a science, what it’s like to be a medical student, and anything else that I think about that was originally inspired by something medical or health related. Maybe, if so inspired, I will write about whatever crosses my mind, medicine or health related or not. After all, without some other sort of interests that normal sane people share, I would quickly sound insane, or worse, boring.
Enjoy, and please comment profusely.
