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Okay, youngsters, listen up while I hit you with some knowledge.
I completed my first year of med school a couple weeks ago, and I've learned a thing or two. So here it goes. I don't know how long this is going to be, but read it anyway, because it will be useful to you:
ON ME:
I turned away from a chance at a potentially promising career in college athletics and Strength & Conditioning, in order to become a physician. I graduated with a kinesiology degree from one of the better programs in the country, and I completed one of the best S&C (not to be confused with S&M, but I did that too) internships in college athletics, if not the best. I was faced with a choice of applying for graduate assistant positions and doing a masters, or taking a different path. To be honest, I had made the decision before I started my last semester of college that I was going to go to med school.
My GPA was 2.2 when I graduated, so I knew I had my work cut out for me. I knew I had to go back to school and light it up, which I did, and that I had to get 30+ on the MCAT, which I did. But even then, I never really thought I'd leave TX. But they didn't really like me (zero interviews through two cycles, as I watched people who could not hang with me in any way get accepted to places like Baylor and UTSW).
But just to be on the safe side, I applied broadly. Twice. Didn't really know what DO was the first time around. Got a few MD interviews, a wait-list, and nothing else. The second time around, I applied broadly to everything. Got a few MD interviews late in the process that I did not choose to attend, and a **** ton of DO interviews, most of which I also did not attend.
So why was I sold on GA-PCOM?
1. Atlanta. I knew about Emory and Grady, the CDC, and so-on. I thought there would be a lot of opportunities here. I was right. More on that later.
2. PCOM. I knew the name. I assumed a quality product. I was happy with the school when I interviewed.
3. I was poor. After spending all my money on applications, I was perfectly content to not take any more interview trips, and I wanted to spend my money on other things in my last free summer.
ON GA-PCOM:
First year is the integrated basic sciences. Second year is systems. Overall, I have no problems with how they have things set up, and I think the profs are generally pretty good. Everyone has a different taste in this.
I was particularly partial to the physicians who lectured, as opposed to the PhD-types. Not everybody shared this view, and it is cathartic to bitch about your professors anyway. But those were my favorites.
If I could change one thing, it would be the OMM schedule. We had OMM on Tuesday afternoons, and it is pretty hard to switch gears from basic sciences to that. It would be nice to have it either Monday or Friday morning. Not really a big deal, but sometimes I would get in such a "sit down and study" mode, that I would just dread having to go to OMM lab in the middle of the day.
One thing I love about our school is how much imaging we get. Between the radiologist we have on full-time faculty, and OMM, we get a **** ton of CT/MRI/etc. instruction during first year, and probably even more next year. If I were to have made a list of specialties that I might want to go into before I started school, radiology would have been near the bottom. Now it is #2 to EM. A much closer #2 than most people who know me would suspect. And of the two research projects I am working on this summer, both of them have to do with imaging (ultrasound and imaging in the ED). These projects are not through GA-PCOM. More on this later.
ON OMM:
The lectures are great. Even though I rarely went (gotta pick your battles sometimes), I would almost always watch the DVD, and I got quite a bit out of most of them. It helps you keep up with your anatomy, we got a lot of musculoskeletal trauma stuff, which I like as a prospective EM doc, and it gives us a nice clinical look at a lot of what we're studying in our other courses. So far, OMM itself has actually been a small part of what I've learned in OMM.
As for the techniques, they piss me off. Not because I don't believe in OMM, or some idiotic **** like that, that you might read from idiot pre-meds on this board. But because I suck at them. I am the worst OMMer in the history of OMM. And given my background with kinesiology and S&C, this was one of the things that made me interested in DO schools. I knew I might not ever use it, but it was definitely something that interested me. But now its just demoralizing. I feel like a jackass at every practical, and I had the worst OMM partner ever. Not that he's a bad guy or anything, but he is so limber that he is very hard to palpate. And on top of that, none of us really have anything significant wrong with us anyway, so palpating dysfunction is pretty hard to learn in this setting. But hopefully, this will make us better in the long run.
If you're good at it, more power to you. I may be your patient one day. Actually, I'd say one of the best things about going to an Osteopathic school is that if I've got something wrong with me, I can get a classmate or a professor to pop my neck or whatever, and fix me right up. One time this year, actually just about a month or two ago, I could barely turn my neck. It was painful and sucked ass. I couldn't drive or anything. But the next time I had lab, I got one of our profs to pop me before we got started, and I was good as new.
And believe me. After sitting in the same position from studying or whatever all day long, you will get these little issues that we like to call "somatic dysfunction", and it can be helpful to have someone to fix you up.
ON ATLANTA:
My friends back home always ask me "how's Atlanta?"
The truth is that I have no idea. Our school is in the burbs, and I get to go out so rarely that I don't really know what there is to do here. Obviously, there's the Braves, Hawks, etc., but I never have had a chance to see any of that. Actually, I have a buddy from college who plays for the Hawks, and I swore I was going to go out and watch a game this year, but I never did. Just no time. And another friend of mine is in a band that played about two miles away from my house, at the Gwinnett Center, back in the fall, and I couldn't even find time to make it to that. We had two exams the next day, and they were on tour so I didn't even get to see him, since they had to move on to the next city the following day.
But the opportunities here in medicine are nice, and that is really what I have been counting on.
Our school has a relationship with a free clinic where we can go volunteer. We get to practice a lot of exam skills, as well as SOAP note writing, presenting, etc.. I went 5-6 times I think, and I think that this is a great opportunity that more people should have taken advantage of. It was usually the same people going, and a lot of people didn't even seem to know about it.
But one of the big reasons I wanted to come to this place was Grady. The Mecca of everything that is simultaneously both ****ty and awesome in medicine. I worked in the ER for a while back home, and wanted the full trauma center experience. Grady is one of the places that comes to mind when you think of that: Grady, Parkland, Cook County, LA County, Ben Taub, the one in NYC that I can't spell, are some of the ones that are kind of the "who's who" of inner-city gun & knife club trauma centers. I'm leaving some off, but you get the idea. Nothing against Kirksville or Des Moines, but there was no way I was going somewhere like that, with an opportunity to do stuff at Grady on the table.
But TexasTriathlete, Grady is only for Morehouse and Emory students, right?
But TexasTriathlete, Emory has an anti-DO bias. They NEVER take DO's, right?
For question 1, yeah, they are a core site for Emory and Morehouse students. That doesn't mean you can't volunteer, which I did, and this is how I infiltrated the system.
For question 2, horse ****. This is one of the most idiotic SDN-isms that there is. I have met quite a few DO's at Grady, and nobody gives a ****. Not that I've met, anyway. The EM people all seem to really like us, and I'm just trying to work hard to maintain their good impression of us. I've met DO's from other services too. But to be honest, I don't really even look for it.
So from my volunteering, I got to know a lot of the attendings and residents, and this actually landed me two research gigs. One of them is on EM ultrasound, and the other we still have not ironed out our hypothesis yet, but it will be on emergency imaging. I am likely to end up with my name on publications from both of these. The second one will be a first-author.
But these guys don't just show up at our school and beg us to come do research with them. You have to make your own luck, like the guy on Batman who burned his face off. But if you work hard, and show an interest, there are people out there who would love to have you do stuff with them.
ON MED SCHOOL:
Don't buy textbooks. Going to class is optional. Don't be a douchebag. Try to sit in the back row and play on facebook as much as possible, because this will be the majority of your social life. My facebook friends have increased by like 10x since last August. Make school friends too, and try to enjoy yourself a little bit. Don't get too stressed out. The more fun you have with learning, the better. And if you're going to dick around as much as I did, first year is probably the best time. Second year is going to be very board-heavy, and I've already made the decision to buckle down a little more next year.
The whole first year is kind of a blur, but with all the volunteering and shadowing I did, it is a whole new world in a clinical setting, once you actually know a few things. The amount of knowledge I took in this year was pretty astounding. It all went by pretty fast, it had its ups and downs, but I don't regret it, and I am glad I made the decision to change careers. Anyway, now I am working my balls off this summer, and hopefully, it will pay off. I am working actually more at the ER now, than I did back home, and I am making less money than I have at any job since high school. But whatever. I can live with being poor for a few years. Hopefully, I can finish these projects up before school gets going again in the fall. And to be honest, I am learning a lot from this research, and all the crap I have to read for my literature reviews, and whatnot. Other than the transitional year guy who was pimping me on the freaking left gastroepiploic artery on a CT scan yesterday, and when I couldn't remember it, told me I needed to review my anatomy, I feel pretty good about what I learned this year.
This guy was transitioning to rad-onc, and is probably way smarter than me. I was later reassured by an ER doc that I really am not expected to remember that crap at this point, so that was nice.
So anyway, that's about it.
Be excellent to each other... and... party on, dudes!
That was from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, for those of you who lack culture.
I completed my first year of med school a couple weeks ago, and I've learned a thing or two. So here it goes. I don't know how long this is going to be, but read it anyway, because it will be useful to you:
ON ME:
I turned away from a chance at a potentially promising career in college athletics and Strength & Conditioning, in order to become a physician. I graduated with a kinesiology degree from one of the better programs in the country, and I completed one of the best S&C (not to be confused with S&M, but I did that too) internships in college athletics, if not the best. I was faced with a choice of applying for graduate assistant positions and doing a masters, or taking a different path. To be honest, I had made the decision before I started my last semester of college that I was going to go to med school.
My GPA was 2.2 when I graduated, so I knew I had my work cut out for me. I knew I had to go back to school and light it up, which I did, and that I had to get 30+ on the MCAT, which I did. But even then, I never really thought I'd leave TX. But they didn't really like me (zero interviews through two cycles, as I watched people who could not hang with me in any way get accepted to places like Baylor and UTSW).
But just to be on the safe side, I applied broadly. Twice. Didn't really know what DO was the first time around. Got a few MD interviews, a wait-list, and nothing else. The second time around, I applied broadly to everything. Got a few MD interviews late in the process that I did not choose to attend, and a **** ton of DO interviews, most of which I also did not attend.
So why was I sold on GA-PCOM?
1. Atlanta. I knew about Emory and Grady, the CDC, and so-on. I thought there would be a lot of opportunities here. I was right. More on that later.
2. PCOM. I knew the name. I assumed a quality product. I was happy with the school when I interviewed.
3. I was poor. After spending all my money on applications, I was perfectly content to not take any more interview trips, and I wanted to spend my money on other things in my last free summer.
ON GA-PCOM:
First year is the integrated basic sciences. Second year is systems. Overall, I have no problems with how they have things set up, and I think the profs are generally pretty good. Everyone has a different taste in this.
I was particularly partial to the physicians who lectured, as opposed to the PhD-types. Not everybody shared this view, and it is cathartic to bitch about your professors anyway. But those were my favorites.
If I could change one thing, it would be the OMM schedule. We had OMM on Tuesday afternoons, and it is pretty hard to switch gears from basic sciences to that. It would be nice to have it either Monday or Friday morning. Not really a big deal, but sometimes I would get in such a "sit down and study" mode, that I would just dread having to go to OMM lab in the middle of the day.
One thing I love about our school is how much imaging we get. Between the radiologist we have on full-time faculty, and OMM, we get a **** ton of CT/MRI/etc. instruction during first year, and probably even more next year. If I were to have made a list of specialties that I might want to go into before I started school, radiology would have been near the bottom. Now it is #2 to EM. A much closer #2 than most people who know me would suspect. And of the two research projects I am working on this summer, both of them have to do with imaging (ultrasound and imaging in the ED). These projects are not through GA-PCOM. More on this later.
ON OMM:
The lectures are great. Even though I rarely went (gotta pick your battles sometimes), I would almost always watch the DVD, and I got quite a bit out of most of them. It helps you keep up with your anatomy, we got a lot of musculoskeletal trauma stuff, which I like as a prospective EM doc, and it gives us a nice clinical look at a lot of what we're studying in our other courses. So far, OMM itself has actually been a small part of what I've learned in OMM.
As for the techniques, they piss me off. Not because I don't believe in OMM, or some idiotic **** like that, that you might read from idiot pre-meds on this board. But because I suck at them. I am the worst OMMer in the history of OMM. And given my background with kinesiology and S&C, this was one of the things that made me interested in DO schools. I knew I might not ever use it, but it was definitely something that interested me. But now its just demoralizing. I feel like a jackass at every practical, and I had the worst OMM partner ever. Not that he's a bad guy or anything, but he is so limber that he is very hard to palpate. And on top of that, none of us really have anything significant wrong with us anyway, so palpating dysfunction is pretty hard to learn in this setting. But hopefully, this will make us better in the long run.
If you're good at it, more power to you. I may be your patient one day. Actually, I'd say one of the best things about going to an Osteopathic school is that if I've got something wrong with me, I can get a classmate or a professor to pop my neck or whatever, and fix me right up. One time this year, actually just about a month or two ago, I could barely turn my neck. It was painful and sucked ass. I couldn't drive or anything. But the next time I had lab, I got one of our profs to pop me before we got started, and I was good as new.
And believe me. After sitting in the same position from studying or whatever all day long, you will get these little issues that we like to call "somatic dysfunction", and it can be helpful to have someone to fix you up.
ON ATLANTA:
My friends back home always ask me "how's Atlanta?"
The truth is that I have no idea. Our school is in the burbs, and I get to go out so rarely that I don't really know what there is to do here. Obviously, there's the Braves, Hawks, etc., but I never have had a chance to see any of that. Actually, I have a buddy from college who plays for the Hawks, and I swore I was going to go out and watch a game this year, but I never did. Just no time. And another friend of mine is in a band that played about two miles away from my house, at the Gwinnett Center, back in the fall, and I couldn't even find time to make it to that. We had two exams the next day, and they were on tour so I didn't even get to see him, since they had to move on to the next city the following day.
But the opportunities here in medicine are nice, and that is really what I have been counting on.
Our school has a relationship with a free clinic where we can go volunteer. We get to practice a lot of exam skills, as well as SOAP note writing, presenting, etc.. I went 5-6 times I think, and I think that this is a great opportunity that more people should have taken advantage of. It was usually the same people going, and a lot of people didn't even seem to know about it.
But one of the big reasons I wanted to come to this place was Grady. The Mecca of everything that is simultaneously both ****ty and awesome in medicine. I worked in the ER for a while back home, and wanted the full trauma center experience. Grady is one of the places that comes to mind when you think of that: Grady, Parkland, Cook County, LA County, Ben Taub, the one in NYC that I can't spell, are some of the ones that are kind of the "who's who" of inner-city gun & knife club trauma centers. I'm leaving some off, but you get the idea. Nothing against Kirksville or Des Moines, but there was no way I was going somewhere like that, with an opportunity to do stuff at Grady on the table.
But TexasTriathlete, Grady is only for Morehouse and Emory students, right?
But TexasTriathlete, Emory has an anti-DO bias. They NEVER take DO's, right?
For question 1, yeah, they are a core site for Emory and Morehouse students. That doesn't mean you can't volunteer, which I did, and this is how I infiltrated the system.
For question 2, horse ****. This is one of the most idiotic SDN-isms that there is. I have met quite a few DO's at Grady, and nobody gives a ****. Not that I've met, anyway. The EM people all seem to really like us, and I'm just trying to work hard to maintain their good impression of us. I've met DO's from other services too. But to be honest, I don't really even look for it.
So from my volunteering, I got to know a lot of the attendings and residents, and this actually landed me two research gigs. One of them is on EM ultrasound, and the other we still have not ironed out our hypothesis yet, but it will be on emergency imaging. I am likely to end up with my name on publications from both of these. The second one will be a first-author.
But these guys don't just show up at our school and beg us to come do research with them. You have to make your own luck, like the guy on Batman who burned his face off. But if you work hard, and show an interest, there are people out there who would love to have you do stuff with them.
ON MED SCHOOL:
Don't buy textbooks. Going to class is optional. Don't be a douchebag. Try to sit in the back row and play on facebook as much as possible, because this will be the majority of your social life. My facebook friends have increased by like 10x since last August. Make school friends too, and try to enjoy yourself a little bit. Don't get too stressed out. The more fun you have with learning, the better. And if you're going to dick around as much as I did, first year is probably the best time. Second year is going to be very board-heavy, and I've already made the decision to buckle down a little more next year.
The whole first year is kind of a blur, but with all the volunteering and shadowing I did, it is a whole new world in a clinical setting, once you actually know a few things. The amount of knowledge I took in this year was pretty astounding. It all went by pretty fast, it had its ups and downs, but I don't regret it, and I am glad I made the decision to change careers. Anyway, now I am working my balls off this summer, and hopefully, it will pay off. I am working actually more at the ER now, than I did back home, and I am making less money than I have at any job since high school. But whatever. I can live with being poor for a few years. Hopefully, I can finish these projects up before school gets going again in the fall. And to be honest, I am learning a lot from this research, and all the crap I have to read for my literature reviews, and whatnot. Other than the transitional year guy who was pimping me on the freaking left gastroepiploic artery on a CT scan yesterday, and when I couldn't remember it, told me I needed to review my anatomy, I feel pretty good about what I learned this year.
This guy was transitioning to rad-onc, and is probably way smarter than me. I was later reassured by an ER doc that I really am not expected to remember that crap at this point, so that was nice.
So anyway, that's about it.
Be excellent to each other... and... party on, dudes!
That was from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, for those of you who lack culture.