Thanks for the cheery post.
Did you find any particular textbooks helpful during your first year? Are any of the "required" texts truly worth buying?
Everything ddmo said except that I enjoyed orientation a bit more than perhaps he did (and I'm not the "orientation/cushy feely" type either).
As for texts, I bought a few. The only ones I used were BRS physiology, and also Costanzo's Physiology text. I've read it this summer as well, and it's very well written.
Ofcourse, Rohens and Netters are necessary. And, you'll need Gray's for students as that's what the anatomy course followed. The biochem text was pretty good (this may be contended by some), but there WERE some errors (most of which were pointed out by the profs, which was cool).
But, just hang loose on buying too much. Like ddmo said, you can buy em as you need em.
I also bought a few other books (one of the cardio phys that was recommended) that I did not find particularly useful.
***Most of the PDFs they post on blackboard (from prof's PPT slides) that are presented are password protected. I'd recommend downloading a PDF cracker (some are free. i paid 24$ for one and it was well worth it). Like undergrad, most of the info tested on are from what's presented by the profs (though all is technically fair game). So, the PDFs of the lecture PPTs are useful to carry around and study from. This is important in my opinion.
SOME profs make the PPTs available, but often they were late in making them available in our mailboxes. Also, they were usually small print and black and white. By being able to crack the PDF files (they warned against this, so be careful whom you share with), you can control size and color etc., as well as get em printed out as soon as they are posted on blackboard.
This was important for biochem and physio mostly.
