And So It Begins...

Today was my first real day of classes. I was on the highway at 8 as opposed to 7:45 (which makes a startling difference in traffic, although it's still not as bad as Seattle). And my Histology lecture began at 9 am this morning. Histology seems a bit dull. It's supposed to be studied under a microscope, but we use computers instead. In order to sound interesting, it is still termed "Virtual Microscopy." This seems silly to me, but perhaps I don't know enough about this "virtual" microscope to really judge it. I'll let you know on Wednesday, when I get to use this "virtual" microscope. I can hardly wait, it seems enthralling.

After a two hour Histology lecture, we were shuffled into a seminar on extracurricular activities. Namely, volunteer your little heart out and get credit for it, plus this looks good on your resume. I had to sit on the floor, mind you, because they weren't prepared for the amount of people to show up. Thank god I had packed a lunch, it was almost like I was having a little picnic. Minus the fact that it was storming outside and I was listening to more information than I could digest at once, it was almost fun.

By 1, I had endured 4 hours of lecturing, and sat down for a 2 hour lecture on gross anatomy. The highlight of the lecture was that the professor confused Ventral for Dorsal and Dorsal for Ventral. Since this was the first exposure to anatomy in general for most students, they had no clue this was wrong. For me, I let it go the first time, got confused the second time, and irritated the third. By the end of class someone mustered the courage to confront him. The moral of the story is that even in medical school professors get confused. After this lecture, there was 3 hours of gross dissection. I've done this before, so it was nothing spectacular for me, but I noticed my group was pretty excited

A few more life lessons were learned today. The first being that my body does not deal well with 6 hours of starvation. By the time I arrived home at 6:30 I was so famished I could have eaten anything. My heaping bowl of pasta tasted absolutely amazing. The second thing I learned today was that even in medical school, there are always a few people that still sit in the front of class and still ask the most obvious of questions. Furthermore, those people have no idea how irritating they are and continue to press on in their quest for pointless knowledge, under the false pretenses that they are really figuring out something challenging. The third and final thing I learned today was that I have no patience for alpha males. There was once a time (when I was about 13) that I found this attractive: that pushy, take charge, I know everything attitude. At my current age of 22, I find this absolutely repulsive and more than mildly irritating. Let's leave it at that.

I'm absolutely exhausted. My summer off has not left me well conditioned for this type of educational marathon. Lesson learned: don't take a summer completely off ever again.