Come on, be nice. Guy comes on to ask a decent question instead of just remaining ignorant about pathology like most clinicians. Let's not be impolite to folks who come in here looking for advice on how to better their knowledge of what pathology is really about.
Second this.
To the OP, it depends on your primary goal. FP is probably more *fun* for a medical student, but gen surg path may be more useful in terms of learning what pathologists do and how pathology will be relevant to your future practice. I definitely agree with everyone who suggested spending some time in the frozen section room, since the questions that you try to answer during an intraoperative consult can be very different from those you're trying to answer during permanent processing. It's also important to spend some time both attending sign out AND accompanying a resident in the grossing room.
I'm going to admit it and say that pathology rotations can be almost mind-numbingly boring for med students, particularly when the students have no responsibility for cases. This is in part just the nature of an observership, which is what most path rotations amount to, and because of the vastly different nature of pathology in comparison to clinical work. If you find histology exciting, then by all means read up a little about specific disease entities. To be honest, however, there's very little you can do in a single month in terms of becoming totally comfortable with histology, and it is not something you should really focus on in order to prepare yourself for your future. I think the most important thing for you would be to get a general idea of what pathology is and how it works, from practical things like specimen processing to the fact that individual interpretation and opinion plays a big role in diagnostic pathology. Pathology rotations in many academic centers are quite poorly organized - students can easily rotate through for a month and still have absolutely no idea what pathologists do.
Find a couple of residents who are into teaching, and have them show you around the cutting room, frozen room, and histology areas. Have them explain how specimens get processed, from beginning to end. Spend some time with the autopsy residents that month - often, a one month gen surg path rotation still allows you time to spend observing/helping with medical autopsies. Find out who the chief resident is, and have them help you figure out who to talk to/shadow/work with during the month. Engage the residents and attendings and have them explain to you how we approach a specimen and what we do to answer the questions that the clinician has. Learn that we need to communicate and form a functional professional relationship in order to do what's best for our patients (clinicians often forget that these our patients, too, and we care about providing the best care that we can - the idea that we're "lazy" or reluctant to work and advocate for our patients is ridiculous in most cases; while there are a few people who just don't care, most of us do!).
Don't forget to have fun - anything can be fun and educational if you approach it with an open mind.
