Week 1 of Medical School Complete!

Getting ready for anatomy lab

I am happy to say that I survived my first week of medical school, and it is every bit of intense as everyone says it is! Just last week alone, we probably covered more than what I learned in what amounts to probably a month or so of undergraduate coursework. There definitely wasn’t any introductory period either. On the very first day, we covered the superficial and deep back muscles, histology methods, osteopathic principles, and we had to do a back dissection on cadavers in anatomy lab. I barely managed to make it home before six on any day, and I still had to study for about 4-5 hours to understand what was taught. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel too overwhelmed during the week, but that all changed when Friday hit and we covered the first eight weeks of embryology in just one day. So much information!!!!

GA-PCOM ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

The week didn’t pass without some pretty good highlights though. On Thursday, I used a power saw for the very first time in my life, and removed the vertebrae of my cadaver in order to visualize and remove the spinal cord. I thought it was so awesome! Anatomy lab, although time consuming, could easily pass for my favorite class right now. I also had the chance to do a cervical palpation on a classmate during OMT lab. OMT, which stands for osteopathic manipulation treatment, is something that is only specific to DO schools, but so far I really enjoy it. It not only is a way to have a break from sitting in a classroom all day and going over the basic sciences, but it also a good way to get to know and understand the body from a physical standpoint. So many people complain about not having any patient contact during the first two years of medical school, and I feel like OMT helps to give a little bit of that. GA-PCOM also proved its awesomeness by having a school-wide ice bucket challenge on Friday to raise money for ALS, and it was pretty cool seeing our professors get ice water dumped on them. They also had a huge water slide and free cookies, so it was a nice end to a pretty long week.

My week in a nutshell: studying, studying, and more studying!

As for this weekend, the studying didn’t end with classes on Friday. I not only studied all of Friday night, but on Saturday morning I was back in the anatomy lab doing a dissection to find the subocciptal triangle, and to make sure that I could identify all of the back muscles before we flip the bodies over on Monday. After that I came back home to study embryology for a few hours, but then I went right back to campus to go over the vertebrae and deltoscapular region with one of my classmates. I made a promise that for one day a week I would do absolutely nothing school related, so last night I went out with my wonderful guy and daughter to a nice dinner. I also took my daughter to an indoor trampoline park today, and we basically spent the whole day bonding. It was actually really refreshing to take one day to not worry about schoolwork, because I literally felt like all I did was study throughout the week.

Dinner Break!

A few of you have asked me to make a post about my daily schedule, and I am about to do that right now. I didn’t want to make a super long post though, so I will most likely schedule it to be posted either tomorrow or Tuesday evening. Outside of that, I probably will not post again until next weekend, so I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Mommy and Daughter Bonding Time :-)