welcome to medical school!

Well, here I go. I've had this account for a few months, but haven't touched it until now. I just need to get my gripes out, and if I only gripe to my boyfriend, he'll move out and back to Philly in no time flat -- and I know there are certain of you who wouldn't mind that so much, but I would.

I'm 5 weeks into medical school. I've had my first round of tests -- Black Monday, it was called. I passed everything, solidly in the average. Do I need to do better? There are plenty of people who subscribe to the P=MD theory, and it certainly is tempting. But I'm the class president; I'll get a good dean's letter, so there's no need to honor all the classes. If I'm still class president 4th year, that is. So yes, maybe some extra studying and doing well wouldn't be so bad. But three days a week I come home from gross lab and just feel so disgusting I can't believe it. So I shower (or I don't, if I'm going to just grossify myself more by doing my yoga DVD or playing flag football, etc), and then it's dinnertime, and then I need to relax and digest a little (parasympathetic innervation, yay!), and then... well... by the time 9 rolls around, there's no point in STARTING something, is there? And that, everyone, is how I convince myself out of studying. The other two days a week, when I don't have gross lab, it all somehow happens anyway.

And speaking of gross lab, I love it. It's really amazing, so awesome to see everything and dig around in there. I have no problems with the "grossness" of it -- although I do wish my gloves were longer onto my arms because I'm often quite deep into it -- except for the face. I haven't looked at our cadaver's face yet, because I'm sure that would be creepy. Oh, in case you're wondering, he's an old, white man, died of a PE (that would be pulmonary embolism, or blood clot to the lung) with contribution from heart disease, and no, we haven't named him. We discussed it today, actually, but never came to a decision. He's very hairy, so we thought about Harry, but there's a Harry in our class, so that wouldn't be very nice. As far as I know, UofL doesn't have a memorial service at the end or anything like that, like some schools do (see this book for a great read and more info), but I wish they did 'cause it would be kind of nice. Good closure. But, back on topic: the only thing I hate more than the smell of formaldehyded body is the soap in the locker room that I use after we get out of lab. It smells worse than gross lab, I swear. So I walk home and occasionally get a whiff of my hands/wrists and want to vomit. Why not some regular old antibacterial stuff? Not sure. But I may bring it up at the course director's meeting tomorrow.