Exhaustion. Remember that?

Ugh. So now I guess I'm officially a fourth-year med student. I took Step 2 on Friday and it went OK, as far as I can tell. I mean, I stayed awake through the whole thing, my computer didn't crash, no one robbed the bank next door, and Eric was there with Dibs as a finishing present. My left eye started twitching/throbbing about halfway through, but it had been doing that all week, so I wasn't too worried.

Then I packed up all my stuff yesterday and hauled it to Philly and started my new rotation today. Put the Danskos and white coat back on, and voila, I'm a med student again! I have mixed feelings about this development.

Anyway, I think the rotation will be fun. Some of it is office-based, like today, just one-on-one with the attending, seeing patients. Upon meeting her this morning, she immediately started grilling me on my research experiences (in a friendly way), and I thought that was kind of strange. When I mentioned that I was interested in applying to Penn for residency, she said, "Well, we're a very serious academic institution; in addition to grades and scores, we're very interested in research and publications. That's why I was asking you about it before. We'll try to get you a small project you can do in the month that you're here so you can put it on your CV."

So, that's what going to an academic medical school is like. Seriously, though, she's very nice, and I totally know where she's coming from, and this is the different experience I was looking for.

Of course, she also reinforced that I needed to meet the residents (which I'll do in surgery on Wednesday) and get on their good side by taking call at least a few nights this month, and going to "help out" on the labor deck whenever I have free time. So, it's also going to be a busy month, I see.

But seriously, this is good for me. Time to get the brain working again. Time to get the lips all nourished with chapstick and puckered up, ready to go.

By the way: After one day of REI, I was immensely worried about never being able to conceive. After one day of urogyn, I'm worried about what's going to happen to me if I do manage to give birth. It's a lose-lose situation, people.