Gross Anatomy

Gross Anatomy lab started this week. At Berkeley and I think most undergrad classes, there were different sections, days, and times for labs but here, we're ALL in lab at the same time. Tuesdays and Thursdays from now on are going to be SO crazy because after lunch there's usually Gross Anatomy lecture then proceeding that all 189 or so of us trek up to the 7th floor locker room to prep for lab. That intermission time is CRAZY! First--the locker room. There are about four rows of lockers in the "coed" section and then a couple more rows in each of the smaller side rooms (split off by gender). But most of us have lockers in the coed section so I always see guys in their boxers changing into their scrubs. Some girls even just change in that center coed section but many also step into the side rooms to change before storing back our stuff in the lockers. It's sheer chaos, especially since everyone's in a hurry to get to their cadavers.

Then across the hall is the big dissection rooms which reek of formaldehyde (interestingly enough, it makes you hungry). We're assigned into groups of 6 so there are roughly about 30 cadavers, all lying in their body bags atop these metal cases. It can get tedious plowing through all the fat (and there's an incredible amount of it) and then searching for nerves and vessels that all seem to look the same but at the same time, it's really fun. While my other classes are straight from the book learning, gross gets very hands on and our Professor also rocks. Yay med school!

Finished exam #2 this morning. Funny thing is that the whole time, I just wanted to be done with it so that I could STUDY SOMETHING ELSE (ie Biochem). Physio was fair today but I think what could've hurt me was how little time we had. 42 minutes for 35 questions! Ionno, I didn't get a chance to go back and thoroughly check but let's just hope that all went fine.

Fortunately, UIC's grading system is simply Pass/Fail/Honors. They set the pass rate after doing some statistics about the probability of success on each problem so that's independent from the whole class' performance. Honors, however, is not independent and is set at one standard deviation above the average. So it's fine as long as I pass but I do have that extra pressure to Honor (come on, whether closeted or not, I think we're all Type-A's!).

Our schedule's really ramping up. Starting last week, we've been having full-day schedules and another course, Tissue Biology, starts this afternoon. Gross Anatomy started last week and with each lecture taking up 3-4 hours...it's A LOT of stuff. Actually, everything is A LOT of stuff. All in all, med school is, and I apologize for overusing this cliche, but literally drinking water out of a fire hydrant. I always heard about it but I guess it's just one of those things where you cant truly understand it unless you go through it.

And so it starts

Chicago skyline from Lake Michigan

Just finished my first week of classes and oh goodness, this is the point of no return. I'm not going to say that it's the most I've ever studied in my life (yet) but I've never had 11 lectures of biochemistry lectures in a week! By this afternoon, my brain was seriously overdosing on information and the color was draining from everyone's faces. And to think that they're slowly easing us into the curriculum--we're starting off with Biochemistry and Physiology before piling on the other five courses.

So much has happened in the last two weeks that everything prior to moving to Chicago feels far too long ago. Seriously hard to imagine my carefree summer days had truly existed. So my mom and I flew out to Chicago (also known as Chicagoland or Chi-town) a couple of days before orientation. Orientation itself was three full days of talks, informat ion, meeting people, etc. Like most orientations, there were interesting parts and also drier, more monotonous parts. I think they really liked scaring us, though, about how much of a time commitment this will be, how we might not be able to talk to our friends outside of med school for months at a time, how it brings the best and worst of us, etc etc.

Exploring downtown with the family

Chicago has a huge American Girl store filled with little girls running and squeaming around. These overpriced dolls scare me. Oh yeah, they have a hair salon where for $20, you can style your American Girl with the top hairstyles of the month!!

White Coat Ceremony

UIC College of Medicine's campus