Misconceptions and Surprises

There are some drawbacks to being a "nontraditional" medical student.  It's a different perspective, and it's still surprising how different it is from expectations.

I knew medical school would be hard.  Really, I believed them when they told me. 

(Okay, if we're being completely honest, I did think all of my years as a medic would make it alittle easier.  A smidgen.  At least.)

I knew I'd have to sacrifice stuff and I figured it was good I was single.

What I didn't realize is how much I'd be sacrificing.  As I sit in a quiet study room and fall peeks its gorgeous head into the world, I'm yearning to be outside in nature, hiking, biking . . . doing anything, really.  But I have a test tomorrow.  So I won't be making money and bringing home a paycheck (I miss those).  Or hiking or biking today (Sigh).  Or doing anything else I got used to doing.  Manymost of my classmates have been in school non-stop since they were 5.  They don't really know anything else other than a life that revolves around school and studying.  They don't know what they're missing.  Or maybe they're not missing it because their lives haven't grown yet to be non-academically focused.  

But I know.  And I miss it.

The other misconception I had was how much drive I would have to learn the non-clinical material.  The first two terms of class work are strictly basic sciences.  My particular college has opted for an integrative approach, where classes feed off each other and clinical correlates are presented as often as possible, but at the end of the day, biochemistry is still biochemistry, and microbiology is still microbiology.  And I still have to engage in rote memorization of concepts I'll not be asked to recall past the next exam.  The futility of that leaches me of my drive to study.  Put anything clinical into the picture, and my interest is piqued. 

I suppose that's another drawback to the been-there-done-that life of a critical care paramedic.  The hands-on skills and the basic clinical knowledge is old hat to me.  And outside of surgery and some smaller procedures (arterial line placement, chest tube placement, etc.), there aren't that many physical skills I haven't done yet.

One last thing that I wasn't expecting:  how much of a workout my brain is getting.  I literally feel physically exhausted at the end of a long day studying.  We're all smart people -- we couldn't have made it this far otherwise -- but for many of us, this is the first time in our lives serious studying has been required.

Serious studying.

I still love medical school.  And I still hate rote memorization