Reflections on Week 1

My name is Derrick Antoniak, and this is my blog about being a first year medical student.

Well, today is Labor Day, a day that has always been special to me since I've traditionally been a construction worker looking forward to the end of another hot summer of hard work. This holiday weekend, though, has been mostly built around my study schedule. In fact, I've been watching the dog for my mom while she's out of town, and Joanna's been working pretty much day and night between her two jobs, so aside from the Husker game, I haven't done much at all.

With the holiday today, we had a scheduled session in the gross lab Saturday morning, which turned out to be very worthwhile. Many people left town for the weekend, so with the lab less crowded we got more time with the instructor in those two hours than we got on Tuesday through Friday combined. We finished the dissection of the hand, which means that with the exception of a demonstration on joints, we are done dissecting for the first exam, which is this coming Saturday.

I feel good about school right now. I think the pace is good; we're moving quickly, but not too quick for me to keep on top of it. It's nice, of course, not working. We have five mornings (8 to 12) and two afternoons (1 to 3 or 4) scheduled each week, with the rest of the afternoons and weekend unscheduled, so I haven't done the math yet, but I may be putting in about the same amount of total hours that I was between school and work as an undergrad. The stress level is admittedly higher, but so is the motivation and interest.

Today I am actually reading the anatomy textbook for the first time, which brings up another interesting point. We have more tools for anatomy than we can possibly use. There are dozens of atlases, we have a textbook, a more concise review textbook, there are anatomy flash cards, online we have hundreds of images, slides, radiographs, etc., there are power point lectures online, along with hard copy handouts for each lecture, in the lab there are videos showing dissection of each body region that we're working on, boxes of bones, and of course, the cadavers themselves. It's been fun to have some autonomy in deciding which study aids I want to use, and when and how to use them.

Anyways, back to the grind.