First week of medical school and my friend Isaac

Hey Everyone!  Sorry for not having a post the past few days but the first few days of class have been very busy.  In the mornings my friends and I usually take the early bus and make it to campus at least a few hours before classes start.  Morning classes are 4 days a week and consist of various small group sessions where we discuss anything from Anatomy, to how to meet with patients and take blood pressure.  Lunch breaks are usually pretty minimal at half an hour and then the rest of the day proceeds with large group lectures.  Small groups usually have about 15 people and large group lectures have about 250 people (our class divided into two separate schedules).  You have to be careful and not get lost in the crowd and be accountable for making yourself pay attention in the large classes.  However, that really isn't really that hard since the professors like to call out students in the lecture hall for texting, nodding off, using facebook, or just to simply humiliate them for their own enjoyment.  But it is medical school.....you should be able to put your phone away for a few hours and listen to what your paying for!!!

Today was my first day of small group lecture/study and it made me really nervous!!!  It has been a few years since I had been in the classroom and having a professor run me through the ringer for a few hours on a more personal basis made me very uncomfortable!  But it wasn't too terribly bad and we even got to go down to the simulator lab and play with Harvey!!!!  He is the cardiology dummy that allows you to listen to various heart and lung sounds.  The neat thing about Harvey is that one student can be doing the actually listening and then the rest of the students have head gear to hear what that student is hearing while applying the stethoscope to the dummy patient.  Pretty amazing right?!?!  I think so anyway.  Below is a pictures of a "Harvey" I found on Wikipedia....so it isn't AUA's Harvey but pretty much the same thing.  Beautiful wig aye?



After small classes and lectures sometime we go to the gym and other times we head to the library and study for several hours.  Because we are in student housing and use the bus we have to make sure that we follow the bus schedule so we can make it back to the housing complex.  When we do arrive back at the complex we are usually reading and studying until 11 pm or so.  It is a long day for sure.  Being sick during my first week of medical school wasn't a great experience either.  But I have been studying and reading for about 4 days straight and tonight I have kind of took the evening off for a few hours to get a small nap in and to update my lovely blog.  But I am sure that I will have an hour or two of reading to do before I decide to go to bed for the night.

Onto a non academic matter at this vary moment tropical storm Isaac is making its way to Antigua!  Ya!!!! Today campus got shut down early which destroyed my workout and study time I had anticipated on campus in order to prepare for the storm.  I have received several emails in regards to the storm and things to NOT do while in a tropical storm.....silly things like don't go swimming!  Seriously?!?!??!  WOW!!!  In regard to tomorrow campus is opening at 10 am and the buses are not leaving until later in the morning. So we will see how hard the island gets hit by mister Isaac!  I was told to expect power outages and tons of wind!