Medical School Week 3 Reflection
I sit and type this on my brother’s 9 inch netbook because my Dell Inspiron 1420 seems to have basically crashed. It started off yesterday when I started seeing flashing zig zag lines and flashing blue and green screens, and it culminated in basically crashing or whatever you call it last night. I basically can’t even get to the log in screen now, it just goes black with zig zag flashing lines.
Fortunately I was able to back up my most important folders on an external hard drive (including my medical school notes, I would be very sad if I lost those!). It’s just frustrating because my last Dell laptop’s screen busted, and now this one just busts after maybe 1.5 years of use. I guess I’m not buying a Dell ever again.
A Light Week at Medical School
This was actually a pretty light week, at least in terms of UofT medical school standards. Most of the week was spent on our respirology unit, including a visit to a hospital to see some pulmonary function tests in person. Nothing too interesting or memorable about that.
I had my second session for my Arts and Sciences of Clinical Medicine course yesterday. They are pretty much slowly easing us into learning clinical skills. This week we discussed how to write a good case report (i.e. a report you write after interviewing a patient). After that, we split up into our small groups and had another go at interviewing standardized patients.
The standardized patient I interviewed was elderly, and came in with stiff pain in her knuckles. Although I wasn’t nervous last time, I still felt a bit out of place in terms of figuring out what to ask and having some direction in the conversation. This time I felt a lot more comfortable, and felt much more in control of what I needed to do. At the end of the interview, when the standardized patient was giving me feedback, she told me that she could see the empathy on my face when I spoke with her, and my tutor said the same as well. I was just like “what?” because I honestly wasn’t feeling empathy because I knew it wasn’t a “real patient”. But hey, that’s still got to be a good thing.
Best part of this week was that we got let out early at around noon yesterday, which is a pretty nice start to the weekend. I met up with some friends from class and we had lunch at this Thai restaurant, followed by an insane four and a half hour session of karaoke.
I started off by completely butchering Jason Mraz, but I think I recovered alright by the end. Highlights included attempting to rap Eminem and Jay-Z and realizing how tiring rapping is – I have a lot more respect for that craft now.
Oh Screw It
I got some unsettling news last night. I don’t want to go into details, but it’s just one of those things that makes you reflect on how short life really is. I’m not one of those big believers in living every day as if it were your last (I don’t think that phrase even makes sense), but I’m trying to be a bigger believer in just going for things and worrying less.
So many times an opportunity will come along, and I will think about going for it, but just chicken out at the last minute because I waste so much time thinking.
Something like that came up this week, and I finally just said “screw it” and went for it. And even though it didn’t work out the way I’d hope, I’m really glad I decided to just go for it. I hope this is a sign for many more “oh screw it” moments to come.
Anyways, I’ve taken the last few days off from studying, so I really need to get back in the swing of things. I also need to study more efficiently because I’m generally wasting time on the Internet half the time at the library.
Have a good weekend! 
Related Posts:
- Medical School Week 2 Reflection
- Reflection on 1st Week of Medical School
- UofT Meds Orientation Week Day 1
- End of the 1st Semester of Medical School
- A Little Update
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Comments
I’m not a big fan of rapping either, but I guess it was just fun to try. When you’re around good friends, and you feel comfortable, it’s easy to just randomly try different things I guess.
Ya I guess I came off as a Dell hater lol. I was more frustrated than anything. But my friend fixed things up for me last night, so I will still be with this Dell for the near future at the very least
Haha at the empathy part. I’m glad work load is light for you these days! Ugh, too much detail on proteins and nucleotides on my part. And wow, four and a half hours of karaoke? That is pretty insane.
You’re not alone; I tend to think a lot about things making me very indecisive. But I guess we do sometimes have to take risks and see how it turns out. I’m glad you took the courage to do so! I’m sorry it didn’t work out as you planned but I’m sure those in the future will.
Hey Sonja,
Don’t worry, the workload is going to increase soon for me I actually don’t mind nucleic acids, but proteins can get very :S
haha i usually butcher any kind of songs when i make an attempt to “sing” 
so i used to think rapping would be much easier for singing, but based on your experienec rapping is just as hard as singing
well it’s good thing you at least tried (about how you just went for something and don’t regret), i recently received a scholarship (actually this week ) and when i applied i did not expect to win. after submitting the application i even thoght to myself that i shouldn’t have wasted ~20 pages worth of paper, but things turned out well for me!!!!
(and of course, there are countless times when things never worked out the way i planned…)
i have very similar issues with the whole “wasting time on the internet” thing. if you are one of those people who tend to drift into your own world when you’re 100% by yourself, i suggest maybe sit in big tables (not cubicles) in the library (i.e. open space). i am currently trying that and so far it works fantastic! when i am surrounded by people in a moderate noise-level env, for some bizarre reason i can’t explain, i tend to focus better and actually get some work done!
speaking of getting some work done… i guess i’d better go back to writing up my lovely zoo lab report (sarcasm)
anyways ttyl!
Personally I’m not a fan of rapping, but I think it’s amusing how you term it a “craft” =)
All dell’s aren’t that bad … the xps, for example, is just awesome!