Oh my goodness, it has been a longgg time since I've come on here. I greatly apologize, but as you can most likely imagine, my first month of medical school has certainly kept me busy. By this point, I am about a month-and-a-half in, three exams down, and by no means an expert on the matter, but I'm getting the hang of it. Really, these past couple of weeks have been a learn by trial-and-error situation, and the past two didn't leave me much breathing room, but thankfully this week I had a bit more time to catch my breath. So, what have I been up to?
Medical School
As I mentioned earlier, I've had a lot going on academically. Honestly, the hardest part of medical school is trying to create your own harmony (I'll probably do a blog post on this topic). There are many ways to approach medical school and for the beginning of the year, I was trying to figure out what worked best for me. It has taken a bit of time, but I think I'm slowly starting to get the hang of it (hopefully by October I'll be a bit more convinced). At the beginning of the school year, I decided to get involved in extracurriculars and of course, that added to the madness of being busy. I am currently on of the co-chairs of the community service committee for my school's Latin American Medical Student Association (LMSA). For this, I help organize monthly health fairs in Hispanic communities to allow people to have a place where they can check their glucose levels, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and get BMI counseling. It's a really great opportunity and as I am a co-chair of the committee, I get to sit on the board of the club and that makes me feel kind of bad-ass. I am also teaching a Medical Spanish class to some of my peers. The class is run by LMSA, but I teach one of the sections with two other instructors. So far, it has been really great and it feels cool to be able to help my classmates learn how to expand their practice into the Latin American community. Apart from the academics and extracurriculars, I've been spending time trying to find my niche. I think I've slowly found my group of people and it's making the whole medical school experience more enjoyable. Academics have been a rollercoaster as we've had a couple back-to-back test weeks and those kept me in a frenzy to get prepared for an exam. The lovely part about medical school is that our classes are pass/fail, so the pressure of grades isn't really there. Of course, I always aim to do much better than just a pass, but it's nice to know that at worst all I need to do is pass. Overall, classes haven't been too awful, but where it gets hectic is trying to juggle all the subjects that are being thrown at us. I have happily done well on my first three medical school exams, and I am hopeful that I can keep that a continuing trend.
Social Life
Whoo, I felt odd even typing that subject title (haha). This past month has been on the busier side, so I didn't partake in too many social activities. I'd say the extent of my social outings this month were birthday celebrations with some of my favorite people. Meg's birthday was September 7th, so the weekend after we celebrated with Indian food and drinks at her place and then went out to a really fun dueling pianos bar for a bit. It wasn't a late night for me as I had to get up early the next day to attend our first health fair, but it was still super great to be able to see her and G and to get out of my normal routine for a bit.
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| Never a dull moment with this birthday queen! |
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| My nugget on her birthday! |
Then last night, I happened to get tickets to go to a Blackhawks game and as our schedule has been on the tamer side this week, Mallory and I were super excited to take a night off of studying to go and watch our favorite team. We didn't win, but just being in the stadium is an incredible experience, and I am now super pumped for hockey season to officially start!
Looking Forward
It's crazy because I know that the next coming months will surely be just as busy and I'll have to add in other activities for school (I'll touch on that more next month), but I'm hoping that I'll keep getting better at having a handle on my schedule and it won't seem as difficult as this first month has been. Of course, I can't really promise that I'll blog more often, but I will definitely try!
I am glad I finally had the chance to update you guys on my life and I can't wait to be able to share more of my medical school experience. I hope you guys had a great month and I'll talk to you soon!
~Genesis<3
