Well, first of all, welcome (in August that is). I know we don't have any med students rotating through this month but I heard that there may be a few next month...and I guess a sheep will be amongst them come this August.
I have never used craigslist.org to look for a place to live; although, I do remember recommending it to a few folks on SDN. That is because this is the only website I'm aware of that posts a variety of ads. Hell, I had a buyer for my bed in Ann Arbor within an hour of putting up my ad. So my impression is that there are lots of people who are looking on that website.
When you rotate at the Brigham, you will likely be shadowing a resident. For instance, you can assist on autopsies (this is where you'll probably be the most involved, but I could be wrong...heck, it's only my second day today). As for CP, I have no idea. You'll probably sit in on a bunch of signouts or attend things like microbiology plate rounds...who knows. On surgical pathology, you would probably be shadowing a resident as they gross specimens. You can hang out with us while we preview our **** too but I'll warn you, we tend to preview later in the day (since signouts are typically in the mornings and we gross in the afternoon on the surgical services). But that's really up to you. I think for your purposes, you should definitely sit in on signouts cuz that's when the attendings teach the non-attendings (i.e., us and you) the **** that needs to be learned.
Just as a warning...depending on the service, some residents will be more swamped than others. The more swamped they are, the less teaching and more passive watching you'll do. The first few months of the academic year is tricky in terms of how much residents will be able to spend time teaching you. The first year residents, like myself, are busy learning a ton of diagnostics and techniques...albeit very inefficiently. The second year residents are currently serving as trainers for the first years. But if there is one thing I've noticed already here...there is a very pervasive pro-teaching, pro-education attitude here. Rest assured, we'll do our very best to teach you whatever we happen to know when you work with us.
Lastly, with respect to the rotation, med students are encouraged to give one talk during their months with us. We have weekly "Gross/Micro" conferences on Thursday mornings. There, two residents will each give a 25 minute talk on a topic of their choice and then at the end a third resident presents a "quickie" case. So if you'd like to give a talk, you'd only have to sit up there and babble for not even a half an hour. Should be pretty easy. And we can help you with topic selection too.
OK enough of that.
Traveling in Boston...intimidating at first. But Boston is not a really big city and the public transportation system is rather simple, once you get used to it, and quite reliable. I would check out
www.mbta.com if you want to familiarize yourself with the T. They have subway routes, bus routes, and schedules. I even have it bookmarked on my computer.
There are a few of us Brigham residents lurking here and perhaps they'll offer some more insight. But in any case, feel free to ask me any other questions you may have and I'll try my best to answer them.
That's all I can come up with right now. I'm going to have a beer and if some other strokes of thought enter my brain, I'll add to this post.
