Hello! As you can already imagine, this past week has been a crazy one for me. The earlier part of last week, I spent moving into my new apartment and then was directly thrown into orientation less than 24 hours after. Orientation events ran Monday through Friday and by the weekend I was super glad to catch a break. It's been a great start to my M1 year (it's crazy to think that I am able to say that), so I'll share a little about what went on.
Orientation
Our orientation week was broken down into four days:Tues-Fri (I had another orientation Monday as well, but that was for something separate) with our last day being the day of our white coat ceremony.
Day one:
We just came in to do housekeeping tasks (pick up our white coats, pick up our Step book, fill out forms, get fit tested for respirators, take our white coat pics, etc.). It was a pretty quick day, so we only spent about two hours max on campus. It was the first day that we got to start meeting some of our classmates and also some of the upperclassmen that were helping out, so that was pretty cool.
Day two:
We had orientation 9-4 most of it consisted of different presentations about our school (resources, statistics about our class, etc.) but we also received our team based learning groups (TBL). In medical school, we are divided into smaller groups (in our case it's groups of six) in order to promote team learning. In TBL, we'll be doing activities together but one of the main purposes of TBL is to provide us our lab groups. After orientation, the M2's organized a beach day for us to come and hang out with our classmates, so my roommate and I went to that. Then later that night, we all met up at a rooftop bar to do some more mingling.
Day three:
We had another 9-4 orientation and this one was more so focused on wellness and the resources that the school has to ensure our wellbeing. They do have a lot of great resources and it's pretty cool that they are trying to emphasize from the beginning that they acknowledge that this is difficult and that they don't want you to ever feel like you have to go about it alone. After the presentations, there was an activities fair for us to go and see what student groups we have on campus so that we could get involved in some extracurriculars. Apparently, everyone signs up for a bunch but realistically can only do a couple due to our demanding schedules. Later, we had a big sib-little sib dinner. We were assigned an M2 student to be our big sib, so this was the time that we got to meet them and ask questions about medical school and what their M1 experience was like. I had met with one of the M2s that I knew from SPP previously to get the low-down on medical school, but it was still a great opportunity to meet my peers and to also get to know other M2s. Afterwards, we had a group outing to an arcade bar in Chicago to get to know one another. By this time, we'd gotten a sense of who was who and what the class dynamic would be like. So far, it seems cliques aren't only limited to high school, but we shall see how things go as the year progresses. Hopefully, some of that changes.
White Coat Day
Our white coat ceremony wasn't until the afternoon, so I took the opportunity to sleep in a bit. I was exhausted from the past couple days which consisted of late nights and early mornings, so you can imagine it was taxing. The white coat ceremony was like nothing I had ever experienced before. It felt so amazing to finally be able to take the first step and feel like I was starting my career. I got really emotional and there were several points where I was trying to hold back tears. I don't know, but for me, it was just such an incredible moment because after all the hard work that I had to do, I had finally felt like I had made it. There was a point in the ceremony where they had us turn around and thank our family for supporting us and for me, that was where it was hardest to hold back the tears. If you guys are hoping to pursue medicine, you'll see when you get to your white coat ceremony how it feels like you've officially made it and how incredible it feels. Later that night, the M2s planned out a trolley tour for us. We went around Chicago touring the different landmarks while enjoying drinks on the trolley. It was a pretty great time and the last stop of the night was a club, so we spent the rest of our night dancing away. I was definitely out pretty late (haha).
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| Taking pics with my support system<3 |
First Day Of Medical School
Our first day of class was Monday and you better believe it felt weird to be sitting in the same auditorium that I had classes in for SPP, but now as an M1. They scheduled a pretty full day for us. We had our intro to medical school session for most of the morning then after lunch, we had our first two lectures. Having an 8-4 school day is always a bit rough (my life during SPP), but it did feel pretty cool to finally get started. Thankfully, our class days include a couple half-days during the week, so it shouldn't be too bad.
I have my first exam coming up in a couple of weeks, so they are certainly not wasting any time. I will try to keep you guys as updated as I can, but if I do get busy (like last Thursday) know that I will try to get back A.S.A.P. I hope everyone is having a wonderful week and I will talk to you soon!
~Genesis<3
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